From maryrose333 at att.net Mon Feb 1 15:53:29 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 14:53:29 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Green Jobs for Jailbirds Message-ID: <005601caa391$97961020$c6c23060$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS This is such a fabulous idea - rehabilitating felons so they can return to society as whole functioning people. We need to get healing music into these institutions as well. And these two programs are needed in substance abuse and bipolar rehab centers that are federal, state, and locally funded also. We need a healthy society. http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/green-jobs-prison-work Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Mon Feb 1 16:02:53 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 15:02:53 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] The Race Between Tipping Points: Can We Save Our Civilization? Message-ID: <005c01caa392$e7249ed0$b56ddc70$@net> -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 10:57 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] The Race Between Tipping Points: Can We Save Our Civilization? The Race Between Tipping Points: Can We Save Our Civilization? A renowned environmentalist outlines 10 areas of grave concern, and 10 trends that give us reason for hope. By Lester R. Brown http://www.motherearthnews.com/Nature-Community/Tipping-Point-Planet-Civiliz ation.aspx?utm_content=02.01.10+HE&utm_campaign=HE&utm_source=iPost&ut m_medium=email To mark our 40th anniversary, we asked our longtime contributing editor and sustainable development expert, Lester Brown, to look ahead and share his assessment of the most significant trends that are affecting our world today. - MOTHER The Bad News: 10 Troubling Trends I've been studying global environmental issues for decades, and for perspective, I read about ancient civilizations that declined and collapsed. Most often, shrinking food supplies were responsible for their demise. For the Sumerians, rising salt levels in the soil - the result of a design flaw in their irrigation system - brought down wheat and barley yields, and eventually the civilization itself. For some other early civilizations that have collapsed, it was soil erosion that triggered their decline. Does our civilization face a similar fate? Unless we can reverse the environmental trends that are undermining the world food economy, the answer may be yes. Here are the 10 greatest environmental threats I think we face today. 1. Soil Erosion. Erosion now exceeds new soil formation on about 30 percent of the world's cropland. In some countries, it has reduced grain production by half or more over the past three decades. Kazakhstan, for example, has abandoned 40 percent of its grain land since 1980. Space photos of continent-sized dust storms coming out of the Sahelian region of Africa and northwestern China show us that the loss of topsoil is expanding. 2. Falling Water Tables. Water tables are now falling in countries that together contain half the world's people. A World Bank study shows that 175 million people in India are being fed by overpumping aquifers. The comparable number for China is about 130 million people. As the wells go dry, the food supply will tighten in both countries. 3. Population Growth. Since 1950, world population has more than doubled. Stated differently, population growth from 1950 to 2009 exceeded that during the preceding 11,000 years since agriculture began. Today's world population of 6.7 billion is growing by 80 million per year. In many countries, populations have simply outrun their resource base. The result is soil erosion, falling water tables, deteriorating grasslands, collapsing fisheries and shrinking forests. No civilization has ever survived the destruction of its natural support systems, nor will ours. 4. Melting Ice Sheets. The melting of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, combined with thermal expansion of the oceans, could raise sea levels by up to 6 feet during this century. Every rice-growing river delta in Asia is threatened. Even a 3-foot rise would devastate the rice harvest in the Mekong Delta, which produces more than half the rice in Vietnam, the world's No. 2 rice exporter. A World Bank map shows that a 3-foot rise in sea level would inundate half the rice land in Bangladesh, home to 160 million people. 5. Shrinking Mountain Glaciers. As the Earth's temperature continues to rise, mountain glaciers are vanishing. Nowhere is this of more concern than in Asia, where the annual melting from glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan Plateau sustains the major rivers of India (the Indus and Ganges) and of China (the Yellow and Yangtze), and the irrigation systems that depend on them during the dry season. China is the world's leading wheat producer. India is the second largest. (The United States is the third.) China and India also dominate world rice production. The potential shrinking of the glaciers in the mountains of Asia represents the largest threat to food security humanity has ever faced. 6. Destruction of Forests. Since 1990, the developing world has lost about 32 million acres of forest a year. Meanwhile, the developed countries are actually gaining nearly 15 million acres of forestland each year, principally from abandoned cropland returning to forests and from the spread of commercial forestry plantations. Some marginal cropland is allowed to revert to trees because it isn't economical to farm, because of conservation incentives or a combination of those two factors. Still, worldwide, forests are shrinking by 17 million acres per year. 7. Environmental Refugees. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by population growth, are now also fueled by the advance of deserts and by rising seas. If we continue with business as usual, there will be millions of environmental refugees in the decades ahead. 8. Disappearing Species. The fossil record shows five great extinctions since life began, each representing an evolutionary setback. The last of these mass extinctions occurred some 65 million years ago - most likely because an asteroid collided with our planet, spewing vast amounts of dust and debris into the atmosphere. The resultant abrupt cooling obliterated three-fourths of the Earth's living species, including the dinosaurs. We are now in the early stages of the sixth great extinction. Unlike previous extinction events, this one is man-made - caused by habitat destruction, climate change and pollution. 9. Spreading Hunger. As a result of rising food prices, hunger is spreading. By the mid-1990s, the number of hungry people had fallen to 825 million. Instead of continuing to decline, the numbers started to edge upward, reaching more than 1 billion in 2009. Several trends, including the projected growth in population, the diversion of grain to produce fuel for cars and spreading shortages of irrigation water, could combine to push the number of hungry people to an estimated 1.2 billion or more by 2015. 10. Failing States. States fail when national governments lose control or can no longer provide basic services such as education, healthcare and food security. Recent examples include North Korea, Sudan and Somalia. Each year, the list of failing states grows longer. How many failing states can we tolerate before we have a failing global civilization? The Good News: 10 Hopeful Trends We are in a race between tipping points: natural tipping points and political tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save at least the larger glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau? Can we arrest the deforestation of the Amazon before land clearing for grazing cattle and farming so weakens the forest that it dries out and becomes vulnerable to natural fires? Yes, I think we can. But we have to take action to reverse these threats, while increasing the momentum of positive trends such as utilizing renewable energy and rethinking food production. Here are 10 encouraging trends that suggest dramatic change - for the better - is on the horizon. 1. Turning to the Wind. Wind power is emerging as the centerpiece of the new energy economy. Wind energy is abundant, low-cost and widely distributed. While oil wells go dry and coal seams run out, the Earth's wind resources cannot be depleted. Three states (North Dakota, Kansas and Texas) have enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy our national energy needs. The harnessable wind energy in China is seven times the country's electricity consumption. 2. Solar Power Shines. Energy from sunlight can be converted into electricity with photovoltaic (PV) cells. Worldwide, annual solar installations are doubling every two years. Until recently, PV production was concentrated in Japan, Germany and the United States, but now it has spread into China, Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea. For nearly 1.6 billion people living in villages that are not connected to an electrical grid, it is often cheaper to install solar cells rooftop-by-rooftop than to build a central power plant and an electric grid. 3. Intensifying Solar Power. This form of solar power has become one of the world's fastest growing sources of energy. It uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a vessel containing a liquid to produce steam and generate power. Fifteen large concentrating solar power plants are under development in the U.S. Southwest. Plans are evolving in Europe to harness solar energy in the deserts of North Africa. Studies show that these desert power plants could supply up to half of Europe's electricity. 4. Energy from the Earth. The Earth's geothermal energy resources far exceed the world's current energy needs. Engineers are devising ways to unlock this vast energy source more easily. For many years, U.S. geothermal energy was confined largely to a project north of San Francisco. Now the United States is experiencing a geothermal renaissance. The 132 plants currently under development are expected to triple U.S. geothermal generating capacity. 5. A Lighting Revolution. The world is in the early stages of a revolution in lighting technology. We know that compact fluorescent light bulbs use 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs. But there is still a more advanced lighting technology - the light-emitting diode (LED). If LEDs are combined with motion sensors that turn off lights in unoccupied spaces, the combination can reduce electricity used for lighting by 90 percent. Using the most efficient technologies would save enough electricity to close 700 of the world's 2,700 coal-fired power plants. 6. Electrifying Transportation. This century will see the electrification of transportation as the world shifts from gasoline-powered automobiles to plug-in hybrids, all-electric cars and high-speed intercity rail. And for long-distance freight, the shift will be from diesel-powered trucks to electrically powered rail-freight systems. 7. The Bicycle is Back. From 1990 to 2002, world bicycle production averaged 94 million units per year. In 2007, that number climbed to 130 million, far outstripping automobile production of 70 million units per year. Bicycle sales are surging in many countries as governments devise incentives to encourage bicycle use. The bicycle alleviates congestion, lowers air pollution, reduces fuel use and obesity, and increases physical fitness. (I estimate that I get 7 miles per potato on my bicycle.) 8. Fish Farming Takes Off. Even while oceanic fisheries are collapsing, fish farming is expanding rapidly worldwide and may soon overtake world beef production. China has developed a fish polyculture system that uses four types of carp that feed at different levels of the food chain, in effect emulating natural aquatic ecosystems. Today, more than 60 percent of the world's farmed fish is produced in China. China's aquacultural output, at 31 million tons annually, is double that of poultry, making it the first large country where fish farming has eclipsed poultry farming. 9. India Leads World in Milk Production. Mounting pressures on land and water resources have led to the evolution of a flourishing dairy industry in India that is based on crop residues (principally wheat straw and rice straw, rather than grain) thereby increasing production of food without using more land. Since 1970, India's milk production has increased fivefold, jumping from 21 million tons to 106 million tons, boosting the value of milk output above that of the rice harvest. In 1997 India overtook the United States, becoming the world's leading producer of milk and other dairy products. 10. Localization of Food Production. Localization of the food economy is being driven by a passion for fresh, safe and local food. And as the cost of shipping fresh produce from distant markets rises with the price of oil, even more people will appreciate the benefits and economics of local food. The combination of reducing the food miles in our diets and moving down the food chain can dramatically reduce energy use in the food economy. The choice is ours. We can stay with business as usual and preside over an economy that destroys its natural support systems until it destroys itself, or we can adopt Plan B and become the generation that changes direction, moving the world onto a path of sustained progress. The choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on Earth for many generations to come. Lester R. Brown is the president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. http://www.motherearthnews.com/shopping/detail.aspx?itemnumber=4115 From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 2 05:57:22 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 12:57:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Fw: real-world economics review - Voting is now open for the Ignoble Prize for Economics Message-ID: <201369.17149.qm@web27407.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- On Tue, 2/2/10, real-world economics review wrote: From: real-world economics review Subject: real-world economics review - Voting is now open for the Ignoble Prize for Economics To: "dharao4" Date: Tuesday, 2 February, 2010, 11:17 #yiv1569657655 h1 { color:#3F4A50; font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:220%; font-weight:bold; clear:left; } #yiv1569657655 h2 { color:#4A6279; font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:150%; font-weight:bold; clear:left; } #yiv1569657655 h3 { color:#4A6279; font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:120%; font-weight:bold; clear:left; } #yiv1569657655 , #yiv1569657655 p, #yiv1569657655 td, #yiv1569657655 form, #yiv1569657655 input, #yiv1569657655 textarea, #yiv1569657655 select { color:#3F4A50; font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:13px; } #yiv1569657655 a { color:#000000; font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; } #yiv1569657655 blockquote { font-family:Courier New, Courier; font-size:12px; } #yiv1569657655 a:hover { font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color:#FF6600; } #yiv1569657655 td.norm { background-color:#f96300; color:#000000; border:1px solid #f96300; } #yiv1569657655 td.normbody { border:1px solid #f96300; } #yiv1569657655 img {border:none;} Voting is now open for the Ignoble Prize for Economics ? The Ignoble Prize for Economics is to be awarded to the three economists who contributed most to enabling the Global Financial Collapse (GFC) ? Voting is ultra quick and easy.? Click here http://rwer.wordpress.com/poll-procedures-for-the-ignoble-prize-for-economics/vote-for-the-ignoble-prize-for-economics/ or go to http://rwer.wordpress.com/ ? and you will see the ballot. Click on your three choices and then the big yellow ?vote? button.? ? 22 economists were nominated for the prize.? Through consultation with contributors to the Real-World Economics Review Blog, the following short list of ten, including two pairs of economists, has been selected for the ballot.? ? Dossiers of short-listed of nominees for the Ignoble Prize for Economics ? Fischer Black and Myron Scholes They jointly developed the Black-Scholes model which led to the explosive growth of financial derivatives. ?The importance given to their hypothetical calculation of derivative prices was baneful not just because it was bogus, but also because it meant that relevant and often urgent real-world economic research was widely neglected by the profession. ? Eugene Fama His ?efficient market theory? provided the moral umbrella for all sorts of greed, predatory behaviour and incompetent corporate management.? It also provided the rationale for deregulation.? And his theory?s widespread acceptance meant that ?discussion of investor irrationality, of bubbles, of destructive speculation had virtually disappeared from academic discourse.? ?In these three ways Fama?s work created the environment which made possible the GFC. ? Milton Friedman He propagated the delusion, through his misunderstanding of the scientific method, that an economy can be accurately modeled using counterfactual propositions about its nature.? This, together with his simplistic model of money, encouraged the development of the financial theories with unrealistic assumptions that facilitated the GFC. ?In short,?he opened the door for everyone subsequently to theorize without fear of having to be attached to reality. ? Alan Greenspan As Chairman of the Federal Reserve System from 1987 to 2006, he both led the over expansion of money and credit that created the bubble that burst and aggressively promoted the view that financial markets are naturally efficient and in no need of regulation.? Before a Congressional committee on 28 October 2008 Greenspan confessed that his theoretical beliefs of 40 years were now proven to be without foundation, hence his total confusion and failure at his job. Assar Lindbeck By working to make the Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (?Nobel Prize in Economics?) almost exclusively a prize for neoclassical economists, this Swedish economist has contributed significantly to the conversion of the economics profession and of world public opinion to market fundamentalism.?? ????????? Robert Lucas His development of the rational expectations hypothesis, which defined rationality as the capacity to accurately predict the future, both served to maintain Friedman's proposition that monetary factors do not affect the real economy and, in the name of ?rigor?, distanced economics even further from reality than Friedman had thought possible. Richard Portes As Secretary-General of the Royal Economic Society from 1992-2008, he helped suppress worries expressed by non-mainstream economists about developments in the financial sector.? In 2007 he wrote a Report for the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce giving a clean bill of health to Icelandic banks only a few months before they collapsed.? When investigators called attention to the real state of Icelandic banking, he wrote a series of letters to the Financial Times defending the soundness of Icelandic banks and imputing professional incompetence to those who doubted it. ? Edward Prescott and Finn Kydland For jointly developing and popularizing ?Real Business Cycle? theory, which by omitting the role of credit greatly diminished the economics profession?s understanding of dynamic macroeconomic processes. ? Paul Samuelson Through his textbook Economics: An Introductory Analysis (19 English language editions and translated into 40 languages), he popularized neoclassical economics, contributing more than any other economist to its diffusion and thereby to the deregulation of financial markets which made possible the GFC. ? Larry Summers As US Secretary of the Treasury (formerly an economist at Harvard and the World Bank), he worked successfully for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which since the Great Crash of 1929 had kept deposit banking separate from casino banking.? He also worked with Greenspan and Wall Street interests to torpedo efforts to regulate derivatives.? Procedures The voting is being conducted using PollDaddy.? Its system uses cookies to prevent repeat voting.? A voting box showing the short-listed candidates and a link to their dossiers will remain till voting closes near the top of the right-hand column on the home page of the Real-World Economics Review Blog .? Voting is open to all interested parties. Each voter can vote for up to three of the listed candidates.? The ballots are secret.? Voting will remain open for several weeks.? No results will be announced before closing the poll. ? ? Click here to safely unsubscribe now from "real-world economics review" or change your subscription or subscribe Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498 ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 2 06:03:27 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 13:03:27 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Awareness Campaign for TFE. Message-ID: <819345.72212.qm@web27402.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? ? Dear All, ? ??????? Over the years I have been waging an awareness campaign on Transfinancial Economics on the internet, and I have had some interesting responses. This is notably true with rescent work on Facebook where there are notably many students groups (including the LSE!). I may if I get the time, and energy cut, and post some of the most interesting responses to TFE. ? I also get the feeling that my project is something of an eye opener for many!! ? Robert Searle. ? http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 3 03:08:29 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: 03 Feb 2010 02:08:29 -0800 Subject: Tesco to spend £100 mln on green tech - Yahoo! News UK Message-ID: Robert Searle (dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk) has sent you a news article X-Originating-IP: 77.238.190.41 -------------------- Personal message text: -------------------- Tesco to spend ??100 mln on green tech http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100203/tts-uk-tesco-green-ca02f96.html ============================================================ From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 3 06:29:43 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: 03 Feb 2010 13:29:43 +0000 Subject: [GJM] UK studying high-frequency trading  - Yahoo! News UK Message-ID: Robert Searle (dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk) has sent you a news article X-Originating-IP: 77.238.191.93 -------------------- Personal message text: -------------------- UK studying high-frequency trading?? http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100203/tbs-uk-regulation-myners-03c9bed.html ============================================================ From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 3 06:46:07 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 13:46:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Value for People Message-ID: <408896.25703.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? ? The data below may be of interest. R.Searle.... ? John Rogers Join me and fellow community currency activists around the world, for just ONE HOUR, to get a *taste* of the five week 'Let's Make Money' webinar coming soon. This NO COST GIFT Introductory Teleseminar will take place on Feb 04, 2010. Find out about the content of the full webinar and meet others interested in currency design.... Full details here: www.valueforpeople.co.uk/giftseminarbooking John Rogers Value for People www.valueforpeople.co.ukSee more GIFT SEMINAR | Value For People www.valueforpeople.co.uk Value For People - the Community Currency, Time Banking and Co-Production specialists -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 3 12:27:39 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 11:27:39 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Meet Michael Brune Message-ID: <000201caa507$249d4080$6dd7c180$@net> For your information and consideration. From: Sierra Club Insider [mailto:insider at sierraclub.org] Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 4:38 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Meet Michael Brune The Insider: The official newsletter of the Sierra Club Join or Give | Send to a Friend | View in Browser | Sent to maryrose333 at att.net (Not You? Sign Up Here) February 2, 2010: In This Issue . Our New Executive Director . Will Bikes Take Over Cities? . Snap a Place You Love . A New Network for Activists . Musicians Going Green . Cool Winter Outings Green Gift Today's green tip When making your coffee at home, use a French press instead of a coffee maker. You'll save paper without sacrificing flavor! More tips | Subscribe! EXPLORE Activist Network Introducing the Activist Network The Sierra Club's new Activist Network is a vibrant community where Sierra Club activists and supporters work together to get things done -- like cleaning up creeks, fighting to keep the border wild, and protecting Utah wilderness. Start at our Visitor Center, where you can see our welcome video and a guided tour of our top attractions. ENJOY Adam Levine Green at the Grammys What do Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson, and the Barenaked Ladies have in common with the Sierra Club? They're all part of a new Green Music Group coalition that was announced during Grammy award festivities last weekend. Watch our video to see how musicians and environmentalists are banding together. On the Radio This week on Sierra Club Radio: 1) Sierra Club's incoming Executive Director, Michael Brune 2) Green cuisine ideas from chef Annie Somerville 3) Tips for sustainable coffee and tea from Avital Binshtock 4) Paul Blanc, M.D., author of How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace. Listen | Subscribe PROTECT Clean Air Time to Clean the Air The EPA has proposed new rules to lower the amount of smog in our air. But Big Oil and Dirty Coal are fighting to protect the dirty, unhealthy status quo. Please let the EPA know that you support the strongest proposed smog limit. Michael Brune Meet Michael Brune Last month, the Sierra Club announced that Michael Brune will be the next executive director of the organization. He's been the leader of Rainforest Action Network for the past seven years, and you can read about his work there (and a good deal more) on our website. Though he won't officially start his new job until sometime next month, Michael's already appeared on CNN's Mad Money to talk about clean energy and the Sierra Club's campaign to stop the Coal Rush. It's an issue he knows well, as his relationship with the Club actually goes back a couple of years to the publication of his book Coming Clean: Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal by Sierra Club Books. You can leave a message for Michael at the "Welcome Michael Brune" group on Climate Crossroads. And, for the next week, Insider readers who want to check out Coming Clean can purchase it from the Sierra Club store at a 30 percent discount by using the code CLEAN2010. Discuss | Bookmark and Share _____ City Bikers Can Cities Kick the Car? Been to Times Square lately? Its transformation into a pedestrian plaza last year is due in part to the influence of Jan Gehl, a Danish architect and urban planner who has worked for decades to make Copenhagen more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. On Climate Crossroads, he talks about how cities can be remade to "human scale." In bike-friendly Copenhagen, for instance, 37 percent of all commuting is by bicycle. But New York City actually has more miles of bike path -- most of them added in just the past few years. What do you think? Can American cities become truly bike/pedestrian friendly or will cars always rule the road? Discuss | Bookmark and Share _____ Sierra Club Trails _____ A Place You Love Worth 1,000 Words and $500 Capturing an image that does justice to the beauty of a favorite location is a great way to express your love of the outdoors. That's why, in honor of Valentine's Day, this month's theme for the Sierra Club Trails photo contest is "A Place I Love." The contest is open to anyone; just join the Trails Monthly Photo Contest group (if you haven't already) and upload one shot that you feel best fits the theme. You should also join the group if you want to view the entries and vote for your favorites. This month's prize is a pair of $250 gift certificates to online gear and clothing store Altrec.com -- one for you and one for a friend. The deadline for submissions is February 12, so join the group and show us the best photo you've taken of a place you love. Photo Credit: Debbie Yarra Discuss | Bookmark and Share _____ Sponsor a Wild Place this Valentines Day! Show Your Wild Side! Valentine's Day is around the corner, and what better way to show your environmentally conscious Valentine you care than to sponsor a wild place in his or her name? When you give this unique and special gift, you get the added satisfaction of knowing that you're helping preserve America's wild legacy. Each symbolic sponsorship comes with a personalized certificate, a scenic picture, a colorful factsheet, and gift items such as a plush wildlife puppet or a rucksack modeled after the one worn by John Muir in 1892. There's still time -- order today and choose express shipping to make sure it arrives for Valentine's Day! Discuss | Bookmark and Share _____ Sierra Club Outings Sun or Snow? Enjoy a Winter Outing! The holidays may be over, but it's not too late to sign up for a wonderful winter vacation with Sierra Club Outings. Sun seekers and winter warriors alike will find plenty of extraordinary and affordable trips to choose from. You can take a frosty foray into winter wilderness, such as this hut-to-hut cross-country skiing trip in Quebec. Or escape instead to a sun-soaked destination for whale-watching, kayaking, and rock art in Baja, Mexico or cruising on a yacht through the Galapagos Islands. Check out our list of upcoming trips and reserve your spot! Discuss | Bookmark and Share _____ Win an Outing! _____ * View previous editions of the Sierra Club Insider at the Insider Archives. * Subscribe to the Sierra Club Insider. * Unsubscribe from the Sierra Club Insider. Know someone who might be interested in the Sierra Club Insider? Help spread the word by using our online form to tell your friends, family, and co-workers about the Insider or simply forward this Insider on. (Some email clients strip the links out of emails when forwarded. If your email does this, you can also direct friends, family, and co-workers to our online version.) _____ Update My Profile | Manage My Email Preferences | Update My Interests | Explore Our Online Communities Sierra Club 85 Second St. San Francisco, CA 94105 insider at sierraclub.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 3 20:31:18 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 19:31:18 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] The Crisis Is Not Over Message-ID: <001c01caa54a$bbce68b0$336b3a10$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Again we are warned about the economy, but most will still continue to believe that we are in recovery as the alternative is too much to bear. What I notice here once again is the failure to understand from Krugman's point of view, and that of most other economists, that the world's needs for goods and services today can be met with less than 30% of the worldwide labor force due to advances in technology that are far more efficient in production. The general opinion appears to be that the Earth and its resources are not finite and we can go on plundering forever without there being any end to this. And that we can continue to keep both humans and technology on the assembly line with no ramifications. We have to begin to "get it" that "off-shoring" is not the problem -- the problem is that we do not need as many people on the assembly lines and that the corporations are going off-shore in search of the cheapest labor they can find to put into the assembly lines that are still running. Meanwhile the passive investors are still moving into the stock markets and making money hand over fist, but when one compares the small number of passive investors with the massive number of human laborers who have now been displaced and are out of work worldwide, one begins to understand the situation a little better. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 8:47 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] The Crisis Is Not Over The Crisis Is Not Over February 2, 2010 at 20:27:39 By Paul Craig Roberts http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Crisis-Is-Not-Over-by-Paul-Craig-Robert s-100202-265.html Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans' prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one. Here is the situation as I understand it: The global crisis is understood as a banking crisis brought on by the mindless deregulation of the U.S. financial arena. Investment banks leveraged assets to highly irresponsible levels, issued questionable financial instruments with fraudulent investment grade ratings, and issued the instruments through direct sales to customers rather than through markets. The crisis was initiated when the U.S. allowed Lehman Brothers to fail, thus threatening money market funds everywhere.The crisis was used by the investment banks, which controlled U.S. economic policy, to secure massive subsidies to their profits from a taxpayer bailout and from the Federal Reserve. How much of the crisis was real and how much was hype is not known at this time. As most of the derivative instruments had never been priced in the market, and as their exact composition between good and bad loans was unknown (the instruments are based on packages of securitized loans), the mark-to-market rule drove the values very low, thus threatening the solvency of many financial institutions. Also, the rule prohibiting continuous shorting had been removed, making it possible for hedge funds and speculators to destroy the market capitalization of targeted firms by driving down their share prices. The obvious solution was to suspend the mark-to-market rule until some better idea of the values of the derivative instruments could be established and to prevent the abuse of shorting that was destroying market capitalization. Instead, the Goldman Sachs people in charge of the U.S. Treasury and, perhaps, the Federal Reserve as well, used the crisis to secure subsidies for the banks from U.S. taxpayers and from the Federal Reserve. It looks like a manipulated crisis as well as a real one due to greed unleashed by financial deregulation. The crisis will not be over until financial regulation is restored, but Wall Street has been able to block re-regulation. Moreover, the response to the crisis has planted seeds for new crises. Government budget deficits have exploded. In the U.S. the fiscal year 2009 federal budget deficit was $1.4 trillion, three times higher than the 2008 deficit. President Obama's budget deficits for 2010 and 2011, according to the latest report, will total $2.9 trillion, and this estimate is based on the assumption that the Great Recession is over. Where is the U.S. Treasury to borrow $4.3 trillion in three years? This sum greatly exceeds the combined trade surpluses of America's trading partners, the recycling of which has financed past U.S. budget deficits, and perhaps exceeds total world savings. It is unclear how the 2009 budget deficit was financed. A likely source was the bank reserves created for financial institutions by the Federal Reserve when it purchased their toxic financial instruments. These reserves were then used to purchase the new Treasury debt. In other words, the budget deficit was financed by deterioration in the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve. How long can such an exchange of assets continue before the Federal Reserve has to finance the government's deficit by creating new money? Similar deficits and financing problems have affected the EU, particularly its financially weaker members. To conclude: the initial crisis has planted seeds for two new crises: rising government debt and inflation. A third crisis is also in place. This crisis will occur when confidence is lost in the U.S. dollar as world reserve currency. This crisis will disrupt the international payments mechanism. It will be especially difficult for the U.S. as the country will lose the ability to pay for its imports with its own currency. U.S. living standards will decline as the ability to import declines. The financial crisis is essentially a U.S. crisis, spread abroad by the sale of toxic financial instruments. The rest of the world got into trouble by trusting Wall Street. The real American crisis is much worse than the financial crisis. The real American crisis is the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs such as software engineering and information technology. Jobs offshoring was initiated by Wall Street pressures on corporations for higher earnings and by performance-related bonuses becoming the main form of managerial compensation. Corporate executives increased profits and obtained bonuses by substituting cheaper foreign labor for U.S. labor in the production of goods and services marketed in the U.S. Jobs offshoring is destroying the ladders of upward mobility that made the U.S. an opportunity society and eroding the value of a university education. For the first decade of the 21st century, the U.S. economy has been able to create net new jobs only in domestic non-tradable services, such as waitresses, bartenders, sales, health and social assistance and, prior to the real estate collapse, construction. These jobs are lower paid than the jobs were that have been offshored, and these jobs do not produce goods and services for export. Jobs offshoring has increased the U.S. trade deficit, putting more pressure on the dollar's role as reserve currency. When offshored goods and services return to the U.S., they add to imports, thus worsening the trade imbalance. The policy of jobs offshoring is insane. It is shifting U.S. GDP growth to the offshored locations, such as China, thus halting growth in U.S. consumer incomes. For the past decade, U.S. households substituted an increase in indebtedness for the lack of growth in income in order to continue increasing their consumption. With their home equity refinanced and spent, real estate values down, and credit card debt at unsustainable levels, it is no longer possible for the U.S. economy to base its growth on a rise in consumer debt. This fact is a brake on U.S. economic recovery. Stimulus packages cannot substitute for the growth in real income. As so many high value-added, high productivity U.S. jobs have been offshored, there is no way to achieve real growth in U.S. personal incomes. Stimulus spending simply adds to government debt and pressure on the dollar, and sows seeds for high inflation. The U.S. dollar survives as reserve currency because there is no apparent substitute. The euro has its own problems. Moreover, the euro is the currency of a non-existent political entity. National sovereignty continues despite the existence of a common currency on the continent (but not in Great Britain). If the dollar is abandoned, then the result is likely to be bilateral settlements in countries' own currencies, as Brazil and China now are doing. Alternatively, John Maynard Keynes' bancor scheme could be implemented, as it does not require a reserve currency country. Keynes' plan is designed to maintain a country's trade balance. Only a reserve currency country can get its trade and budget deficits so out of balance as the U.S. has done. The prospect of U.S. default and/or inflation and decline in the dollar's exchange value is a threat to the reserve system. The threats to the U.S. economy are extreme. Yet, neither the Obama administration, the Republican opposition, economists, Wall Street, nor the media show any awareness. Instead, the public is provided with spin about recovery and with higher spending on pointless wars that are hastening America's economic and financial ruin. Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous academic appointments. He has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. From mukhtaralam2000 at yahoo.com Thu Feb 4 02:16:52 2010 From: mukhtaralam2000 at yahoo.com (Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 14:46:52 +0530 (IST) Subject: [GJM] =?utf-8?b?Rnc6IFVTIEZlZGVyYWwgUmVzZXJ2ZSDigJxTaG9ja+KAnSAy?= =?utf-8?q?012_Move_Dooms_America?= Message-ID: <757607.529.qm@web94912.mail.in2.yahoo.com> ?Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam 58-C, Top Floor,DDA Janta Flats, Ashok Vihar-III,Delhi-110052,India Tel:+9968345380 http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://muhammad_mukhtar_alam.tigblog.org ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Sorcha Faal To: sorchafaal at fastmail.fm Sent: Wed, 3 February, 2010 10:55:41 PM Subject: US Federal Reserve ?Shock? 2012 Move Dooms America [Ed. Note: This report should be read from its website location at http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1332.htm as this email copy does not contain the links embedded in the original report.] February 3, 2010 US Federal Reserve ?Shock? 2012 Move Dooms America By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers A grim report given to President Medvedev today by Finance Minister of the Russian Federation Alexei Kudrin is stating that the private European banking conglomerate known as the United States Federal Reserve System, that basically rules over the finances of America, has given a ?shock warning? to President Obama that they do not intend to renew the charter granted to them in 1913 by the US Congress and is set to expire on December 21, 2012, which (coincidentally?) is also the exact date that the controversial Mayan Calendar predicts will be the ending of our present age. Even worse for the American people, this report says, is that in the Federal Reserves notification to Obama they? further stated that they only intend to pay back the US Government $156.3 Billion from out of their ?huge profits? gained from their looting the United States Treasury of an estimated $23.7 Trillion. Interesting to note about these events is that for the first time known, the ?mainstream? American press is beginning to align themselves with those of us who have long warned of this banking monstrosity and their deliberate destruction of the US economy, and as we can read as reported by the Bloomberg News Service in their January 29th article titled ?Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows?, which says: ?The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week?s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all. Wednesday?s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials. We?re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG?s bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny.? To Bloomberg?s admission of this ?secret banking cabal? that is destroying the American economy we can further read as reported by Canada?s Center for Research on Globalization: ?As we have constantly emphasized, as the global government and the financial takeover accelerates, it?s becoming harder and harder for the elite to hide the true intention of what they are doing, which is centralizing power into fewer hands, destroying sovereignty and creating a one world order run by an unelected, undemocratic authoritarian system. So whereas ?conspiracy theorists? were once sidelined as paranoid kooks, as more and more of what they warned about comes to fruition, they gain more credibility and the establishment finds it more difficult to neutralize what they are saying by means of character assassination. The Bloomberg writer?s admission that the ?conspiracy theorists? were probably right reminds us of former Clinton advisor Dick Morris? appearance on Fox News last year, when he pointed out that people who have been sounding the alarm bells over a global government takeover for decades have also been vindicated. ?Those people who have been yelling ?oh the UN?s gonna take over, global government?, they?ve been crazy but now ? they?re right!,? stated Morris on Sean Hannity?s show.? To the dramatic shift of the ?mainstream? American news in telling their citizens the truth of what is happening to them we can see further evidenced by a New York Times article posted today which actually gives these peoples sound advice, and as we can read from their story titled ?No help in sight, more homeowners walk away?, and which says: ?We?re now at the point of maximum vulnerability,? said Sam Khater, a senior economist with First American CoreLogic, the firm that conducted the recent research. ?People?s emotional attachment to their property is melting into the air.? Suggestions that people would be wise to renege on their home loans are at least a couple of years old, but they are turning into a full-throated barrage. Bloggers were quick to note recently that landlords of an 11,000-unit residential complex in Manhattan showed no hesitation, or shame, in walking away from their deeply underwater investment. ?Since the beginning of December, I?ve advised 60 people to walk away,? said Steve Walsh, a mortgage broker in Scottsdale, Ariz. ?Everyone has lost hope. They don?t qualify for modifications, and being on the hamster wheel of paying for a property that is not worth it gets so old.? Mr. Walsh is taking his own advice, recently defaulting on a rental property he owns. ?The sun will come up tomorrow,? he said.? To how bad the Federal Reserve System (which many call the World?s largest Counterfeiter) has destroyed the American economy is evidenced in their destruction of the US Dollar which has lost over a quarter of its value in the past 8 years, and what a single Dollar could buy in 1913, when this secret banking cabal began to strangle these people, would cost $21.67 today, and which comes out to a shocking inflation rate of? 2067.0%! And, most unfortunately, it is going to get worse as new reports are showing that the Baltic Dry Index (the World?s most reliable indicator of future economic growth) has collapsed over 40% in the past 10-weeks signaling the worst of this Global financial crisis is yet to come. Equally as worse for the Americans is the ending of the World?s central banks support for the Federal Reserve, and as we can read as reported by the Business Week News Service: ?The Bank of England said Wednesday that it and other major central banks are ending emergency lending arrangements put in place with the U.S. Federal Reserve in the wake of the global credit crisis, citing improvements in financial markets. The decision marks the first unified retraction by central banks around the world of extraordinary support measures to boost lending after credit markets seized up in late 2007, causing the global economic downturn.? To the doom warned facing the American people it is entirely predictable to envision, as what is happening to them now has happened in the past, and they could plainly see if they but opened their eyes to the truth of how completely manipulated they?ve been.? And the truth behind the ?manipulators? currently destroying the American people was the creation by a European elite class of bankers (headed in the United States by Paul Warburg (known to history as the ?Father of the Federal Reserve?) and chief financier of the United States and its Allies in World War II, and in Germany by his brother Max Warburg, who through his families 200-year-old private bank M.M.Warburg & Company was the chief financier of Adolf Hitler?s National Socialist Party) intent upon total Global domination and the enslavement of mankind. [Put into its simplest context, the stark truth is that World War II was entirely financed by these two Warburg brothers using American funds funneled to them by Prescott Bush and the right-wing cabal that has, in essence, ruled the Western World since 1918 and has reaped Trillions of dollars in war profits for their ?investors? at the expense of hundreds of millions of lives.] To the American people awakening to their soon coming destruction it is not in our knowing, other than to point out the obvious fact that even as they continue to suffer under the cruel regime these ?banksters? have imposed upon them, they still continue to pay their ?bills? to a corrupt and secretive cabal so that they can continue reaching for the American Dream. Unfortunately it is not a dream these people are living in, it is a nightmare?.and of their own making because they just won?t face the truth. And as hard as it is to believe it is nevertheless true that these American people pay more on overdraft fees to their banker masters than they spend on fresh vegetables! What can you say about people such as this? Maybe that they truly deserve what is coming. [Note: Russian Finance Ministry calculations show that should the American people stop paying their money to banks (mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, etc.) and all declare bankruptcy the entire debt load carried by the US Government would be paid in less than 2-years and? the United States would have over $85 Trillion available to them over the next 10-years to pay for the complete rebuilding of their Nation and society.]? ? February 3, 2010 EU and US all rights reserved http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1332.htm -- ? Sorcha Faal ? sorchafaal at fastmail.fm The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 4 03:32:18 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 10:32:18 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Fw: Reviewing Capitalism - Feb 2010 Message-ID: <821625.18275.qm@web27407.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 3/2/10, CfAE AE Bulletin wrote: From: CfAE AE Bulletin Subject: Reviewing Capitalism - Feb 2010 To: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Date: Wednesday, 3 February, 2010, 17:30 February 2010 1) Beyond The Market - This Friday 2) Capitalism Reviewed 3) The Colours of Money Seminar. UK - Feb /?USA - Mar 4)?Finance and Education -?Towards an Independent Youth College 5) Associate!?February?2010? 1) Beyond The Market - Public Lecture This Friday A public lecture entitled 'Beyond The Market - The origins, history and future of the market' is being held this?week in Stroud, UK. The lecture will be presented by Dr. Christopher Houghton Budd, an economic and monetary historian who works in many contexts around the world, both mainstream and alternative. His latest book, Edge Funding (to be published by Gower in July), deals with the interface between the real and financial economies and considers the global financial crisis through the lens of Rudolf Steiner's monetary ideas. The lecture takes place in link with the Colours of Money Seminar - full registration details can be found at: www.cfae.biz/fae-bulletin/10janCOMextra Admission is ??5.00. For details contact Arthur Edwards on 01453 756728 / mail at arthuredwards.net Friday 5th February, 8PM The Old Town Hall, The Shambles, Stroud, GL5 1AP, UK mail(at)arthuredwards.net 2) Capitalism Reviewed For most people the continuing global financial crisis is all about banking and how to control the banks. It ought to be about the presence of relatively too much capital in the economy, or the effects of excess liquidity, to use the term from Adair Turner, chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority. The discussion ought to be about the genesis and best use of this surplus. Talking about how to modify the banks of the river serves little purpose when the problem is that there is too much water coursing through it. ?In this issue of Associate! we review the nature of capital and by extension, the kind of society it calls for. 3)?The Colours of Money Seminar (UK &US)? This Weekend -?UK: 5-7 February 2010 In?Stroud?UK, see here?for details The next Colours of Money seminar will be taking place in Stroud from February 5-7 2010. It begins with a public lecture ?(Beyond the Market) on the Friday evening.? USA , Apr / May?2010:?The Colours of Money Seminar?in Washington DC area - ?take contact if interested 4)?Finance and Education Seminar - London 14 February /?14 March Towards an Independent Youth College Details here: http://www.anthromedia.com/index.php?id=7389 On-going research concerning finance and education, with particular reference to the Waldorf movement and Rudolf Steiner's insights. Education is facing growing pressures, the essence of which is to undermine a free spiritual life. Many ofthe pressures are financial in guise, but also rely on an inadequate understanding of law and equity. In this project the case of Waldorf (Steiner) education is explored, both as a case in point and for the contribution it might make to the wider debate. 5) Associate! February 2010 Click image to subscribe Lead:?Rudolf Steiner, Capitalism and Investment??John Mugge A Sign of Our Time:?Bad Banks or Too Much Capital??Editorial Comment Feature:?Liberated Capital - The role of capital in society?Folkert Wilken Feature:?Rudolf Steiner, Monetary Economist??Arthur Edwards? Glossary: G?Gift Money News and Views:??Financial Markets as Gift Money / News from Sonoma County USA / Prelude in Economics / Steiner?s Terminology Accounting Corner: World Accounting?Stephen Torr Click here to subscribe The Friends of Associative Economics Bulletin provides an overview of what is going on around the world?in the associative economics movement. The bulletin is viewable as a webpage at www.cfae.biz/fae-bulletin/10Feb/ ? Click here to unsubscribe or edit your subscription A service provided by the Centre for Associative Economics Copyright 2010 Centre for Associative Economics. All rights reserved. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 4 06:26:32 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: 04 Feb 2010 13:26:32 +0000 Subject: [GJM] Bank halts QE, leaves door open for more  - Yahoo! News UK Message-ID: Robert Searle (dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk) has sent you a news article X-Originating-IP: 77.238.191.93 -------------------- Personal message text: -------------------- Bank halts QE, leaves door open for more?? http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100204/tuk-uk-britain-bank-fa6b408.html ============================================================ From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 4 06:26:32 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: 04 Feb 2010 13:26:32 +0000 Subject: [GJM] Bank halts QE, leaves door open for more  - Yahoo! News UK Message-ID: Robert Searle (dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk) has sent you a news article X-Originating-IP: 77.238.191.92 -------------------- Personal message text: -------------------- Bank halts QE, leaves door open for more?? http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100204/tuk-uk-britain-bank-fa6b408.html ============================================================ From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 4 06:28:37 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 13:28:37 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Fw: Overpopulation worries are a potentially racist distraction Message-ID: <17602.69155.qm@web27405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- On Thu, 4/2/10, the Ecologist wrote: From: the Ecologist Subject: Overpopulation worries are a potentially racist distraction To: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Date: Thursday, 4 February, 2010, 12:52 To ensure delivery of these emails to your inbox, please add newsletter at theecologist.org to your email address book. Alternatively, click here to download as a business card (VCard). This email was sent to dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk by newsletter at theecologist.org. Click here to view it in your browser ??|?? Click here to unsubscribe ? 4th February, 2010 News ? ????? ? Is aid without climate adaptation in Haiti a waste of time? ????? ? Fred Pearce interview: overpopulation worries are a potentially racist distraction ????? ? UK overseas aid ignoring small scale agriculture ????? ? Brazil to build world's third largest dam in Amazon ????? ? RBS labelled 'dirtiest bank in Britain' ????? ? UK Government nuclear consultation ?farcical?, say locals ????? ? Public to be paid for generating green energy - but will it be enough? ? Investigation What is the Pill doing to our bodies and planet? It was the drug that fuelled the sexual liberation of the 1960s, but what price are we paying for our love of the contraceptive Pill? Read the full investigation Fred Pearce: overpopulation worries are potentially racist distraction >From our advertisers Find free money to help you go green Green Grants Machine is a FREE, easy to use website that lets you search through more than 500 grants, loans and other funds on offer to carry out environmental activities. Millions of ???s are up for grabs each year to help you recycle more, cut carbon emissions, improve local parks and green spaces, generate renewable energy and much, much more. See for yourself at the Green Grants Machine! Green living and how to make a difference ? ????? ? GRAPHIC - Beef: an interactive buyer's guide ????? ? How credit unions can succeed where banks fail ????? ? Ecologist/NUS video competition. Vote for the best film ????? ? The Ecologist guide to green skills and education ????? ? Don't buy garden seeds, swap them ? >From our advertisers Open a Triodos Climate Change Bond and both you and the planet can profit. Why wait for the world's leaders at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference to embrace a more sustainable future? Put your savings to work right now, and help to secure a safer and more sustainable world. Click here to find out more about our Climate Change Bonds Triodos Bank NV (incorporated under the laws of the Netherlands with limited liability, registered in England and Wales BR3012). Authorised by the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for the conduct of UK business. Registered office: Brunel House, 11 The Promenade, Bristol BS8 3NN. Blogs, comments and letters ? ????? ? Ewan Kingston: I failed. I caught a plane ????? ? Letter: Fred Pearce is in a muddle about population ????? ? Calendar: Food Inc movie opens in UK ????? ? What the carbon market did after Copenhagen: nothing ? >From our advertisers Gogreencompare.com ? The UK?s Green Comparison Website? A free online car insurance comparison website for UK motorists. Customers can quickly search and compare a large number of insurance providers by completing the simple online form. For every customer that purchases their insurance through our site we will offset 50% of their annual CO2 emissions* for FREE. ? Why not make a start and get a green comparison quote today *Based on an average passenger car with average annual mileage ? The Ecologist guide to green skills and education Ecologist guide: Green skills and education Weaning ourselves off carbon will mean a profound change in every aspect of daily life, every sector of society and every job. For that to happen we need a new mindset and a new set of tools... Read more about the importance of green skills to the UK Find more details on skills and educational courses ? >From us Subscribe to the Ecologist for ?15 and get a free copy of The Good Shopping Guide worth ?14.95 A subscription to the Ecologist gets you access to our weekly exclusive investigations, full access to our 40-year archive, a printable, monthly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox, and details of subscriber-only special offers on genuinely useful green products On top of all that, you'll be helping us continue to provide information on the issues that really matter ? The Ecologist Newsletter is published by Ecosystems Ltd, trading as the Ecologist Company registered in England # 970404 Unit 102, Lana House Studios, 116-118 Commercial St., London E1 6NF contact: ecosystems at theecologist.org unsubscribe subscribe forward update profile ? powered by ? This mailing system may only be used for sending permission based email. If you did not give permission to receive emails from this sender, Please notify us. This email was sent to dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk by newsletter at theecologist.org | Read our Privacy Policy Ecosystems Ltd T/A The Ecologist Magazine - Unit 102D Lana House Studios, 118 Commercial Street, London, E1 6NF, United Kingdom -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 4 09:30:20 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 08:30:20 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Revealing History Channel Documentary on Mind Control is a Must Watch Message-ID: <004001caa5b7$8ffc3830$aff4a890$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I just posted this to Facebook. If you are not on Facebook, I urge you to join with the approximately 350 million others who are using this venue to voice their concerns about the challenges we face in today?s world as the human family. The Facebook venue transcends nation-state boundaries and joins us together as one family holding out our hands to one another in love and in gratitude for what we can do together united in purpose. The Internet is but an extension of the human mind/brain. Let us use it to its fullest potential to set ourselves free. mary rose From: PEERS: WantToKnow.info Email List [mailto:emaillist at peerservice.org] Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 8:01 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject Revealing History Channel Documentary on Mind Control is a Must Watch To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this list (one email every few days) or to reply to this message, see end of email This message is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrolvideo Bookmark and Share Mind control is one of the most secretive, disruptive activities ever conducted by elements within the government. Yet it is also one of the best documented of the cover-ups. Over 20,000 pages of declassified CIA documents prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these programs not only existed, but were very well funded. To read highly revealing excerpts of these documents with links to online versions of the originals and instructions to verify authenticity, click here . By far the best video exposing these top secret mind control programs is the History Channel's excellent documentary Mind Control: America's Secret War. Though available for purchase on the History Channel website, this disturbing, yet incredibly important video can also be viewed free at the link below. For the good of all of us, educate yourself on this most important matter by watching this masterfully done program, and then read below <> for what you can do about it. History Channel ? Mind Control: America's Secret War (45 minutes) www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/mind_control_history_channel This powerful History Channel video documents how for decades, top secret government projects worked virtually non-stop to perfect means of controlling the human mind. Though for many years the government denied that these projects even existed, the details have long been preserved in the thousands of pages of now declassified government documents mentioned above, which were reluctantly released through the Freedom of Information Act. LSD and electroshock therapy in huge doses given to unsuspecting citizens are only a part of this unbelievable program. Mind Control blows the lid off years of chilling experiments, drawing on the declassified documents and interviews with some of the victims and respected experts in the field. Hear from John Marks, the author of In Search of the Manchurian Candidate, who originally broke the story of the CIA's abuses by unraveling the mysteries contained in the declassified documents. Learn how many of the most important records pertaining to the mind control experiments were destroyed by the director of the CIA in an attempt to prevent the details from ever being known. The projects involved brutal, at times lethal experiments on thousands of unsuspecting citizens in direct defiance of law, all ethical codes, and basic human rights. Interviews with top psychiatrists, lawyers, and victims send chills up the spine. U.S. intelligence agencies spent millions on these mind control projects with a goal of creating programmable human spies. A former head of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Ewen Cameron, is one of many highly respected doctors who erased the personalities and manipulated the minds of thousands of unsuspecting victims, while many in the profession simply turned a blind eye. Among the captivating interviews presented, you will hear from Dr. Cameron's patient Linda McDonald, whose past was completely erased by a brainwashing experiment. Linda describes how at age 25 she was placed on a psychiatric ward and subjected to horrific shock and drug treatments which completely erased her mind and brought her back to being the mental age of an infant. She, along with many other victims of these highly unethical programs eventually won a significant lawsuit against the U.S. government for the crimes committed against her by one of the most respected doctors of psychiatry in the world. The box below provides several ideas on what you can do to further educate yourself and to spread the word and make a difference. By being willing to look into these disturbing shadows, we can bring these secrets to light and transform our world into a better place for all of us. And for a powerful online lesson which gives an excellent overview not only of the secrets of mind control, but also how it can be used for the betterment of all humankind, click here . Bookmark and Share What you can do: * Educate yourself further by visiting our information-packed Mind Control Information Center. * Inform your media and political representatives of this powerful documentary and other information on top secret mind control programs. To contact those close to you, click here . Urge them bring this information to light and allow public dialog on this vital topic. * Learn more about the intriguing history and development of these controversial mind control programs in this excellent two-page summary. Footnotes and links to reliable sources are provided for verification purposes. * Read powerful, reliable major media articles on mind control at this link. * Explore inspiring ideas on how we can build a brighter future in this short essay . * Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and bookmark this article on key news websites using the "Share This" icon on this page, so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference. Final Note: WantToKnow.info believes it is important to balance disturbing cover-up information with inspirational writings which call us to be all that we can be and to work together for positive change. Please visit our Inspiration Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/inspirational for an abundance of uplifting material. See our archive of revealing news articles at www.WantToKnow.info/indexnewsarticles Your tax-deductible donations, however large or small, help greatly to support this important work. To make a donation by credit card, check, or money order: www.WantToKnow.info/donationswtk Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the nonprofit PEERS network: www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all To respond to this message, visit www.WantToKnow.info/contactus.php To subscribe to or unsubscribe from the WantToKnow.info list (one email every few days): www.WantToKnow.info/subscribe _____ Change email address / Leave mailing list Powered by YourMailingListProvider -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 4 10:38:02 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 09:38:02 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Fwd: I got plenty of "enoughing" from Vicki Robin Message-ID: <005801caa5c1$05c97380$115c5a80$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Vicki Robin is the Co-author of "Your Money or Your Life." If you are struggling with how to live on a decreased income in these challenging times, I heartily recommend reading this book and getting acquainted with Vicki Robin and her philosophy. Now Vicki is coming forward with the CONSCIOUS MONEY SPEAKER'S SERIES and I urge you if at all possible to sign up for this series (see below). However, I also urge you to accompany this series with the reading of Thomas Greco's books "MONEY" and his latest "THE END OF MONEY and THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION" Here is a video link also: www.chelseagreen.com/.../watch-thomas-greco-the-end-of-money-and-the-beginni ng-of-civilization/ Also check out Tom's website: Reinventing Money www.reinventingmoney.com/ - Please consider this: while there are many ideas for new monetary systems out there, the plain and simple truth is that most of them are based on the continuance of the world as we know it today. However, we must recognize that we are at the end of the Industrial Age and are moving into the Age of Knowledge and are neither here nor there. So, the only thing that we can count on are LOCAL CURRENCIES of some type or other and I am not going to go into these as I am not an expert in this area. However, I do trust both Vicki and Tom to give us good advice on making it through the tough times ahead as we transition into the future. It is inevitable that as we make this transition everything is going to be in CHAOS, and I do mean CHAOS with a big "C". Almost everything we do today is destroying our life support system - so we have a major correction to make here. Making this correction requires that we return to the basics and begin all over again. We need to design new social systems that are life-enhancing including our monetary system. We need to restructure the way we are divided by Nation-States that encourage competition and redefine ourselves in terms of bio-regions which encourage co-operation. We need to begin looking at how to grow the most nutritious foods possible in the smallest possible space. We need to understand that "food sovereignty" is the cornerstone of freedom and that when we are working for money in jobs as a means of supporting ourselves that when the jobs disappear and we no longer have income nor are we doing subsistence gardening/farming, then we are no longer have a way to provide food for ourselves except to pray for hand-outs from those who have not as yet become victims of the system. I cannot urge you seriously enough to consider the statistic that due to advances in technology it now takes less than 30% of the presently available worldwide workforce to produce all the goods and services necessary for the 6.7 billion of us on the planet and this leaves 70% of those available out of the loop plus those who are dependent upon them for support. And, must I remind you again, that the technology we are presently using is inappropriate and is destroying our life support system faster than it can restore itself - we must fast move into "appropriate technology" which is bio-mimicry at its best. Yesterday I sent around a message from Brian Knox on the use of algae - and it is to these type of things that we must become more aware and begin inserting into our systems. We must make the move away from technology and back to nature. Restoring our severely damage eco-systems must be the first order of the day. Only when these natural systems are operating at peak performance and maximizing carrying capacity can we look to a sustainable future which guarantees our children and their children for generations to come, a viable future. Now on to Vicki's message: Please let me know if this message does not reach you. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Vicki Robin Date: Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 2:56 PM Subject: I got plenty of "enoughing" To: dustysummerrose at gmail.com Greetings! Enoughness: A state of contentment. The pleasurable Goldilocks moment of "not too much, not too little, but just right." A peak experience of fulfillment, nothing missing, nothing in excess. Enoughing: Living in a state of "enoughness." These interactive teleclasses give you perspectives and practices to get the hang "enoughness", and have more "enough" in your life. (...that was supposed to be funny). The Conscious Money Speakers Series 15 "front row" seats have opened up for the CMSS (Mondays from 5.15-6.30 PM PST). Since 3 of the 13 lectures in the series are done (but not forgotten as all recordings are available to series participants), the new price is $65, ~15% off the original. Click here to sign up for the series at the new price of $65. See below for the class schedule. Not sure? Listen to my free Introduction to the Conscious Money Series by clicking here Orange Smiling Vicki The Freedom of Enough Registration is open for new "enoughness" class. The Freedom of Enough (formerly the 4-session Discover Your Enough Point) is now a 5-session class to make the shift from more to enough. From 5.15-6.15 PM PST every Tuesday from March 9-April 6, we'll gather for the fun and eye-opening teleclass. This is a life changing course because you make changes in everything from money to stuff to time to rest to papers to emails to appointments to thoughts. The tools put you in the driver's seat in any area where's "it's" running you - and running you over. Here's what happens in a class: I'll offer a lecturette, we'll discuss it, you'll have small group conversations, you'll do as many of the transformative "experiments in truth" as you like, we'll meet during the week on the Enough Groupsite to share discoveries, miseries, celebrations, insights and cool links. If you don't have enough of "enough" after 5 weeks you can come back again and again for community support for half the going rate. The new price is for the 5-session class $95. Sign up now. Not sure? Listen to my free Introduction to the Discover Your Enough Point class, by clicking here for a recording (head's up: music for 6 minutes, then class) CMSS Line up January 11 - Free Class #1 of the Conscious Money Series from 5:15-6:30 PM PST with me, Vicki, explaining the three definitions of "conscious money", the Your Money or Your Life definition of money and what you can expect from the line-up of speakers and the class series. January 18 - Spencer Sherman, investment adviser, best-selling author on Transform Your Financial Life in 2010. Based on a profound, practical and proven method for understanding and making peace with money, Spencer will help the participants establish new pathways to achieving greater prosperity while experiencing less stress at a time when millions of Americans are consumed by fear and uncertainty about their future financial and emotional well being. January 25 - John deGraaf, award winning filmmaker (Affluenza, Running Out of Time) on Taking Back your Time. John is a "time activist" because running out of time means we are running out of family and caring and rest and community service - and running ragged. Learn why and how to "take back your time." February 1 - Bill McKibben, author, leader of the grassroots 350.org on Building Community Economies. "Our idea of what constitutes "the economy" is quickly shifting-from some giant globalized abstraction to something close to hand and very real. Let's talk about how that is happening, what it means, and how you could help." February 8 - Trent Hamm, author of one of the best simplicity and frugality sites, The Simple Dollar. Every day Trent Hamm's blog, The Simple Dollar, has clear, intelligent and practical advice about how to manage your life and money and time better. He's our favorite source of frugality advice - and may be yours as well. February 15 -Alisa Gravitz, leader of Green America for ~20 years, on From Greed to Green. Some people talk about what ought to happen. Alisa's class will reveal the steps by which our bottom line can shift from greed to green. Alisa has a special capacity to put big ideas into simple words - and inspire. February 22 -David Korten, author, speaker and re-framer of the highest order on Agenda for a New Economy. The framework for a New Economy is designed to bring humans into balance with Earth's biosphere, equitably share the wealth of our common human heritage, and make democracy a living practice. You'll understand why the economy doesn't work, how it can and what you can do. March 1 - Brent Kessel, investment adviser and author of It's Not About the Money, on Heal Your Money Karma - curtailing desire and cultivating balance and clarity. March 8 - Olivia Mellan, author, teacher, psychotherapist and money coach on Moving toward Money Harmony in Turbulent Times. The way we use our money either reflects our deeper values - or conflicts with them . Olivia will help us understand - and heal - our money styles, our childhood messages and vows, our gender differences, couples polarization and more. You'll learn now to destress and transform your money patterns. March 15 - Victoria Castle, author, coach, comedienne on Viral Abundance - Embodying a new Collective Story. Our unexamined stories and habits, our obsession with financial reports and predictions can all collapse our generative capcity to create a rich future. Victoria teaches how to actually "reset" your nervous system when you clench up - and be centered even in challenging times. March 22 - Lynne Twist, fundraiser, author, speaker on The Soul of Money for Transformational Times. Lynne will share a key secret about money - the one thing you need to know which will change forever the way you view, attract, and use money. March 29 - Hazel Henderson, futurist, visionary on Promoting Climate Prosperity by Growing the Green Economy. Climate Prosperity turns the economic debate about "costs to the fossil fuel sectors" to the financial savings, returns and benefits to society and the environment of all the private sector investments in wind, solar, renewables and efficient infrastructure. the global green economy is expected to top $1 trillion 2010, $10 trillion by 2020. Learn how. April 5 - John Robbins, speaker, author, great dad on The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever In An Age of Less (Pub date May 2010). Who is a "success?" A person with money? Or a creative loving and balanced person? Thinking of success just as making a lot of money actually leaves us impoverished - which is why we need a new vision of the good life. Contact Information vickirobin.1 at earthlink.net Error! Filename not specified. Forward email Error! Filename not specified. This email was sent to dustysummerrose at gmail.com by v.robin at earthlink.net. Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe T | Privacy Policy . Email Marketing by Error! Filename not specified. | PO Box 1501 | Langley | WA | 98260 Error! Filename not specified. -- >From the desk of mary rose dustysummerrose at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 4 11:15:42 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 10:15:42 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] NetNews February 4 2010 #1 Message-ID: <006201caa5c6$43bb81b0$cb328510$@net> Here for your consideration is a series of important news items from Trading Post Paul. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 9:29 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] NetNews February 4 2010 #1 Focus on the Family: Funding Extremism Millions of Dollars at a Time February 2, 2010 - 6:26pm http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2010/02/02/focus-family-funding-extremism -millions-dollars-a-time The Super Bowl advertisement being funded and produced by Focus on the Family, using NFL player Tim Tebow and his mother Pam to highlight the beauty and importance of a woman choosing to carry her pregnancy to term, has been discussed, dissected and critiqued enough, I realize. But in the back and forth about whether this is an issue of censorship by CBS (for refusing in both the past and the present to run advertisements from such progressive-minded groups like United Church of Christ, Moveon.org, a gay dating service, etc.) or an issue of injecting controversial commentary where it doesn't belong, one thing has been overlooked. Just how does Focus on the Family have almost $3 million to run a single television ad? And if women's health and rights organizations are so angry about it, why don't they just purchase air time on the public air waves for their own persuasive moment? I would never, of course, ask an abortion fund or a women's health center to spend millions of dollars on an advertisement to highlight how critical reproductive rights are for women's autonomy in this country. Why? Because they need that money to fund actual health care for actual human beings. I realize this is a foreign concept to those who chose to contribute to anti-choice, anti-family, anti-woman groups like Focus on the Family but I can break it down further. FoF is an arm of an extraordinarily powerful media EMPIRE run by James Dobson which exists to essentially push propaganda, fund their lobbying and disseminate an anti-family, anti-woman agenda. At its core, FoF is a media ministry, in essence, spending millions upon millions each year to push anti-gay, anti-woman, and anti-family (except white, Christian, heterosexual ones) initiatives. You can read up on them on our site and Right Wing Watch has an excellent run-down of exactly what they do with their money. Their reason for being is basically zealotry and they have enormous sums of money to do that. Focus on the Family's ownership of its land (it prefers to own rather than rent its space) and buildings add up to $48 million on its books, and in 2004 they cited the cost of upkeep and improvements on their property to be over $101.5 million. Republicans Out of Touch as Middle Class Sinks by Jim Hightower http://www.creators.com/liberal/jim-hightower/republicans-out-of-touch-as-mi ddle-class-sinks.html Published on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 by Creators Syndicate American politics is a hoot! Where else can raw ignorance rise to such high places - and then flaunt itself shamelessly for all to see? For example, who needs Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien for comic relief, when we've got Andre Bauer? He's the Lieutenant governor of South Carolina (a state, by the way, that really is a comer on the political comedy circuit - especially after Gov. Mark Sanford's madcap schtick last year involving his disappearance, the Appalachian Trail and an Argentine mistress. But Sanford is leaving office, and Bauer, who is now a Republican contender for governor, is the state's new star joker. He had 'em rolling in the aisles recently when he did a wild, slapstick routine on food stamps at a town hall meeting. Andre proclaimed that much of his political thinking was shaped by his grandmother and that he had learned a valuable lesson from her. "She told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why?" he asked, pausing for comedic effect. "Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce." I tell you, Andre Bauer is an absolute scream! But here's the real punch line: The need for food stamps has been soaring as more and more Americans are falling out of the middle class into poverty. From 2000 to 2008, 5 million more were added to the poverty rolls, and that was before the economic collapse of the last two years. In fact, check this out Andre, and laugh if you feel like it: About 6 million Americans today are living entirely on food stamps - they've lost their jobs and have no other income. That's one out of every 50 of us, and their numbers are growing rapidly. Now, isn't that a hoot? Well, one who's not laughing is Republican member of Congress John Linder. This far-out Georgia right-winger is irked that America's food stamp program will grow to more than $60 billion this year. "This is craziness," Linder barked to a New York Times reporter. "We're at risk of creating an entire class, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government." Comfortable? When was the last time this pampered lawmaker experienced the "comforts" of the food stamp life? Linder himself has been "living off the government" for 18 years, but at the high end - drawing $174,000 a year in pay, plus subsidized health care, a fat pension and generous perks of office. Don't Call It a 'Defense' Budget by Norman Solomon http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/02 Published on Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by CommonDreams.org This isn't "defense." The new budget from the White House will push U.S. military spending well above $2 billion a day. Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it. "Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors," the New York Times reports this morning (February 2). It isn't defense to preclude new domestic initiatives for a country that desperately needs them: for healthcare, jobs, green technologies, carbon reduction, housing, education, nutrition, mass transit . . . "When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer," Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out. "We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you don't even get good oleo. These are facts of life." At least Lyndon Johnson had a "war on poverty." For a while anyway, till his war on Vietnam destroyed it. Since then, waving the white flag at widespread poverty -- usually by leaving it unmentioned -- has been a political fact of life in Washington. Oratory can be nice, but budget numbers tell us where an administration is headed. In 2010, this one is marching up a steep military escalator, under the banner of "defense." Legitimate defense would cost a mere fraction of this budget. House Trio Moves to Block EPA By Kate Sheppard Wed Feb. 3, 2010 7:28 AM PST http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/house-trio-moves-block-epa A bipartisan trio of House members announced yesterday that they are sponsoring a bill to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Missouri Reps. Ike Skelton (D) and Jo Ann Emerson (R) introduced the measure. Efforts to bar the agency from following through on their determination that planet-warming emissions threaten human health are already underway in the Senate, as we've reported, and Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) has also introduced legislation on the subject in the House. "I have no confidence that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act without doing serious damage to our economy," Peterson said on Tuesday. "Americans know we're way too dependent on foreign oil and fossil fuels in this country--and I've worked hard to develop practical solutions to that problem--but Congress should be making these types of decisions, not unelected bureaucrats at the EPA." Obama Budget: War, Debt And Cuts In Social Services By Patrick Martin 03 February, 2010 http://www.countercurrents.org/martin030210.htm The Obama administration's budget for the 2011 fiscal year, unveiled Monday, projects massive US government deficits for the next decade, fueled by gargantuan military spending and the impact of the financial and economic crisis of American and world capitalism. The US national debt is projected to more than double over the coming decade, increasing by $8.5 trillion. Administration officials also revealed that for the current fiscal year, which ends September 30, 2010, the federal deficit will approach $1.6 trillion, by far the largest ever, and nearly 11 percent of total US gross domestic product. This is up sharply from the $1.35 trillion estimate last week by the Congressional Budget Office. The mushrooming deficit for the current year is largely a byproduct of the worsening economic crisis, which has simultaneously depressed tax revenues and forced the expenditure of much greater sums for unemployment compensation and other mandatory programs. White House budget director Peter Orzag now projects that tens of millions of American workers will remain on the unemployment rolls for much of Obama's four-year term in office. The FY '11 budget assumes that the unemployment rate this year will average 10 percent, falling to 9.2 percent in 2011 and 8.2 percent in 2012, both figures well above those prevailing before the Wall Street crash of September-October 2008. Even these unemployment and deficit figures are unduly optimistic, since they are based on a return to economic growth averaging 2.7 percent of GDP this year, 3.8 percent in 2011 and 4.3 percent in 2012, remaining above 4 percent for several more years, a figure last reached during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. In the event the GDP growth stagnates at the current level-let alone a return to slump-the unemployment figures could soar much higher into double digits, and the federal deficit would quickly reach a level that would precipitate a loss of international confidence and a collapse of the dollar. Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge 02 February 2010 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527451.300-digital-doomsday-the-end- of-knowledge.html "IN MONTH XI, 15th day, Venus in the west disappeared, 3 days in the sky it stayed away. In month XI, 18th day, Venus in the east became visible." What's remarkable about these observations of Venus is that they were made about 3500 years ago, by Babylonian astrologers. We know about them because a clay tablet bearing a record of these ancient observations, called the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, was made 1000 years later and has survived largely intact. Today, it can be viewed at the British Museum in London. We, of course, have knowledge undreamt of by the Babylonians. We don't just peek at Venus from afar, we have sent spacecraft there. Our astronomers now observe planets round alien suns and peer across vast chasms of space and time, back to the beginning of the universe itself. Our industrialists are transforming sand and oil into ever smaller and more intricate machines, a form of alchemy more wondrous than anything any alchemist ever dreamed of. Our biologists are tinkering with the very recipes for life itself, gaining powers once attributed to gods. Yet even as we are acquiring ever more extraordinary knowledge, we are storing it in ever more fragile and ephemeral forms. If our civilisation runs into trouble, like all others before it, how much would survive? Of course, in the event of a disaster big enough to wipe out all humans, such as a colossal asteroid strike, it would not really matter. Even if another intelligent species evolved on Earth, almost all traces of humanity would have vanished long before. Let's suppose, however, that something less cataclysmic occurs, that many buildings remain intact and enough people survive to rebuild civilisation after a few decades or centuries. Suppose, for instance, that the global financial system collapses, or a new virus kills most of the world's population, or a solar storm destroys the power grid in North AmericaMovie Camera. Or suppose there is a slow decline as soaring energy costs and worsening environmental disasters take their toll. The increasing complexity and interdependency of society is making civilisation ever more vulnerable to such events (New Scientist, 5 April 2008, p 28 and p 32). Whatever the cause, if the power was cut off to the banks of computers that now store much of humanity's knowledge, and people stopped looking after them and the buildings housing them, and factories ceased to churn out new chips and drives, how long would all our knowledge survive? How much would the survivors of such a disaster be able to retrieve decades or centuries hence? Truth Amidst The Rubble In Haiti: The U.S. Is The Problem, Not The Solution By Li Onesto 03 February, 2010 http://www.countercurrents.org/onesto030210.htm Hearts around the world continue to ache for the Haitian people. So many dead and dying. Most buildings in Port-au-Prince completely flattened. The rest uninhabitable. Hundreds of thousands living in the streets, coming together to help the sick and injured, sharing what little they have. Tent cities amidst the indescribable stench of death. Revolution sent a correspondent to Haiti who has told me stories of the incredible spirit of the people-struggling to not only stay alive but to keep their dignity and humanity toward each other. People trying to go on with life, even as they bury the dead. "It is quite something," he says, "to see people living in unbelievably unlivable conditions and then to hear the sound of children still playing in the street... It is incredible to see how generous and caring people can be in the most utterly miserable conditions." Some of the people now living in the streets of Port-au-Prince are angry that the U.S. has sent more soldiers with guns than doctors with medicine. At the same time people argue the situation in Haiti is now so desperate that the only way to rebuild the country is to bring in and completely rely on the United States. In fact, this moment in Haiti-where the whole future of the country and the people hangs in the balance-poses sharp questions. How did Haiti come to be so poor? Why was there no infrastructure in the country? Why were 2-3 million people out of a population of 9 million living in the capital city of Port-au-Prince? And will the aid and economic development that the U.S. is offering really help the people and rebuild the country? Enforcing Domination One way to begin getting at these questions is to look at the history of Haiti. The Crash, Peak Oil and Resilient Cities December 9th, 2008 by Peter Newman http://blog.islandpress.org/267/peter-newman-the-crash-peak-oil-and-resilien t-cities How did the crash happen? Over-inflating the economic balloon with debt that was vulnerable to rises in oil price. What do we do about it? Use non-oil-based projects and approaches to generate economic growth or else we are going to make things worse. In detail.. * Peak oil theorists have been squabbling about when the geological peak will happen but in economic terms it happened in 2005 when the production of conventional oil (cheap oil which can be produced under about $65/bbl) peaked. The five mega Major oil companies peaked in their oil production in 2005 and have gone down since. * The price of oil was then based on the marginal production from unconventional oil (deep water, remote and dirty oil like shale). Oil rapidly increased in price from $40 to $140 between 2005 and July 2008. * The first financial fall-out was the exposure of debt in sub-prime mortgages based primarily in highly car dependent urban areas. Tripling of fuel prices made it impossible to pay mortgages. Non-recourse financing meant that people in many vulnerable areas walked away from their homes without carrying the debt with them (cant do this in Australia). * All global debt began to be pulled into the crash as the vulnerability to oil underlies just about everything. As Colin Campbell predicted in 2005: ".the banks lent more than they have based on confidence that the resulting expansion was sufficient collateral for today's debt. But unrecognised was that this expansion was not just money it was good old cheap energy. We face this monumental kind of weakness of our entire banking and financial sector." Peak Oil Newsletter 53, May 2005. Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, Will Iraq's Oil Ever Flow? by Michael Schwartz at 4:50PM, February 02, 2010. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175199/tomgram%3A_michael_schwartz%2C_will_i raq%27s_oil_ever_flow___/ Americans have largely stopped thinking about Iraq, even though we still have approximately 110,000 troops there, as well as the largest "embassy" on the planet (and still growing). We've generally chalked up our war in Iraq to the failed past, and some Americans, after the surge of 2007, even think of it as, if not a success, at least no longer a debacle. Few care to spend much time considering the catastrophe we actually brought down on the Iraqis in "liberating" them. Remember when we used to talk about Saddam Hussein's "killing fields"? The world of mayhem and horror that followed the U.S. invasion and occupation delivered new, even larger "killing fields" that we don't care to discuss, or that we prefer to consider the responsibility of the Iraqis themselves. Even with violence far lower today, Baghdad certainly remains one of the more dangerous cities on the planet. The bombs continue to go off there regularly and devastatingly, while the killing, even if not of American troops who rarely patrol any longer and are largely confined to their mega-bases, has not ended, not by a long shot; nor has the anger, suspicion, and depression that go with all of this. A striking recent article in the British Guardian by reporter Martin Chulov seemed to catch something of what the U.S. actually accomplished in Iraq in a nutshell. It describes a country in "environmental ruin" (and, let's not forget, taxed with an ongoing drought of monumental proportions). The headline tells the story: "Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds." The contamination from depleted uranium weapons, bombed pipelines, and other disasters of the years of war, civil war, and chaos seems centered around Iraq's population centers and, perhaps not surprisingly, coincides with a massive rise in birth defects. Worse yet, in all those years of occupation, the U.S., despite billions of dollars spent (or rather squandered) on "reconstruction," never managed to deliver electricity, jobs, potable water, health care, or much else. And despite many attempts, as Michael Schwartz, returning TomDispatch regular and the author of War Without End, makes clear, Washington never even got the oil out of the ground in a country that is little short of a giant oil field waiting to be developed. A remarkable record when you think about it. Fox News is a conservative political organization http://mediamatters.org/research/201002030053 "Voice of the opposition": Fox News openly advocates against Democratic Congress, White House. Since Barack Obama's inauguration, Fox News has frequently engaged in political advocacy against the Democratic Congress and White House. Specifically, Fox News personalities have promoted and encouraged viewers to "join" tea party protests, Glenn Beck's organization The 9-12 Project and its September 12, 2009, "March on Washington," and town hall meetings; engaged in a witch hunt seeking to "get rid of" Obama administration officials and nominees; implored viewers to call Congress and the White House to protest Democratic policies; and celebrated "victor[ies]" when Democratic legislation has been stalled. Research and communications arm: Fox News is home to GOP in exile. A revolving door exists between the Republican Party and Fox News Channel, with a number of former Bush administration officials, former and potentially future GOP presidential candidates, and Republican strategists on Fox's payroll and airwaves. A Media Matters review of Fox coverage from September 1, 2009 through October 25, 2009 revealed that these individuals, typically hosted alone or on unbalanced panels, often used their airtime to advance false and misleading claims about Democrats and progressives, as well as to fundraise, further demonstrating that Fox is effectively a conservative political organization and not a legitimate news outlet. From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 4 12:58:09 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 11:58:09 -0800 Subject: [GJM] The Light of Transformation Message-ID: <007a01caa5d4$965abfe0$c3103fa0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS As we continue to explore who we really are and the form that we take, this piece by Gerald H. Vind on light and sound offers some insights. The URL for this piece is: http://www.futurescience.org/html/light_transformation.html This page is one of many found on The Academy for Future Science at www.FutureScience.org and I urge you to explore this website in depth. Due to lack of time, since I am now focusing on getting the Future Dawning Virtual Learning Center launched, so that we may begin to subscribe members and link them up with ground-based Community Learning and Information Centers which will, in turn, foment a worldwide movement into sustainable living communities, I have not had time to read everything on the website. However, we have already laid groundwork here for incorporating this information into our awareness as we explored the work of Dr. Valerie V. Hunt in her book: "Infinite Mind - Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness," and learned how they link into the Solfeggio Scale and its tones (sound) with the 528 tone being the one which creates life. What we need to remember is that each of us and everything else in the Universe is an energy/information field or system. And each field has its own unique frequency vibration - its code. And, what is happening as we move into the future as the old systemic structures fall and new ones come into being, we are creating more coherent frequencies/systems/fields through the process of co-creation. And, in so-doing we are moving closer and closer to the pure white light of 1100 hz which is the Zero Point Energy Field also referred to as the Akashic Field where all memory is stored in what is also referred to as: "The Universal Mind." This website has been compiled by J.J. Hurtak. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hurtak Keep in mind as you view this site, and explore the "Keys of Enoch," that the Book of Enoch was one which was removed from the Bible back in 325 A.D. along with some 20 other books as the Bible was rewritten by the "Paulines" to support the concept of "God" and his son "Jesus" as we know them today. But also remember that the Book of Enoch told the story of the Nephilim who came here to Earth from the Planet Nibiru and created "homo-sapiens" as we know ourselves today as told in the Sumerian Tablets and as transcribed by Zechariah Sitchen. So, let us explore together where this takes us, and I will be reading it later today and tomorrow so that we can compare notes and see where we are. With love and in gratitude to everyone for all that we are doing together. mary rose The Light of Transformation by Gerald H. Vind, M.A. Copyright C 1997 Gerald H. Vind [Excerpt from Future History Series 2 volume 6] Our conscious awareness develops from the fundamental process of our perception of light and sound. The light we observe comes mainly from the radiation of photons from things, and each photon results from an electron releasing a tiny portion of energy called a quantum. There are no fractional quantum units (no fractional photons), yet light has a dual existence as both particle and wave. Physicist Fred Allen Wolf has popularized this paradox with his observation that the human eye, when adapted to darkness, can detect a single photon.1 Since as either a quantum wave or as a photon particle there is only oneness as a unit of energy, when that photon is detected by the eyes retina, the wave properties that were simultaneously radiated from the source must cease to exist. Somehow, the rest of the radiating quantum wavefront knows instantaneously when one point is detected. Furthermore, this knowing must take place faster than the speed of light (which is the speed of the radiating wavefront). The crucial factor in the transformation from a propagating wavefront to a photon seems to be the act of conscious detection of this microcosmic event. Quantum physics has led us to an awareness of a hyperdimensional or multidimensional reality, and yet contemporary science is limited by present definitions of our greatly expanded reality. There is a prevalent epistemology that we can only know the physical reality within our spacetime continuum and that all else is unmeasurable, unknowable, and has no true reality. However, to talk of reality, we must examine it as a psychological map of our own making, in which we create our own individual reality. What purport to be real are our belief structures that operate within a larger set of agreements by which we humans experience our lives together. Reality is an individual experience of physical things and events, and there is a social fabric of agreement that provides the larger context for our individual experience of reality. Individual belief systems are harmonized in our cultural experience, and most of us do not challenge or deviate from this social fabric of agreement. We learn at an early age that there are penalties for going against the established order or rules; multidimensional journeys to other realities can get one in trouble. However, enough people in agreement can form their own system, order, or religion. Quantum physics has developed enough agreement that another paradigm shift is taking place. Most have earlier moved beyond the view of classical (Newtonian) physics, that of an observed reality, to a contemporary physics view wherein the act of observing (measuring) changes reality. Now, however, we are entering a new era of physics where we are part of the reality we perceive, and we too change, along with what is observed. This new view might be referred to as transformational physics There is another paradigm shift that has taken place recently, that has to do with the organization and ordering of forces. The belief that selforganization was the exclusive property of living systems has changed, because selforganizing forces are observable in nonliving things such as ocean currents and weather patterns. The concept of selforganizing systems was popularized some fifteen years ago by Erich Jantsch, in his book, The SelfOrganizing Universe: Self organization is the dynamic principle underlying the emergence of a rich world of forms manifest in biological, ecological, social, and cultural structures. But self organization does not start with what we call life. It characterizes one of the basic two classes of structures which may be distinguished in physical reality, namely the dissipative structures that are fundamentally different from equilibrium structures. Thus, self organization dynamics become the link between the animate and inanimate. Life no longer appears as a thin superstructure over a lifeless physical reality, but as an inherent principal of the dynamics of the universe.2 Even earlier, in 1963, this distinction between selfordering and dissipative structures (between animate and inanimate) brought Illia Prigogine a Nobel Prize in chemistry: The force of disorder (entropy) causes structures to dissipate and disintegrate, and this disordering force has a coexistent companion force that is observed in all living things: the property or capability of increasing order and complexity. So, we exist in a dynamic tension between order and chaos, between centropy and entropy. Perhaps this is touching on something as fundamental as consciousness and energy. Different molecular structures each have a characteristic oscillatory (vibrational) rate and, much like a bunch of crickets, molecules are constantly chirping their identity and location. The fundamental nature of life energy is information, and this information is modulated in electrical fields, magnetic fields, and quantum fields that interact in resonant patterns and harmonics that flow throughout (and beyond) the body. Information is a vital part of the process of self organization. Rupert Sheldrake calls this morphic resonance and morphogenic fields.3 In other words, our physical body exists within a larger formgenerating body. Dr. J.J. Hurtak sheds some light on this through describing five bodies or vehicles. In my study of these five bodies as described by Dr. Hurtak [and Desiree Hurtak , see book The Five Bodies], first described in The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of EnochR4, I discovered a relationship between physical and quantum level biological processes, between microscopic and macroscopic, that make up our collective energy field. The EpiKinetic Body operates in the level of kinetic vibration (primarily low frequency acoustic energy). The Electromagnetic Body is a dynamic harmonic expression of the electromagnetic spectrum of our bodies as we absorb and radiate photons. These two bodies emerge as collective forms of the fundamental molecularlevel processes of all of our molecules chirping their identity and location. These two energy bodies of sound and light interact biologically with each other through piezoelectric conversions of one form to another. They also operate within a larger reality, a hyperdimensional or subtleenergy body. I relate this to what Dr. Hurtak calls the Eka Body, a Higher Consciousness Body...which is a collection of many plus and minus relativities..., a consciousness vehicle used for time travel while sustaining a direct relationship to the physical vehicle. This third of the five vehicles is a body of consciousness that transcends our spacetime reality. Recently, in his investigations into the effects of hyperdimensional fields, Glen Rein found that relatively high levels of information can be stored in water.5 His experiments used selfcanceling coils to create scalar or hyperdimensional fields, and he was able to produce certain physical effects in water. He found that the anomalous information storage in water appeared from within the same zeropoint domain as used to explain the socalled freeenergy phenomenon. This scientific work points us toward a higher dimensional reality in which we are able to access free information as well as free energy. I experience that I am at my fullest potential when these five bodies are nested together like a set of Chinese boxes. That nesting or harmonic resonance is approached from both the top down and the bottom upin other words, from both the large Self and the small self. Our personal misalignment comes when our egodriven (small) self is disconnected from our full spiritual existence. Alignment and harmonic resonance come through meditation and prayer; the trick for us is to develop our relationship with our true creator, and not with some counterfeit spirit. We must learn to reliably distinguish between the sacred and profane. I experience humanity entering some stimulating times, going through something that is building or increasing our consciousness and spiritual energy. Some have difficulty integrating change into their lives, and they increase the dysfunctional patterns that cause them pain and suffering. This dysfunction has its roots in our disowned responsibility to our life experiences. C.G. Jung referred to this disowned material as ones shadow, and explained how our inability to confront and take responsibility for our own shadow has a way of projecting that disowned negativity into the world around us. This shadow realm is the realm of the counterfeit spirit, where the profane masquerades as the sacred. The cultural hypnosis that grips us all is beginning to lift for more and more individuals. Truth and responsibility are the pillars supporting the doorway to a positive new millennium. The levels of human awareness and spiritual sensitivity are increasing, and this allows us to see through the lies and deception that are pandemic. Now is the time in which we must work on revealing the truth within and around us. It is time to recognize that we are all destined to return to the Light, and that we are all in the process of becoming beings of Light, being transformed in the Light, where we are destined to serve a higher sacred purpose. References 1 Wolf, Fred Alan, Taking the Quantum Leap. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. 2 Jantsch, Erich, The SelfOrganizing Universe. New York: Pergamon, 1980. 3 Sheldrake, Rupert, The Presence of the Past. New York: Time Book Co., 1988. 4 Hurtak, J.J., (1977) The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of EnochR Los Gatos: AFFS. 5 Rein, Glen, Anomalous Information Storage in Water, Proceedings of the New Energy Conference, Texas A&M University, October, 1996. Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 4 13:39:50 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 12:39:50 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: NetNews February 4 2010 #1 (Comment from Trading Post Paul) Message-ID: <009301caa5da$66853560$338fa020$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I am responding to Paul's message below. -----Original Message----- From: TradingPostPaul [mailto:tradingpost at riseup.net] Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 10:30 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Re: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] NetNews February 4 2010 #1 I'm encouraged to see some of these things sprout legs and run. The picture we're seeing is such a different world from corporate media. I just hate to think the people trying to do better are facing the hard times ahead along with all the rest. Paul Paul, what my perspective is on this is that we are moving into a much healthier and more conscious way of living. And that the changes associated with this are going to be "uncomfortable" to say the least. But, what I feel we need to avoid as much as possible is the fear that is associated with change. We need to let the good simple natural things of life move back into our awareness once again and reclaim that which once gave us soul. As many people on this list know, I became homeless in the recession of the late 80's early 90's and spent about a year living in my station wagon sleeping in underground parking garages at night making believe I was part of the cleaning crew in order to be undisturbed by the police. By day I went to the library and obtained books which I read endlessly while parked by a lovely beach in So. Calif. At night I was able to find work telemarketing for four hours which kept me with enough money to purchase food for myself and my dog, and gas for my car. I had a mission which kept me inspired and that mission was to do what I am doing today -- finding out why in the hell we have these horrible recessions and what the government and the Fed Reserve were/are doing that contribute to the mess. And, once finding out then determining what we can do about it. Initially I was so afraid of being homeless, but once I was so to speak "out on the streets" I found life to be not unpleasant at all. And that when need was there assistance came from somewhere. I learned to "dumpster dive" for food that was thoughtfully put into dumpsters by small compassionate grocers who could not risk giving it away due to fear of law suits in case of accidental food-poisoning, etc. And, occasionally there would be stew pots of food made from contributions of a potato here, a carrot and an onion there, that would be shared on the beach watching a gorgeous sunset -- the camaraderie of it all was heart-warming. There was no "bowling alone" among this group of people who had to depend upon one another for their well-being. We talked of better times, of growing food organically, of building homes of earth and straw, of becoming contributors to the Earth's well-being rather than being the constant "takers" associated with conventional society. And life was good with the worst part of becoming homeless associated with the fear of not knowing what homelessness could be like if one was unable to be creative about it. If we are organized and plan our down-sizing, becoming homeless and forced to live life without all the destructive creature comforts we have come to believe are the "strongholds" of life of which we are deserving, then "being the change we wish to see in our lives" as we give it all up and begin "living simply so that others may simply live," can be very rewarding and character-building. I am a far, far better person from having undergone this experience, and I am ever greatful for having had the experience and having all the wonderful people I now know come into my life at that time. What I feel we need to realize is that the discomforts of being homeless are only temporary ones that can be overcome as we make adjustments to what is real and what is not. We need to begin asking ourselves "what is need" and "what is greed associated with ego" and make lifestyle adjustments accordingly. Can we not be as happy and fulfilled living in a tent as in a mansion -- perhaps even more so? With love and in gratitude for all that we do together, mary rose *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 2/4/2010 at 10:15 AM mary rose wrote: >Here for your consideration is a series of important news items from >Trading >Post Paul. Msg truncated. From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 4 14:38:11 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 13:38:11 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Revealing History Channel Documentary on Mind Control is a Must Watch - Comment by Constance Demby Message-ID: <00a401caa5e2$8efe41a0$acfac4e0$@net> From: Constance Demby [mailto:cdemby at constancedemby.com] Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 9:07 AM To: mary rose Subject: Re: Revealing History Channel Documentary on Mind Control is a Must Watch I've been tapping into their site for a long time now, they are the best! he even used a clip of my music on their metaphysical meditation sites best CD Mary Rose wrote: Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I just posted this to Facebook. If you are not on Facebook, I urge you to join with the approximately 350 million others who are using this venue to voice their concerns about the challenges we face in today's world as the human family. The Facebook venue transcends nation-state boundaries and joins us together as one family holding out our hands to one another in love and in gratitude for what we can do together united in purpose. The Internet is but an extension of the human mind/brain. Let us use it to its fullest potential to set ourselves free. mary rose From: PEERS: WantToKnow.info Email List [mailto:emaillist at peerservice.org] Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 8:01 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject Revealing History Channel Documentary on Mind Control is a Must Watch To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this list (one email every few days) or to reply to this message, see end of email This message is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mindcontrolvideo message truncated. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 4 17:45:11 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 16:45:11 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: i believe this. Message-ID: <00ca01caa5fc$ae7c8c20$0b75a460$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS This is an important message. We must pay attention. -----Original Message----- From: TradingPostPaul [mailto:tradingpost at riseup.net] Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 2:07 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: i believe this. All of the debts for societys century-long industrial fiesta are coming due at the same time. We have no choice but to transition to a world no longer dependent on fossil fuels, a world made up of communities and economies that function within ecological bounds. How we manage this transition is the most important question of our time. -- Richard Heinberg From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 5 03:05:22 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 10:05:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Fw: Re: [Arthakranti] Arthakranti Documentary : Pre-Release Preview Message-ID: <736206.73986.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 5/2/10, Abhijit Mulye ?????? ?????? wrote: From: Abhijit Mulye ?????? ?????? Subject: Re: [Arthakranti] Arthakranti Documentary : Pre-Release Preview To: "Amol Phalke" Cc: "Artha Kranti" Date: Friday, 5 February, 2010, 3:59 ? Pls go thro' the link. Its interesting. http://india. 5thpillar. org/ZRN Abhijit Mulye On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 20:41, Amol Phalke wrote: ? Dear All, We have had preview of rough cut of documentary in October, we had good feedback from that interaction, thanks to all of those who attended the same. Now we have come up with ?First-Cut? of the documentary. It is ready to be released. So before releasing the same, we want to have quick feedback from the people who are ????????? Either not well familiar with Arthakranti and its details o?? We need to find out such people and see if they would like to understand/know @ it ????????? Or those of us who are familiar but have not seen the documentary yet ? Proposed details for the session(Pre- Release Preview): Time:??? 6.30pm to 7.30pm for viewing documentary and thereafter session will be open for comments and discussion Date:???? 9th Jan, 10 i.e. coming Saturday Venue: Flat 502, Casablanca, Opp Karishma Soc, Sangam Press Road, Kothrud, Pune-38 ? Please confirm to me about who would be attending this session, ASAP. Aurangabad team have already given their feedback on this first cut, so let?s complete this session effectively, so that we can go ahead and release this tool as soon as possible. ? Thanks & Regards, Amol & Bhushan From: PATIL Bhushan Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 10:05 AM To: AKP Pune Cc: bhushan patil Subject: Arthakranti Documentary Preview : Long awaited ? Dear All, We all are waiting for Arthakranti documentary film, so here is good news that we have arranged for preview session of the film. We will be collecting feedback at the end of the preview, it will be sorted out for the scope of the film and date for final launch will be announced based on the same, as far as possible immediately there itself. ? For Preview session Date: 4th Oct, 09 Venue: Flat 502, Casablanca Apartment, Opp Karishma Society, Sangam Press Rd, Kothrud, Pune ? Please note that there are 2 preview sessions A>??? For AK volunteers a.?????? This session is for existing AK volunteers, who have been familiar with the proposal since some time and actively involved in taking it ahead b.????? With feedback about the? film, we would also have to decide on the plan for spreading it further c.?????? Time: 5pm to 6pm ? B>??? For unfamiliar ones a.?????? This is a session for those who have NOT attended a single presentation on Arthakranti yet, so are not aware about the idea b.????? Time: 10am to 11am Please suggest names of the persons who you think should attend this session, we would prefer to have mix audience to have all round feedback. Please provide names and contact numbers to us and confirm about them, if possible today itself. ? Regards, Amol & Bhushan __._,_.___ Reply to sender | Reply to group Messages in this topic (2) Recent Activity: Visit Your Group Start a new topic Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest ? Unsubscribe ? Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Sun Feb 7 15:59:10 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 22:59:10 -0000 Subject: [GJM] It's getting nasty . We stand together or hang separately References: <31f677a31001260241g54438b90y8e4ec038bc595285@mail.gmail.com> <007001caa144$54e0b0e0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Message-ID: <005f01caa849$2cf408f0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Dear All, This is important. It is getting nasty -- spread the news. It is being said that websites including www.lnfowars.com and www.prisonplanet.com are being blocked in many countries. These sites, which are non-violent, exposed the swine flu hoax, climategate, glaciergate and are demanding that the Federal Reserve be audited. Where the freedom of the internet is concerned, we stand together or hang separately. Rodney Shakespeare. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Feb 8 08:40:44 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 15:40:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Reforming AID using Electronic Tracking, and Enforcement to Governments in Developing Countries... Message-ID: <988424.94577.qm@web27403.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? ??????????? This is probably not be a new idea but I feel it is worth pursuing. How can we be sure if financial AID (irrespective of whether it be loans, and/or grants)sent directly to governments in developing countries is being correctly used? ? One approach which may appear to be too radical, or indeed too draconian?is to ensure that it is electronically monitored very closely. If for example tracked money goes to a bank account which is questionable it could be stopped,or instantly frozen (temporarily, or permanently)?and/or else the sender could be fined electronically!?Such electronic monitoring, and enforcement could help to make sure that such capital is going to the right bank accounts concerned with economic development in the form of relevant goverment departments, companies, known businessmen, and the like. Thus, corruption, and misuse of financial AID would be difficult to undertake..if at all... ? ...Remember money is electronic information..and it can be directly tracked, and controlled.... ? Such electronic monitoring, and enforcement of financial aid would have to be ?part of the legal conditions on which it is first given?to any government in the Developing World. ? ? http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics ? Robert Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Feb 8 08:49:30 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 15:49:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Peer to Peer Reviews.... Message-ID: <917758.61487.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? I have not included a link to Sense about Science but recently it has done some interesting research into the "veracity"(or? lack of it..)?of peer to peer reviews which raises serious concerns about it...................This is notably true in economics...plus other subjects..... Robert Searle. ? ? Researchers show loyalty to peer review but want a lot more from it Most researchers agree that peer review plays an active role in the community and for scientific communication, but more than two-thirds think that peer review should identify the best papers, determine their originality and importance, improve those papers and, though lower scoring, also determine whether research is plagiarised or fraudulent By IWR News Desk, Information World Review 08 Sep 2009 Preliminary results of an international survey of authors and reviewers on what they think about peer review and its future was released today at the British Science Festival. Called the Peer Review Survey 2009, it is developed by Sense About Science, a UK registered charity, in consultation with editors and publishers and with grant from Elsevier. According to the survey, 90% say they participate in peer review because of its role in the community while 84% respondents believed that without peer review there would be no control in scientific communication. However, almost 80% researchers expect review to detect fraud and misconduct. About 73% said that technological advances have made it easier to do a thorough job than five years ago. Whilst 86% enjoy reviewing, 56% say there is a lack of guidance on how to review; 68% think formal training would help. Some said peer review is unsustainable because of too few willing reviewers. On average, reviewers turn down two papers a year. As much as 61% of reviewers have rejected an invitation to review an article in the last year, citing lack of expertise as the main reason. Interestingly, over half of reviewers think receiving a payment in kind (e.g. subscription) would make them more likely to review; but this drops to just 2.5% if the author had to cover the cost. Acknowledgement in the journal is the most popular option. Peer review is fundamental to integration of new research findings and allows researchers to analyse findings and society at large to weigh up research claims. It results in 1.3 million learned articles published every year, and it is growing rapidly with the expansion of the global research community, according to the survey. Sense About Science embarked on promoting understanding of peer review following concerns about getting the next generation of researchers to review in sufficient numbers, about maintaining the system?s integrity and whether it can be truly globalised; and also new ideas - about alternative quality measures, technologies to prevent plagiarism, rewarding reviewers and training them. The survey also suggest that while researchers agree that peer review is well understood by the scientific community only one third believe the public understands the term. Irene Hames, author 'Peer Review and Manuscript Management in Scientific Journals- guidelines for good practice' said that the survey proved the importance researchers attach to peer review but warned: ?That is not to say there aren't problems - there clearly are, and improvements and innovative solutions are needed. Crucial in this is the need to professionalize this area of activity, which too often is put in the hands of people who may have great academic reputations and research expertise, but no experience of running a peer-review system.? The full findings and the report are due to be published in November 2009. Other websites Accountancy Age Active Home Best Practice BusinessGreen Computeractive Computing CRN Financial Director Management Consultancy Personal Computer World V3.co.uk Useful links: About us . Privacy policy . Terms & conditions . Advertise UK Subscriptions Overseas Subscriptions ? 2010 Bizmedia. All rights reserved. Published with the permission of Incisive Media Bizmedia Ltd, Royal Station Court, Station Road, Twyford, Reading RG10 9NF,UK -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Feb 8 08:58:09 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 15:58:09 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund clilmate deniers Message-ID: <526558.66815.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers ExxonMobil cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming By Jonathan Owen and Paul Bignell Sunday, 7 February 2010 Share ?Print Email Text Size Normal Large Extra Large ap Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org, part of a network of climate change sceptics enlarge .firstcolumn {font-family: verdana; font-size: 11px; border-bottom: 5px solid #7D704D; color:#000000; margin-bottom:10px;} .firstcolumn div{padding-left:2px;} .firstcolumn .title {font-size: 13px; margin-top: 2px; margin-bottom: 2px; color:#7D704D; font-weight: bold; text-transform:uppercase;} .firstcolumn .title a{ color:#7D704D;} .firstcolumn .description {font-size: 11px;} .firstcolumn .thumbnail {float:left; margin-right:5px; border:0px;} .firstcolumn .commercialpromo {border-top: 5px solid #CEB669; margin-bottom: 10px;} .firstcolumn .clear {clear:both; height:1px; overflow:hidden;} .firstcolumn .mainheading {border-top: 5px solid #7D704D; margin-bottom: 0px;} .firstcolumn .mainheading .title{margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;} .firstcolumn a{color: #125581; text-decoration: none;} .firstcolumn a:hover{color: #125581; text-decoration: underline;} .firstcolumn a:visited{color: #125581;} .firstcolumn .dotted {background-image:url(http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00027/dots_27496a.gif);background-repeat:repeat-x;background-position:bottom; padding-bottom: 4px;} .firstcolumn .yh{font-weight:bold;}.clearbutton { /* generic container (i.e. div) for floating buttons */ overflow: hidden; width: 100%;} .firstcolumn .yahoo {overflow: hidden;} .firstcolumn .yahoo ul {list-style-type: none; margin: 0; padding: 0;} .firstcolumn .yahoo ul li {FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px; WIDTH: 180px; LIST-STYLE-TYPE: none; padding-left: 20px; background-image: url(http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00027/bullet_27264a.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 5px; font-weight:bold; } var ref_url= new String(document.location); myRegExp2 = new RegExp("incoming|.ece|html"); // display only for sections if (myRegExp2.test(ref_url) == false){ document.write('sponsored links: '); google_ad_client = 'ca-pub-5964551156905038'; if (ref_url.indexOf("/arts-entertainment") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+4791354580'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/environment") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+1107748553'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/indybest") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+3474960607'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/life-style") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+2301525710'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/money") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+3913758598'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/news") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+1985344535'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/offers") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+4759364625'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/opinion") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+6546546544'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/sport") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+5668950562'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/student") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+4306162616'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/travel") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '6756172661+9352556589'; } else { google_ad_channel = '6756172661'; } google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '4'; google_ad_type = 'text'; google_image_size = '728x90'; google_feedback = 'on'; }else { document.write(''); } var ref_url=(document.location); myRegExp2 = new RegExp("incoming|.ece|html"); // display only for sections if (myRegExp2.test(ref_url) == false){ document.write(''); } else { document.write(''); } var $ = jQuery; var ref_url= new String(document.location); $adsHtml = ""; function google_ad_request_done(google_ads) { var s = ''; var i; if (google_ads.length == 0) { $(".yahoo>div").append(".indy_googleads div {display:none;})"); return; } s += 'Ads by Google'; for(i = 0; i < google_ads.length; i++) { s += '' + google_ads[i].line1 + '' + google_ads[i].line2 + '' + google_ads[i].line3 + '' + google_ads[i].visible_url + ''; } $(".yahoo>div").append(s); return; } // the banned sections myRegExp = new RegExp("incoming|.ece|middle-east|crime|incoming|why-let-drink-decide|1774358|1789728|1785006|1792595|1792579|1792580|1792581|1792582|1792583|1792584|1792585|1792586|1792587|1792588|1792589|1792590|1792591|1792592|1792593|1795994|1799173|1802020|1803847|1803244|1803245|1803246|1803242|1803247|1803248|1803249|18032531806594|1806597|1806598|1806594|1807237|1810122|1809808|1809816|1809868|1809863|1813510|1813399|1813694|1813886|977700|1813893|1816252|1819588|1822090|1827138|1778090|1835880|1835917|1831558|1768764|1840567|1859671|1860931|1859785|1864447|1871767|1879569|1879576|1879579|1879583|1890350|1890350|1890547|1890530"); // if it is an article myRegExp2 = new RegExp("html"); if (myRegExp.test(ref_url) == false && myRegExp2.test(ref_url) == true){ $adsHtml +='sponsored links: '; } google_ad_client = 'ca-pub-5964551156905038'; if (ref_url.indexOf("/arts-entertainment") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+4791354580'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/environment") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+1107748553'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/indybest") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+3474960607'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/life-style") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+2301525710'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/money") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+3913758598'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/news") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1235598758'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/offers") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+4759364625'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/opinion") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+6546546544'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/sport") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+5668950562'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/student") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+4306162616'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/travel") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '1898374577+9352556589'; } else { google_ad_channel = '1898374577'; } google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '4'; google_ad_type = 'text'; google_image_size = '728x90'; google_feedback = 'on'; document.write($adsHtml); $(document).ready(function() { var count=1; jQuery.each($("div.body>p"), function(i, val) { if (jQuery.trim($(this).text())!='') count++; if (count>5) $("div.box").removeAttr("style"); }); }); sponsored links: Ads by Google Climate change? Dont care If this is you then good luck.If it?s not come & find out more www.carbonbalanced.org Climate Change Report Facts & figures on climate change.Read the latest news & views online climate.change.sidewaysnews.com Science: So What? So everything! See what science isdoing now and in the future. sciencesowhat.direct.gov.uk/ Join the 10:10 campaign Campaign against climate changeand join 10:10 with Good Energy now www.goodenergy.co.uk/10:10 window.google_render_ad(); An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night. The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December. Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe. Related articles Green light for show homes to sell eco-town project Leading article: Sceptics have their uses Search the news archive for more stories Many of these critics have broadcast material from the leaked UEA emails to undermine climate change predictions and to highlight errors in claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Professor Phil Jones, who has temporarily stood down as director of UEA's climactic research unit, is reported in today's Sunday Times to have "several times" considered suicide. He also drew parallels between his case and that of Dr David Kelly, found dead in the wake of the row over the alleged "sexing up" of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Professor Jones said he was taking sleeping pills and beta-blockers and had received two death threats in the past week alone. Climate sceptic bloggers broadcast stories last week casting doubts on scientific data predicting dramatic loss of the Amazon rainforest. All three stories, picked up by mainstream media, questioned the credibility of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the way it does its work. A new attack on climate science, already dubbed "Seagate" by sceptics, relating to claims that more than half the Netherlands is in danger of being submerged under rising sea levels, is likely to be at the centre of the newest skirmish in coming weeks. The controversies have shaken the IPCC, whose chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was subjected to a series of personal attacks on his reputation and lifestyle last week. A poll this weekend confirmed that public confidence in the climate change consensus has been shaken: one in four Britons ? 25 per cent ? now say they do not believe in global warming; previously this figure stood at 15 per cent. Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and former chairman of the IPCC, said yesterday that the backlash is the result of a campaign: "It does appear that there's a concerted effort by a number of sceptics to undermine the credibility of the evidence behind human-induced climate change." He added: "I am sure there are some sceptics who may well be funded by the private sector to try to cast uncertainty." A complicated web of relationships revolves around a number of right-wing think-tanks around the world that dispute the threats of climate change. ExxonMobil is a key player behind the scenes, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years to climate change sceptics. The Atlas Foundation, created by the late Sir Anthony Fisher (founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs), received more than $100,000 in 2008 from ExxonMobil, according to the oil company's reports. Atlas has supported more than 30 other foreign think-tanks that espouse climate change scepticism, and co-sponsored a meeting of the world's leading climate sceptics in New York last March. Called "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?", it was organised by the Heartland Institute ? a group that described the event as "the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics". The organisation is another right-wing think-tank to have benefited from funding given by ExxonMobil in recent years. A large British contingent was present at the event, with speakers including Dr Benny Peiser, from Lord Lawson's climate sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF); the botanist David Bellamy; Julian Morris and Kendra Okonski from the London-based International Policy Network; the weather forecaster Piers Corbyn; Christopher Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher; and Professor David Henderson, a member of GWPF's advisory council. Speakers at the event also included two prominent climate bloggers who associate with Paul Dennis, a 54-year-old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia who has been questioned by police investigating the theft of climate data. In a posting on the blog of the climate sceptic Andrew Montford on Friday, Mr Dennis insisted: "I did not leak any files, data, emails or any other material. I have no idea how the files were released or who was behind it." But he confirmed that he had been in email contact with Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org ? a site that was one of the first to receive an anonymous link to the original leaked data from UEA. Mr Dennis said he emailed Mr McIntyre to alert him to a "departmental email saying that emails and files were hacked" and that "police had copies of my email correspondence with Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id [a pseudonym for the climate sceptic Patrick Condon]. They said it was because I had sent the emails that they were interviewing me." The UEA researcher also has connections with another prominent sceptic, Anthony Watts, with whom he has posted and who spoke beside Mr McIntyre. Mr Dennis was not available for comment. Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "A lot of the climate sceptic arguments are being made by people with demonstrable right-wing ideology which is based on opposition to any environmental regulation of the market, and they are clearly being given money that allows them to disseminate their views more widely than would be the case if they didn't have oil company funding." But Dr Richard North, a climate change sceptic and blogger, rejected claims of a conspiracy as "laughable" and denied having any links to vested interests. "Anybody who knows me knows I'm a loner. Nobody tells me what to do or dictates my agenda." ExxonMobil said in a statement: "We have the same concerns as people everywhere ? and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions." Switch your Gas & Electricity and save up to ?380 with Independent Compare var ref_url= new String(document.location); // the banned sections myRegExp = new RegExp("1799960|1800095|1799961|1799289|1798701|.ece|incoming"); if (myRegExp.test(ref_url) == false){ document.write('sponsored links: '); google_ad_client = 'ca-pub-5964551156905038'; if (ref_url.indexOf("/arts-entertainment") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+4791354580'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/environment") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+1107748553'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/indybest") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+3474960607'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/life-style") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+2301525710'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/money") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+3913758598'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/news") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+1985344535'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/offers") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+4759364625'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/opinion") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+6546546544'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/sport") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+5668950562'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/student") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+4306162616'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/travel") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+9352556589'; } else { google_ad_channel = '5258566634'; } google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '4'; google_ad_type = 'text'; google_image_size = '728x90'; google_feedback = 'on'; google_skip = '4'; } else { document.write(''); } sponsored links: window.google_render_ad(); Ads by Google JP Morgan Climate Care Fight global warming, calculate &offset your carbon footprint today www.jpmorganclimatecare.com Join the 10:10 campaign Campaign against climate changeand join 10:10 with Good Energy now www.goodenergy.co.uk/10:10 NHS Organ Donor register By becoming an Organ donor youcould save a life. Find more here. www.OrganDonation.NHS.uk Forex Trading - GFT New to forex? Try a risk-freepractice account today. GFT www.GFTuk.com var ref_url=(document.location); // the banned sections myRegExp = new RegExp("1799960|1800095|1799961|1799289|1798701|.ece|incoming"); if (myRegExp.test(ref_url) == false){ document.write(''); } else { document.write(''); } Post a Comment Subject: Message: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Feb 8 09:04:45 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 16:04:45 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Problem with Article on Oil Comps, and Climate Deniers. Message-ID: <133701.63940.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ?Hopefully, the text of the full artilce will appear from the Independent UK website because I cannot see it in the original post...! ? ? ?R.Searle ? ? An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment experts claimed last night. The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December. Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe. Related articles Green light for show homes to sell eco-town project Leading article: Sceptics have their uses Search the news archive for more stories Many of these critics have broadcast material from the leaked UEA emails to undermine climate change predictions and to highlight errors in claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Professor Phil Jones, who has temporarily stood down as director of UEA's climactic research unit, is reported in today's Sunday Times to have "several times" considered suicide. He also drew parallels between his case and that of Dr David Kelly, found dead in the wake of the row over the alleged "sexing up" of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Professor Jones said he was taking sleeping pills and beta-blockers and had received two death threats in the past week alone. Climate sceptic bloggers broadcast stories last week casting doubts on scientific data predicting dramatic loss of the Amazon rainforest. All three stories, picked up by mainstream media, questioned the credibility of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the way it does its work. A new attack on climate science, already dubbed "Seagate" by sceptics, relating to claims that more than half the Netherlands is in danger of being submerged under rising sea levels, is likely to be at the centre of the newest skirmish in coming weeks. The controversies have shaken the IPCC, whose chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, was subjected to a series of personal attacks on his reputation and lifestyle last week. A poll this weekend confirmed that public confidence in the climate change consensus has been shaken: one in four Britons ? 25 per cent ? now say they do not believe in global warming; previously this figure stood at 15 per cent. Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and former chairman of the IPCC, said yesterday that the backlash is the result of a campaign: "It does appear that there's a concerted effort by a number of sceptics to undermine the credibility of the evidence behind human-induced climate change." He added: "I am sure there are some sceptics who may well be funded by the private sector to try to cast uncertainty." A complicated web of relationships revolves around a number of right-wing think-tanks around the world that dispute the threats of climate change. ExxonMobil is a key player behind the scenes, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few years to climate change sceptics. The Atlas Foundation, created by the late Sir Anthony Fisher (founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs), received more than $100,000 in 2008 from ExxonMobil, according to the oil company's reports. Atlas has supported more than 30 other foreign think-tanks that espouse climate change scepticism, and co-sponsored a meeting of the world's leading climate sceptics in New York last March. Called "Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?", it was organised by the Heartland Institute ? a group that described the event as "the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics". The organisation is another right-wing think-tank to have benefited from funding given by ExxonMobil in recent years. A large British contingent was present at the event, with speakers including Dr Benny Peiser, from Lord Lawson's climate sceptic think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF); the botanist David Bellamy; Julian Morris and Kendra Okonski from the London-based International Policy Network; the weather forecaster Piers Corbyn; Christopher Monckton, a former policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher; and Professor David Henderson, a member of GWPF's advisory council. Speakers at the event also included two prominent climate bloggers who associate with Paul Dennis, a 54-year-old climate researcher at the University of East Anglia who has been questioned by police investigating the theft of climate data. In a posting on the blog of the climate sceptic Andrew Montford on Friday, Mr Dennis insisted: "I did not leak any files, data, emails or any other material. I have no idea how the files were released or who was behind it." But he confirmed that he had been in email contact with Stephen McIntyre, who runs climateaudit.org ? a site that was one of the first to receive an anonymous link to the original leaked data from UEA. Mr Dennis said he emailed Mr McIntyre to alert him to a "departmental email saying that emails and files were hacked" and that "police had copies of my email correspondence with Steve McIntyre and Jeff Id [a pseudonym for the climate sceptic Patrick Condon]. They said it was because I had sent the emails that they were interviewing me." The UEA researcher also has connections with another prominent sceptic, Anthony Watts, with whom he has posted and who spoke beside Mr McIntyre. Mr Dennis was not available for comment. Bob Ward, the policy director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "A lot of the climate sceptic arguments are being made by people with demonstrable right-wing ideology which is based on opposition to any environmental regulation of the market, and they are clearly being given money that allows them to disseminate their views more widely than would be the case if they didn't have oil company funding." But Dr Richard North, a climate change sceptic and blogger, rejected claims of a conspiracy as "laughable" and denied having any links to vested interests. "Anybody who knows me knows I'm a loner. Nobody tells me what to do or dictates my agenda." ExxonMobil said in a statement: "We have the same concerns as people everywhere ? and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions." Switch your Gas & Electricity and save up to ?380 with Independent Compare var ref_url= new String(document.location); // the banned sections myRegExp = new RegExp("1799960|1800095|1799961|1799289|1798701|.ece|incoming"); if (myRegExp.test(ref_url) == false){ document.write('sponsored links: '); google_ad_client = 'ca-pub-5964551156905038'; if (ref_url.indexOf("/arts-entertainment") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+4791354580'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/environment") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+1107748553'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/indybest") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+3474960607'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/life-style") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+2301525710'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/money") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+3913758598'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/news") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+1985344535'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/offers") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+4759364625'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/opinion") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+6546546544'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/sport") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+5668950562'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/student") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+4306162616'; } else if (ref_url.indexOf("/travel") != -1) { google_ad_channel = '5258566634+9352556589'; } else { google_ad_channel = '5258566634'; } google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '4'; google_ad_type = 'text'; google_image_size = '728x90'; google_feedback = 'on'; google_skip = '4'; } else { document.write(''); } sponsored links: window.google_render_ad(); Ads by Google JP Morgan Climate Care Fight global warming, calculate &offset your carbon footprint today www.jpmorganclimatecare.com Join the 10:10 campaign Campaign against climate changeand join 10:10 with Good Energy now www.goodenergy.co.uk/10:10 NHS Organ Donor register By becoming an Organ donor youcould save a life. Find more here. www.OrganDonation.NHS.uk Forex Trading - GFT New to forex? Try a risk-freepractice account today. GFT www.GFTuk.com var ref_url=(document.location); // the banned sections myRegExp = new RegExp("1799960|1800095|1799961|1799289|1798701|.ece|incoming"); if (myRegExp.test(ref_url) == false){ document.write(''); } else { document.write(''); } Post a Comment -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From peterchallen at googlemail.com Mon Feb 8 09:42:59 2010 From: peterchallen at googlemail.com (Peter Challen) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 16:42:59 +0000 Subject: [GJM] A couple of worthwhile quotes In-Reply-To: <003901caa8dc$ec8c4e50$c5a4eaf0$@net> References: <003901caa8dc$ec8c4e50$c5a4eaf0$@net> Message-ID: <1155b3ea1002080842k2d917162x4892a48ae55abd58@mail.gmail.com> and what make you of '*Forgiveness is finally letting go of all hope for a better past.'* * * *I heard the words but not the name of the author. * *There is enduring wisdom there it seems to me. * Peter On 8 February 2010 16:35, mary rose wrote: > Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS > > > > I live by forgiveness, and fit into the second one very well. > > > > Where are you? What is your life about? > > > > M R > > > > > > > > Forgiveness is the economy of the heart - forgiveness saves the expense of > anger, cost of hatred, and waste of spirits. > > > > Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The > round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're > not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can > praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or > vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they > change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They > create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to > be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? > Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a > red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of > people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the > people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones > who do. > > > > Steven Jobs > > > > *Your Logo, Inc.* > > FutureDawning.org > > *Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org* > *CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation* > > *Future Dawning.org* > > dustysummerrose at gmail.com > > *Always have my latest info* > > *Want a signature like this?* > > > -- "Financially, the World is living on drafts upon the future: Economically, it is living on the Products of the past." unknown -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 9 02:21:58 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: 09 Feb 2010 01:21:58 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Sanctions should be imposed to boost loans  - Yahoo! News UK Message-ID: Robert Searle (dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk) has sent you a news article X-Originating-IP: 217.12.6.88 -------------------- Personal message text: -------------------- Sanctions should be imposed to boost loans?? http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100209/tuk-uk-britain-banks-fa6b408.html ============================================================ From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 9 02:34:02 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 09:34:02 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] The Need for Greater Fiscal Easing.... Message-ID: <643508.69287.qm@web27402.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- On Mon, 8/2/10, robert searle wrote: The Need for Greater Fiscal Easing................... ? Responsibly creating? "enough" new non-repayable money electronically in a process similiar to Quantitative Easing would not lead to hyperinflation. Instead, it would ?lead overtime to a small degree of higher inflation. This could ?be checked out by using conventional Economic Indicators notably the CPI. ? i) The idea of helping to solve social/economics problems using new money as indicated in the above may be "socially unacceptable"? at present. But many of the problems of the world such as poverty, and?environmental degradation are also socially unacceptable. With fiscal easing the process of change can happen more quickly. ? ii) Money created in the above manner is not funny money because it already exists. It is called credit creation in which banks electronically create new capital out of thin air. However, the resulting loans made out of legalised funny money are ofcourse repayable with interest added on to them!! ? .....Remember funny money already exists! ? Moreover, with full Transfinancial Economics (as opposed to limited TFE of the above)?a banking transaction tax of some kind could be unnecessary. But something akin to an instant inflation "tax"?may be necessary. How often this could be used would be dependent on the quality of electronic inflation management of the entire financial system. ? http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics ? Robert Searle. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 9 07:17:30 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 14:17:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Jeremy Lee.....and Social Credit.. Message-ID: <871308.91539.qm@web27408.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? This may be of interest! ? http://www.youtube.com/user/robertaklinck ? Robert Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 5 05:36:14 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 04:36:14 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Foodsheds, Urban Rurals, Ag Vision and more from ROC Message-ID: <000001caa660$01cf8950$056e9bf0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS In this regard, I am ordering my first organic food package from the Golden Share Food Program here in So. California. For $20 I will be getting a 15 pound package of fresh organic fruits and vegetables. This is going to cut my food bill substantially and also cut my gasoline bill as it is delivered to a pick-up station just 4 miles from my doorstep. Other packages including frozen items are available monthly. Check out the program if you are in So. California. http://www.goldensharefoods.com/ If not in So. Calif. see what you can do about setting up a program like this in your area. From: Michael R. Dimock [mailto:mail at rocnetwork.org] Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 9:49 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Foodsheds, Urban Rurals, Ag Vision and more from ROC roc logo Dear Supporter: Here at Roots of Change we have been working hard behind the scenes and on the ground to accomplish our goal of creating a sustainable food system in California by the year 2030. We understand that this goal is lofty and so wanted to bring to light some of the tangible results that were realized last year. Highlights of our 2009 successes: * Roots of Change attracted more than $3.5 million in direct and indirect funding to support a broad set of network projects to change the food system. Directly, we raised $1.8 million that flowed through ROC, and the remaining $1.7 million flowed to network partners. ROC is 61% of the way to the five-year goal of $11.4 million in revenue for the ROC network, having attracted more than $6.9 million into food system work in the first three years. * California Department of Food and Agriculture awarded ROC $500,000 to help increase access of fresh food at farmers' markets around the state for those on government assistance. In addition USDA Risk Management Agency awarded ROC $200,000 to empower disadvantaged producers and under-served crops. * In May, the San Francisco Urban-Rural Roundtable presented it's recommendations to Mayor Gavin Newsom, which resulted in an announcement in July by the mayor for the first regional foodshed policy in the country. (Los Angeles has recently started their Urban-Rural Roundtable and is working to develop a pathway to metropolitan foodshed planning in Southern California.) * In July, ROC and the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, held a Summit with 130 leaders from across the nation to accelerate the development of sustainable foodsheds that offer fresh, healthy, regional and sustainable food to all people regardless of income level or location. * ROC played an integral role in the California Department of Food and Agriculture Ag Vision process, with over 20 network partners taking part in the consensus building. Specifically, ROC helped write potential policy papers for immigration reform and healthy food access. * Through AgVision, and support of the California Roundtable on Agriculture and the Environment, ROC has begun to activate relationships with California production agriculture leaders, which will become increasingly important moving forward. * Over the Thanksgiving holiday we gathered 2,537 signatures from supporters around the nation to thank the USDA for the "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" initiative, and to urge their continued focus on locally grown food. * Finally, and perhaps most importantly over the long-term, ROC's network of concerned citizens increased 320% to 31,000 people (with over 20,000 from California) and more are joining every month. Thank you Sylvia Drew Ivie and Rich Rominger for your service After years of dedicated service, Richard Rominger and Sylvia Drew Ivie have rotated off the ROC Stewardship Council. Although now absent from ROC's quarterly Council meetings, their involvement with ROC's work will continue. As Chief of Staff to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, Sylvia continues to assist ROC through the Los Angeles Urban-Rural Roundtable. Richard Rominger Former USDA Deputy Secretary, Rich was a founding ROC Council member. Rich will continue to support ROC with issues of policy and links to those shaping the future of food and farming. The ROC Council and staff offers heartfelt thanks and appreciation for their wisdom and assistance over the years. In the weeks ahead, ROC's email communications will introduce the three new Council members. We look forward to having you join us for a productive 2010 as we continue to work towards a sustainable food system in California. Michael R. Dimock President, Roots of Change Roots of Change, 221 Kearny Street, 3rd Floor San Francisco, California 94108 www.rootsofchange.org This email was sent to to tiffany at rocnetwork.org by tiffany at rocnetwork.org. Click here to unsubscribe Roots of Change | 221 Kearny Street | 3rd Floor | San Francisco | CA | 94108 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 5 16:16:59 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 15:16:59 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy By Noam Chomsky Message-ID: <000001caa6b9$92252970$b66f7c50$@net> -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 6:47 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy By Noam Chomsky (To change your settings or unsubscribe please go to http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/globalnetnews-summary) The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy By Noam Chomsky http://www.planetarymovement.org/go/newsflash/-the-corporate-takeover-of-u.s .-democracy--by-noam-chomsky/ Jan. 21, 2010, will go down as a dark day in the history of U.S. democracy, and its decline. On that day the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the government may not ban corporations from political spending on elections-a decision that profoundly affects government policy, both domestic and international. The decision heralds even further corporate takeover of the U.S. political system. To the editors of The New York Times, the ruling "strikes at the heart of democracy" by having "paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding." The court was split, 5-4, with the four reactionary judges (misleadingly called "conservative") joined by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. selected a case that could easily have been settled on narrow grounds and maneuvered the court into using it to push through a far-reaching decision that overturns a century of precedents restricting corporate contributions to federal campaigns. Now corporate managers can in effect buy elections directly, bypassing more complex indirect means. It is well-known that corporate contributions, sometimes packaged in complex ways, can tip the balance in elections, hence driving policy. The court has just handed much more power to the small sector of the population that dominates the economy. Political economist Thomas Ferguson's "investment theory of politics" is a very successful predictor of government policy over a long period. The theory interprets elections as occasions on which segments of private sector power coalesce to invest to control the state. The Jan. 21 decision only reinforces the means to undermine functioning democracy. noamThe background is enlightening. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged that "we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment"-the constitutional guarantee of free speech, which would include support for political candidates. In the early 20th century, legal theorists and courts implemented the court's 1886 decision that corporations-these "collectivist legal entities"-have the same rights as persons of flesh and blood. This attack on classical liberalism was sharply condemned by the vanishing breed of conservatives. Christopher G. Tiedeman described the principle as "a menace to the liberty of the individual, and to the stability of the American states as popular governments." Morton Horwitz writes in his standard legal history that the concept of corporate personhood evolved alongside the shift of power from shareholders to managers, and finally to the doctrine that "the powers of the board of directors "are identical with the powers of the corporation." In later years, corporate rights were expanded far beyond those of persons, notably by the mislabeled "free trade agreements." Under these agreements, for example, if General Motors establishes a plant in Mexico, it can demand to be treated just like a Mexican business ("national treatment")-quite unlike a Mexican of flesh and blood who might seek "national treatment" in New York, or even minimal human rights. A century ago, Woodrow Wilson, then an academic, described an America in which "comparatively small groups of men," corporate managers, "wield a power and control over the wealth and the business operations of the country," becoming "rivals of the government itself." In reality, these "small groups" increasingly have become government's masters. The Roberts court gives them even greater scope. failedstatesThe Jan. 21 decision came three days after another victory for wealth and power: the election of Republican candidate Scott Brown to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the "liberal lion" of Massachusetts. Brown's election was depicted as a "populist upsurge" against the liberal elitists who run the government. The voting data reveal a rather different story. High turnouts in the wealthy suburbs, and low ones in largely Democratic urban areas, helped elect Brown. "Fifty-five percent of Republican voters said they were `very interested' in the election," The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll reported, "compared with 38 percent of Democrats." So the results were indeed an uprising against President Obama's policies: For the wealthy, he was not doing enough to enrich them further, while for the poorer sectors, he was doing too much to achieve that end. The popular anger is quite understandable, given that the banks are thriving, thanks to bailouts, while unemployment has risen to 10 percent. In manufacturing, one in six is out of work-unemployment at the level of the Great Depression. With the increasing financialization of the economy and the hollowing out of productive industry, prospects are bleak for recovering the kinds of jobs that were lost. Brown presented himself as the 41st vote against healthcare-that is, the vote that could undermine majority rule in the U.S. Senate. It is true that Obama's healthcare program was a factor in the Massachusetts election. The headlines are correct when they report that the public is turning against the program. The poll figures explain why: The bill does not go far enough. The Wall St. Journal/NBC poll found that a majority of voters disapprove of the handling of healthcare both by the Republicans and by Obama. These figures align with recent nationwide polls. The public option was favored by 56 percent of those polled, and the Medicare buy-in at age 55 by 64 percent; both programs were abandoned. Eighty-five percent believe that the government should have the right to negotiate drug prices, as in other countries; Obama guaranteed Big Pharma that he would not pursue that option. Large majorities favor cost-cutting, which makes good sense: U.S. per capita costs for healthcare are about twice those of other industrial countries, and health outcomes are at the low end. But cost-cutting cannot be seriously undertaken when largesse is showered on the drug companies, and healthcare is in the hands of virtually unregulated private insurers-a costly system peculiar to the U.S. The Jan. 21 decision raises significant new barriers to overcoming the serious crisis of healthcare, or to addressing such critical issues as the looming environmental and energy crises. The gap between public opinion and public policy looms larger. And the damage to American democracy can hardly be overestimated. noamNoam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate. From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 5 16:18:54 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 15:18:54 -0800 Subject: [GJM] The Stand for Less Movement Message-ID: <000101caa6b9$c514b670$4f3e2350$@net> From: info at standforless.com To: hdthoreau62 at hotmail.com Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 08:00:30 +1100 Subject: The STAND FOR LESS movement is alive and growing If you are having trouble reading this email, click here to view in your web browser. Please add info at standforless.com to your address book to ensure our emails reach your inbox. The STAND FOR LESS movement is alive and growing Dear friends, We STAND FOR LESS to have more. We want a more sustainable future for ourselves and our children. The STAND FOR LESS movement in San Diego is alive, strong and growing. The movement is alive via Sacramento where the most comprehensive overhaul of California's water system was passed in to law last year. The new law deals with the hard realities of water needs for humans while recognizing the value of non-human ecosystems. It is one step in the process toward dealing with our state's water problems. The movement is alive in outstanding organizations like Surfrider of San Diego, a local non-profit dedicated to "the protection and enjoyment of our world's oceans, waves and beaches." Read more about Surfrider on our Web site. STAND FOR LESS is alive on the STAND FOR LESS Facebook page where we follow local, regional and national stories related to conservation. The movement is alive in the San Diego-based LEED for Homes program. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental design. LEED is the recognized standard for commercial buildings but is a new green standard for homes. A LEED certified home costs an average of 2 to 5 percent more to construct than a non-certified home. Those costs are recovered through lower utility bills. As more and more people recognize the need to STAND FOR LESS, the LEED certification is expected to improve resale values of homes. By learning more about the issues impacting our environment we can make better decisions as individuals, organizations and through our elected officials. Only by being informed can we stand together for a sustainable future. Email a friend and tell them about STAND FOR LESS. Thanks! Regards, The STAND FOR LESS Team cid:image001.gif at 01CAA666.93BFDC60Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tnordramprasad at yahoo.co.in Thu Feb 4 22:06:03 2010 From: tnordramprasad at yahoo.co.in (tnordramprasad at yahoo.co.in) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 10:36:03 +0530 (IST) Subject: [GJM] FW: Revealing History Channel Documentary on Mind Control is a Must Watch (Action Required) Message-ID: <751441.67555.qm@web94403.mail.in2.yahoo.com> Hello Discussion Forum for Global Justice, This message serves as notification that you will not receive any more courtesy notices from our members for two days. Messages you have sent will remain in a lower priority queue for our member to review at their leisure. Future messages will be more likely to be viewed if you are on our member's priority Guest List. Thank you, tnordramprasad at yahoo.co.in About Boxbe This courtesy notice is part of a free service to make email more reliable and useful. Boxbe (http://www.boxbe.com) uses your existing social network and that of your friends to keep your inbox clean and make sure you receive email from people who matter to you. Boxbe: Say Goodbye to Email Overload Visit http://www.boxbe.com/how-it-works?tc=1527013542_2094336777 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- Reporting-MTA: dns; yahoo.com Action: failed Arrival-Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 08:30:20 -0800 (PST) Final-Recipient: rfc822; tnordramprasad at yahoo.co.in Diagnostic-Code: X-Boxbe-Notice; Sender not pre-approved, delivered to low priority folder. Follow instructions in above notice Status: 4.7.0 -------------- next part -------------- >From mary rose Thu Feb 4 16:30:20 2010 X-Apparently-To: tnordramprasad at yahoo.co.in via 203.104.16.232; Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:32:07 +0530 Return-Path: X-YMailISG: HAzkFxwWLDvJ6nE_jt9ZNW47DB7GJfKHpMy7u8fW2309DcUeGN_tKYAo9klcqsMrt9kAvtiFTte2ZMqc5VLXMrAI06aay6HkTCV3YJUnC2LylOSkU0zd9ViCGo3G7cMladvRX6cCAQjKiZjG73PNW6bvosHWfgoiSejhvmxHy4roMdxa7jfafrl1b6mJFHSaRTGrVeZphRn1Z7YmlZ37hnD_O95dfyAC32jiMOskA3d_nyilV_th2.F7m9kKtnb6d5YP.G31FWh8Gl5j5.wk8ZLTxTckn41blQCLntA_Ugf6ExnaLycMfAERPmq.j5d4cCzLSSR82IAY1bvwN7fbLEhV7u.kJnvFm_OAgnH3jAEAjxC5oZ6927VgTBOsLmMco7OzKlhb3OxhQzNdLbS88Xql95zXlxPMtWdGOPxK6AxWM16tnYlV6FBuev3fNwsQvsQzDGLbSA-- X-Originating-IP: [209.151.94.25] Authentication-Results: mta149.mail.in.yahoo.com from=globaljusticemovement.net; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); from=globaljusticemovement.net; dkim=neutral (no sig) Received: from 209.151.94.25 (EHLO megs17.100mwh.com) (209.151.94.25) by mta149.mail.in.yahoo.com with SMTP; Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:32:07 +0530 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=megs17.100mwh.com) by megs17.100mwh.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1NdFOC-0000a7-EO; Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:01:52 -0700 Received: from smtp106.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com ([68.142.198.104]) by megs17.100mwh.com with smtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Nd4cb-0003kl-Pt for discussion at globaljusticemovement.net; Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:32:06 -0700 Received: (qmail 82525 invoked from network); 4 Feb 2010 16:32:02 -0000 Received: from MaryRosePC (maryrose333 at 75.107.22.85 with login) by smtp106.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com with SMTP; 04 Feb 2010 08:31:54 -0800 PST X-Yahoo-SMTP: ksfzh6WswBCYQOyPmYUcZp5ZeaUTYOTGGsfS5trQYwk- X-YMail-OSG: HFX01q0VM1nw.PFkgnVZDvgZEicvz.yB0Gvz5BMWczM02WWzuxCqSBbBhRY5jaoaoFk.lwxniaQkJAvXMjKErmRamAddcg1CLQn70v4ka1l83E6gPGxpR1MteABf7df3BqTLf7k.s1byTrEfZi90bvFTreZ0HpDP0PZeqBlBx4OEZkRzTSVpucToPkLN0klTttlDvPEDuy0iQ7Eh5CMSiRZPSIbdFQAtsF_V6IK0uUfuzl_cLERAb5MvvHQxPGexDE3q_hXk6cOdUyUzj_UkvMaZNoFPAp7qsV6lNTmeMaAYA07jpM98wgAcmqybub3ZLN.2WJeP_jZI42U3Gg9Sz2_1DfCRXzbb.QhErbtLompmGmupQcUKqgmmvyQqx5ovaxZo9a4nl7drTZpEUDksiD.vMJiLKH3g1.iaeHQjFK1iavlIQg21sfNy4hvy58Sqj.MafzW1hzEHet4nNJb7sFujbLppj5paXFqEi60o88c9tojo45Y.rO3bP6LVgSuMJfmvvtRlPKFgvdVTsY1nQdHgUqZDBFq21mV6NwUY23_c52sUbKrurmG0uvMHiMZ8kvw2DOQoULmQtap3UZLZ0od72hOPd_VRhHjnBqWSQeK28E6smuw_daXQyKzZEaJnKHf59luGK1qR2MsMrdXjXStMa5vVmuWm2wCKW27spJSC.DqHJjfigQFFcROqtIRMrkO79oC.AHFWluG9Jc_0ma.kEcUXU6Hy3cvy8spVx4Xn_T64esK9.TPbz0HIKwVgs6EqhZvR38Zd0gwmpUC3mE7q2d81XtrjKfGn_5yCTpeS7it.MIowHACnBz8pXLfj3cTEe21PG_sDsiqgR8icCa15tR.0TRQ_OE.LlyTCmPqWdky8HlnNlWX6CSJtNW1Tuzkv2Xr1W6EVZSL8WE3GTjcG6ieOLXlIiorGz6iHgqmRPBaPRbzDF3p2k7uu3saOrJpXMU yDFiOKNqMKxFg7ZTH_LphiM2OnGm5_tOQy_0bOLQ3HSgMNIg-- X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 From: "mary rose" To: "FixGov at yahoogroups. com" , "'Discussion Forum for Global Justice'" Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 08:30:20 -0800 Message-ID: <004001caa5b7$8ffc3830$aff4a890$@net> MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 12.0 Thread-Index: Acqlsy5rDnVJQ2SgQaGOXYFZT6DrWgAArM7A Content-Language: en-us X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.5 X-Spam-Score: -14 X-Spam-Bar: - X-Spam-Flag: NO X-Mailman-Approved-At: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:01:50 -0700 Subject: [GJM] FW: Revealing History Channel Documentary on Mind Control is a Must Watch X-BeenThere: discussion at globaljusticemovement.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12.cp3 Precedence: list Reply-To: Discussion Forum for Global Justice Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============0422671562==" Sender: discussion-bounces at globaljusticemovement.net Errors-To: discussion-bounces at globaljusticemovement.net X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - megs17.100mwh.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - yahoo.co.in X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - globaljusticemovement.net Content-Length: 29590 From ceasig at gmail.com Fri Feb 5 08:23:44 2010 From: ceasig at gmail.com (Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion & Governance) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 20:53:44 +0530 Subject: [GJM] Fwd: Chernobyl in the Amazon In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <31f677a31002050723l177f0f55k11d6b6c90bc7a5c1@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Luis Morago - Avaaz.org Date: Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 7:45 AM Subject: Chernobyl in the Amazon To: "ceasig at gmail.com" Dear friends, Oil giant Chevron faces losing a historic lawsuit on its *dumping of toxic waste in the Amazon -- let?s help the people of the rainforest win* in the court of public opinion and before the law, by *pressing Chevron?s new CEO to clean up this mess* and stop Chevron?s dirty lobbying: [image: Sign The Petition!] The final judgment is imminent after a long legal battle between *oil giant Chevron and brave indigenous peoples* of the Ecuadorian Amazon, who are seeking redress for the multinational?s *dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste in the rainforest.* If Chevron is forced to pay billions in damages, it?ll be a big step forward in bringing the world?s polluters to account. Staring defeat in the face, the oil giant has launched an *aggressive last-ditch lobbying campaign to derail the lawsuit. * But Chevron?s *newly-appointed CEO, John Watson, knows his corporation?s brand is under fire* and is growing anxious about the risks of a public shaming campaign -- so let?s turn up the heat! *Sign the petition* calling on Watson and Chevron to clean up their mess in Ecuador, and it will be delivered to them, their shareholders and the US media -- *click below to take action now:* https://secure.avaaz.org/en/chevron_toxic_legacy_4/?vl Over the years, civic action like this has helped to transform the policies of some of the world?s biggest corporations. But most *oil and gas multinationals spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on lobbying and PR* to reshape climate and energy policies and deny their environmental and human rights duties -- and *Chevron is one of the biggest offenders*. >From 1964 to 1990, *Chevron-owned Texaco deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste* from their oil fields in Ecuador's Amazon -- then pulled out without properly cleaning up the pollution they caused. Facing imminent defeat in the courts, Chevron has turned to legal machinations, powerful public relations firms and lobbyists to intimidate its critics into silence and avoid responsibility for the massive environmental and human disaster it has triggered. Chevron has repeatedly vowed to refuse to pay for a clean up even if ordered to by the court, saying ?We will fight this until hell freezes over. And then we?ll fight it out on the ice.? Its latest strategy: *pushing the US government to bully Ecuador into burying the case*. We cannot sit back and watch Chevron make a mockery of justice like this -- *let?s build a critical mass of support* and help the rainforest inhabitants win this round, in the court of public opinion and before the law. *Click here to sign the petition and help deliver a deafening message personally to Chevron?s new chief executive John Watson*: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/chevron_toxic_legacy_4/?vl Citizens in Ecuador and around the world are joining efforts to *stand up to one of the biggest and dirtiest corporations in the world*. If we win, it?ll be another big step toward a future of corporate accountability, human rights and environmental protection. Let's add our voices and spread the word today! With hope and determination, Luis, Paula, Benjamin, Pascal, Paul, Alice, Ricken, Graziela and the whole Avaaz team PS - This campaign is part of a larger effort by Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network and other environmental and human rights allies worldwide. SOURCES: ChevronToxico, the website of Amazon Watch's Clean Up Ecuador Campaign, includes new video of affected Ecuadorians urging Chevron?s CEO to clean up oil pollution: http://chevrontoxico.com/ Wall Street Journal, "Chevron Plaintiffs Ask U.S. Court for Action": http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704363504575003153443151606.html Politico, "Chevron's lobbying campaign backfires": http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29560.html The Huffington Post, "Chevron and cultural genocide in Ecuador", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-kennedy/chevron-and-cultural-geno_b_346257.html Los Angeles Times, "Oil, Ecuador and its people": http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/28/opinion/ed-chevron28 "CRUDE. The Real Price of Oil"", Joe Berlinger?s award-winning documentary film that chronicles the epic battle to hold oil giant Chevron accountable for its systematic contamination of the Ecuadorian - official website: http://www.crudethemovie.com/ ----------------------- *Want to support Avaaz?* We're entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated online team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way -- donate here . *ABOUT AVAAZ* Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva. Click *here*to learn more about our largest campaigns. *Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Myspace and Bebopages! You can also follow Avaaz on Twitter! * You are getting this message because you signed "G8+5: FEEL THE HEAT, ACT NOW! " on 2007-06-08 using the email address ceasig at gmail.com. To ensure that Avaaz messages reach your inbox, please add avaaz at avaaz.org to your address book. To change your email address, language settings, or other personal information, click here: https://secure.avaaz.org/act/index.php?r=profile&user=30f1b236d9b78dec315399d940a534e6&lang=enor simply click here to unsubscribe . To contact Avaaz, please *do not reply to this email.* Instead, write to us via the webform at http://www.avaaz.org/en/contact. You can also call us at +1-888-922-8229 (US) or +55 21 2509 0368 (Brazil). -- Endeavoring for ecological safety ,social inclusion and distributive justice for the renewable resource based livelihoods and habitats, Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion and Governance (CEASIG) , an initiative of Labour League Foundation, Sewa and Sufi Trust , Delhi aims for socially inclusive and ecologically safe future for all through organizing and communicating carbon neutral neighborhood discussions/ consultations, building capacities in ecological audit, ecologically safe networking ,advocacy, interfaith dialogue & other related domains for multiplying personal, community , governmental and corporate actions for ecologically safe education, ecological audit ,and, ecologically safe and socially inclusive governance. Contact Details: 58-C,DDA Flats, Ashok Vihar-III, Delhi-110052 Phones: 0968345380 http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 5 18:15:52 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 17:15:52 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Throw a Penalty Flag Against CBS! Message-ID: <001001caa6ca$20f4a8f0$62ddfad0$@net> From: Nancy Keenan, NARAL Pro-Choice America [mailto:CAN at prochoiceamerica.org] Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 8:42 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Throw a Penalty Flag Against CBS! NARAL Pro-Choice america Throw a Penalty Flag Against CBS! Dear Mary, Despite objections from pro-choice Americans across the country, CBS is about to take sides in the culture war. Until now, the network's policy has been clear: no advocacy in advertising. The network's misguided decision to air a Focus on the Family ad is a mistake. Focus on your anger and do something about it before Sunday's big game. Donate $10 to NARAL Pro-Choice America right now, for the 100 million people who will see the ad when it airs on Sunday - and show your support for a woman's right to choose. Focus on the Family paid CBS $2.5 million to run its 30-second anti-abortion ad during the Super Bowl. We need these kinds of resources to keep our grassroots efforts mobilized so we can. * Focus on the millions of women who have extremely limited or no access to abortion care and other reproductive-health services. * Focus on the 30 states where anti-choice forces are gathering support for "personhood" measures that threaten to ban abortion, and potentially most forms of birth control. * Focus on the approximately 350,000 women who serve in our military that will now have access to emergency contraception (EC) at military health care facilities abroad. * Focus on the one in four teenage girls who have a sexually transmitted disease. * Focus on the fact that anti-choice politicians outnumber pro-choice lawmakers in Congress, which was never more apparent than after the House passed the egregious Stupak-Pitts amendment. Focus on the Family's ultimate message is to deny women the ability to make the choice that is right for them and their family. It's absurd that CBS would give a radically anti-choice group like Focus on the Family a platform to expose its extreme agenda to millions of people -- especially since the network has blocked other advocacy groups from having the same opportunity. Make your contribution and throw a penalty flag against CBS today! Sincerely, Nancy Keenan Nancy Keenan President, NARAL Pro-Choice America _____ Donate Now Tell your friends about the Choice Action Network. If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for the Choice Action Network. To update your profile, click here. If you would like to unsubscribe from the Choice Action Network, please click here. C Copyright 2009 NARAL Pro-Choice America & NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation. All rights reserved. Powered By Convio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 6 07:23:46 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 06:23:46 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Mary, Take off your Shades, because... Message-ID: <000b01caa738$30060af0$901220d0$@net> This is priceless. . . . IMHO! From: bamletter2 at RazorrConnect.com [mailto:bamletter2 at RazorrConnect.com] On Behalf Of Dr Eric Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 7:53 AM To: Mary Subject: Mary, Take off your Shades, because... Hi Mary, When you READ this e-letter, you will get an idea how it FEELS to see things without judgment... Seeing things without judgment can Skyrocket your manifestations... Let me start off with a fictional story... hmm..., An absolutely fictional story! Once there was this world in which everyone was wearing blue shades... Perhaps, they were all born with these shades... They thought it was part of them, since they were always wearing them... Having blue shades on, they would see everything in blue But, there were whispers of existence of others colors... Apparently, small group of them had a glimpse of light without blue filters... Perhaps, their shades had seams or were not rigidly attached to their eyes... This small group could see other colors sometimes... But They could not explain it to others... You see Mary, the problem was in this world, they didn't have words for other colors... That's why it was so difficult to convince others that there are other colors In fact, every one of them had glimpses of other colors through the seams of their shades but most of them dismissed those cases as flukes... Except that small group of people who were exposed to bright light at some point and more light had made its way through the seams unfiltered... Some others called them MIRACLES... So obviously, you understand why some of the people in this world would be very skeptical about the existence of other colors... Some even critical... The most critical ones said: "OK, let's test it" They were very logical. So they built real sophisticated devices to detect other colors... They built the device and looked through it... Guess what? They saw blue only again, because they still had their blue shades on... You see Mary, they didn't know that the problem was not out there. They were all kind of colors out there... The problem was within. The problem was with the way they were seeing things, filtering the whole reality and seeing only a tiny part of it... I've got to tell you, this story was not as fictional as I initially claimed...and by the way, this is not the end of the story. I will tell you the ending at the end of the e-letter. We are all walking around with certain beliefs that are preventing us from manifesting GREAT RELATIONSHIPS, GREAT WEALTH, or other desires... wrong beliefs that we are not even aware of because like those blue shades, they have been with us for a long time... But you know, there is a way to take off the shades, and see all the opportunities out there and manifest your greatest desires... (Even those desires that the blue shade wearers say they're impossible) In my ebook, I talk about manifestation sessions and belief changes. Oh, by the way, as for the end of the story, it does have a happy ending... That small group ended up learning how to take off their blue shades systematically. They are now coming up with great methods to do that... And now they are spreading it around in that world. People are learning how to take their blue shades off and see the whole range of colors and see how beautiful the life can be... Click here to check out my ebook Don't forget to send your feedbacks, success stories and testimonials to: success at BelieveAndManifest.com As always, it HELPS OTHERS with their journeys... I'll talk to you soon, Your Friend, Dr E If you have a customer support question, email the support personnel at: support at BelieveAndManifest.com ----------------------------------------------- C2009 Believe And Manifest Inc, All Rights Reserved. ------------------------------------------------ 9107 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 450, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, USA To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://clients.razorrconnect.com/z/r/?nKzMnCzstKwMDBzsDIyMtGa0LAxsjCzs7A== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 6 13:36:16 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 12:36:16 -0800 Subject: [GJM] IMPORTANT READ: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] New Poll Results Are Proof That Republicans Don't Think Message-ID: <004701caa76c$42b0ccb0$c8126610$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS While overall I feel this article makes some very good points, I also feel that more "social intelligence" could have been used in writing it. There is a very sarcastic tone to this which just does not jell with me -- I find the words: "the village idiot" to be repugnant to say the least. But, then I view the Republican fundamentalist right to be victims of mind-programming by the religious belief system in which they have become embedded through no fault of their own -- but, this does not by any means make them into "village idiots." Lack of knowledge of quantum physics and the new biology, which give many of us an advantage in understanding how the world around us unfolds, is very much lacking in our society today. And the role of media in perpetuating the type of ignorance exhibited by what Frank Schaeffer calls "the village idiot" certainly figures prominently as it serves to keep awareness of what reality really is and away from the realm of new and emerging scientific evidence, and leaves it in the hands of religious zealots who stand to be pushed from their jobs in the pulpits of the world if the truth be known. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 8:27 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] New Poll Results Are Proof That Republicans Don't Think New Poll Results Are Proof That Republicans Don't Think A poll commissioned by DailyKos shows just how far to the right the GOP has been dragged by its right wing...and how far out of step they are with the rest of America. February 5, 2010 by Sara Robinson http://www.alternet.org/news/145569/new_poll_results_are_proof_that_republic ans_don%27t_think?page=entire A village cannot revise village life to suit the village idiot. -- Frank Schaeffer On Tuesday, the Daily Kos published a new Research 2000 study showing the current state of belief in the GOP. Though the results aren't anything new -- indeed, the study just puts hard numbers to everything we already thought we knew about the right wing -- the data also show, in sharp detail, just how far to the right the GOP has been dragged by its right wing...and how far out of step they are with the rest of America as a result. The data also show that Frank Schaeffer was more than fair in characterizing these people as America's "village idiots." For one thing, they really are a bitterly small minority. Last week, I laid out some numbers of my own, which showed that the conservative movement as it's currently constituted only represents the views of about 25 to 30 percent of Americans. (And, historically, that's about as big as conservative movements ever get in the US -- though it's plenty big enough to do some real damage.) Furthermore, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll done last October, only about 20 percent of Americans currently identify as Republican, which is a 40-year low. There's nothing about our current GOP that can be supportably described as "mainstream." Kos's pollsters did a valiant job of getting inside the heads of this 20 percent. But the story they tell also shows how severe the conservatives' level of derangement has become; and just how little introspection the conservatives have done to reckon with the causes and consequences of their own failures. And it also documents the vast chasm this willful refusal to deal with reality is creating between this noisy minority and the vast majority of Americans. To grasp the size of the gap, you only have to compare Kos' numbers on conservative beliefs with the most current available stats on the attitudes of the country as a whole. So -- that's what I did below. This discussion doesn't address all of the the questions in Kos's summary, because good data wasn't available on some of them; but a look at most of the high points gives you an accurate picture of just how far out of the mainstream the GOP is pulling. Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not? Yes 39 No 32 Not Sure 29 Over a third of Republicans say Obama should be impeached. ("For what? Who the heck knows?" asks Kos. The beauty of being a village idiot is that you never have to explain yourself.) Nearly another third think it's an open question; only one-third say no. But out in the Real America, Obama's Gallup approval ratings are well within the normal range for a one-year president. Since his TV appearances last week, they're up over 50% again -- and, as Rachel Maddow notes, the Omentum is rising. Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist? Yes 63 No 21 Not Sure 16 OK, fine. All faithful FOX watchers know that Obama is a socialist. But the problem for the village idiots is: it's increasingly true that socialism is a terrifying boogeyman that only they can see. For them, it's Mao and Stalin. For the rest of us, it's just another day of government-built roads and schools. An April 2009 Rasmussen poll (and remember, Rasmussen's findings generally skew rightward) found that only 53% of Americans thought that capitalism was better than socialism. A full 20% though we could do with some more socialism around here; and 37% didn't have an opinion either way. When nearly half the country no longer thinks that Socialism is Evil Incarnate, red-baiting just doesn't pack much of a political punch any more. Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama? Yes 53 No 14 Not Sure 33 For those of you thinking the "village idiot" metaphor is bit of hyperbole, consider for just a moment the sheer surreality of the idea that there could be any group, anywhere, in which half of everybody thinks that Sarah Palin would make a good president. Enough said? But let's skip ahead to the facts. Which are these: A CBS News poll taken two weeks ago found that 71% of Americans do not want to Sarah Palin to run for president in 2012. Only 20% of us (apparently the same ones the Kos poll talked to) think this is a good idea. Should Congress make it easier for workers to form and join labor unions? Yes 7 No 68 Not Sure 25 This is "I've got mine -- get off my lawn" conservatism in a Faberge jewel-encrusted nutshell. A Gallup survey done last May found that 57% of Americans think that it's "very important" or "somewhat important" that Congress pass new law to "make it easier for labor unions to organize workers." Only 39 percent opposed such a law. Would you favor or oppose giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and learn English? Favor 26 Oppose 59 Not Sure 15 The village idiots can never resist tuning up their perennial anti-immigration noise machine in advance of an elections. In their minds, it's just not a party until you've got the hate spewing at full volume all the way down Main Street. But this issue is becoming more of a loser for them with every passing election. An America's Voice poll released on January 19 found that 87% of Americans favor comprehensive immigration reform that includes fortifying the border, penalizing employers, and a citizenship path for current immigrants that includes working, paying taxes, and learning English. Do you support the death penalty? Yes 91 No 4 Not Sure 5 The whole country is still conflicted about this issue, and the consensus is far from clear. The Death Penalty Information Center summarizes how Americans' views have changed in the last two decades: The latest Gallup Poll on the death penalty shows 65% of Americans support the death penalty, significantly lower than the 80% support recorded in 1994 and near the lowest support of 64% in the past 25 years recorded last year. Only 57% believe the death penalty is fairly applied, and 59% of Americans believe that an innocent person has been executed in the last five years. Gallup reported that support for the death penalty is lower if Americans are offered an explicit alternative, such as life imprisonment with absolutely no possibility of parole. The last time that Gallup offered such alternatives in 2006, only 47% preferred the death penalty, while 48% supported life imprisonment with no parole. Stlll, 91 percent of Republicans favor the death penalty, compared to 65 percent of Americans generally. There's no more reflection, soul-searching discussion, moral wrangling, or complex and nuanced thought going on over there than there was back in the good old days when executions were public entertainment, and the village idiots never failed to show up. Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military? Yes 26 No 55 Not Sure 19 Media Matters cites four studies done last spring by Gallup, CNN, Quinnipiac, and the Washington Post, all showing that between 56 and 81 percent of Americans favor allowing gays to openly serve in the military. Now that the Joint Chiefs are fully on board with this as well, that 55 percent of Republicans against are increasingly the only people left in the country who are opposing this. Should same-sex couples be allowed to marry? Yes 7 No 77 Not Sure 16 The demographics of this issue put the historical momentum firmly on our side when it comes to the rights of LGBT people to form legal families. Full marriage rights are still controversial among some groups (like African-Americans), and in some parts of the country (like the south). But a wide range of studies last year found that Americans are generally running about 40% in favor, and that number grows by a percent or two each year as the very pro-gay-rights Millennials replace the more deeply conflicted Silent Generation in the voter base. The better news: according to a Pew survey done last October, 57 percent of Americans are fully on board with the idea of civil unions. This idea is now past the point where it's not even considered controversial by anyone who's not pretty far right of center. The Republicans have been losing ground on gay rights issues for the past 20 years, and will probably lose the issue entirely in the next 20. But, as usual, the village idiots will continue to pound on it with jackhammers until the day they finally wake up, forget the whole fight, and realize they were actually for it all along (and blame any remaining lack of progress on us). Should sex education be taught in the public schools? Yes 42 No 51 Not Sure 7 That 42 percent "Yes" vote looks pretty high -- until you realize that, according to the last good poll on this (which was conducted by Pew and NPR in 2004) only seven percent of Americans think sex education doesn't belong in the schools. Just 15 percent think abstinence-only education is a good idea; and only 19 percent think sex ed programs should be silent on the issue of homosexuality. On the other hand, 55 percent of us think kids should be taught how to use condoms; and a sensible 77 percent believe that having this information will make it more likely that kids will practice safe sex. Yet about half of all Republicans apparently cling stubbornly to the belief that if you don't talk to adolescents about sex, it'll never occur to them to have it on their own -- an idiot delusion that ends too often the day little Tiffany comes home pregnant. Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world? Yes 77 No 15 Not Sure 8 I wish the news here was better. This may be the only issue where the Republicans in Kos' survey may actually have their fingers on the American pulse. (I apologize in advance for any sleep lost by this revelation.) The last time Gallup visited this issue was in 2008. Here's how they summarize their long experience with this question: Between 43% and 47% of Americans have agreed during this 26-year time period with the creationist view that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so. Between 35% and 40% have agreed with the alternative explanation that humans evolved, but with God guiding the process, while 9% to 14% have chosen a pure secularist evolution perspective that humans evolved with no guidance by God. It's obvious that America is at risk of turning into one big village of idiots on this issue. GOP candidates who don't toe this line are going to get ripped by their base; and fighting for the reality-based position won't win them many fans among mainstream voters, either. And that, in turn, means that this issue won't be going away any time soon. Should contraceptive use be outlawed? Yes 34 No 48 Not Sure 18 On this issue, it's best to watch what people do, not what they say. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 98 percent of sexually active women between the ages of 15 and 44 have used a contraceptive method. Among the 42 million fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant, 89% are currently practicing contraception. It's reasonable to assume that the overwhelming majority of these are doing this with the knowledge and support of their male partners. Contraception has been thoroughly embraced by four generations of American couples. But a third of Republicans want to roll the whole country back a full century to the days before Margaret Sanger; and another 18 percent have acknowleged that thinking this no-brainer all the way through is simply above their pay grade. Do you consider abortion to be murder? Yes 76 No 8 Not Sure 16 According to the indispensable Nate Silver, who's compared the numbers from a lot of abortion polls over the years, "the remarkable thing about abortion is precisely how steady public opinion has been on it for many, many years." The country has always been fairly evenly split on this issue, which is why it's still not resolved. Based on these numbers, abortion will continue to be a galvanizing issue for the GOP's base for years to come. Silver also notes that the rising Millennial generation is somewhat less pro-choice than the Boomers and Xers; but not as anti-choice as the Silent generation (now ages 64-early 80s) that they are replacing in the voting population. Therefore, abortion rights are another issue where the conservatives' hard line will continue to diverge widely from the far more nuanced thinking of the American mainstream. Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is through Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith? Christ 67 Other 15 Not Sure 18 These stats show that a belief in the One True Right and Only Way -- which only they have the inside line on -- is probably a defining trait among Republicans. They also support the progressive perception that GOP politics is driven by religious belief to a constitutionally dangerous degree. Fortunately, mainstream America is far more tolerant. A 2008 Pew study found that 70% of Americans think that many religions, not just their own, can lead to eternal life. That's very good news for a democracy founded on the principle of e pluribus unum -- and bad news for a party that's relied far too long on stirring up religious antagonism for political gain. * * * Taken as a whole, the Kos data shows a Republican party that's falling farther and farther out of touch with the American mainstream. More interestingly: it also suggests a party that's falling into a concentration-of-craziness pattern that doesn't happen in healthy political movements, but is very typical of authoritarian groups in the middle-to-last stages of decline. In this pattern, the radicals take control of a previously healthy and well-balanced group, and start taking hard positions that alienate the group's more moderate members. Often, these moderates are driven out because they're too reality-based and lack sufficient revolutionary zeal. (Republicans-in-name-only -- "RINOs'' -- have been hunted to extinction in the GOP; but it's important to note that these kinds of intramural purity crusades are ubiquitous in all kinds of radical groups going sour, both on the left and right.) Losing their moderates also means that the group loses the ballast that keeps them from leaning too far to the crazy edge; and the moorings that kept them tethered to some level of objective reality. Without that ballast and mooring, the group is free to drift in a more radical direction. And because they're now smaller, they also tend to feel more persecuted and embattled by the larger culture -- which leads to more paranoia-driven purity crusades within the group, which alienates the next slice of semi-sane people into leaving, which in turn distills the levels of paranoia and radicalism further yet. This vicious cycle typically repeats until there's nothing left but a few True Believers ranting on a street corner somewhere (if you're lucky) or resorting to domestic terrorism to regain their lost renown and take out their revenge on the culture (if you're not). The fact that the GOP has been reduced to 20 percent of the voting pool -- and that that 20 percent holds views that are so deeply at odds with the mainstream of America -- suggests that the Republicans are in the grip of a cycle that portends serious problems with the party's continued viability. Comparing these two sets of numbers also calls into question the conventional (though not-well-documented) wisdom that though the GOP's own numbers are small, they still command strong allegiance among the 38% of Americans who consider themselves independents. On issues like Sarah Palin, don't-ask-don't-tell, sex education in schools, contraception, and religious tolerance, the overwhelming mainstream support for the progressive position shows that on many important issues, these independents are keeping a big philosophical distance from the ever-more-conservative GOP. As we've argued here for several years: America is, at heart, still a progressive country in most of the ways that matter. The Kos poll shows us, once again, just how far from that mainstream the conservatives have drifted. At this point, it should be clear to everybody that doing things their way would amount to nothing more than rearranging American life to suit the whims of our handful of remaining village idiots -- at a very high cost to the rest of us. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sara Robinson is a Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works in Seattle. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006, and is a founding member of Group News Blog. From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 6 13:38:19 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 12:38:19 -0800 Subject: [GJM] MUST WATCH VIDEO: The Only Answer to Cancer - Dr. Leonard Coldwell Message-ID: <004801caa76c$8a1a5ad0$9e4f1070$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Thanks to Laura Lynn Graves for sending this information Dr. Leonard Coldwell - Instinct-based Medicine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi1QrgPAnvI Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 6 13:51:29 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 12:51:29 -0800 Subject: [GJM] MUST WATCH VIDEO: Meat and Dairy Cause Cancer Message-ID: <004e01caa76e$6a0cdef0$3e269cd0$@net> http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/01/meat-dairy-cause-cancer-video.html This is Professor T. Colin Campbell PhD's FULL presentation at the 2003 VegSource Healthy LifestyleExpo. In the 45 minute talk, Professor Campbell discusses the powerful evidence demonstrating that animal protein is one of the most carcinogenic substances people are regularly exposed to. Only 2 to 3 percent of cancers are attributable to genes. The rest has to do with lifestyle, and diet is the primary driver behind several common cancers. This is what the life's work reveals of celebrated professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at CornellUniversity and one of the directors of the China Project -- T. Colin Campbell, PhD. His first epiphany came in the 1970's when he found liver cancer was associated with a diet high in animal protein. The Great American Diet causing cancer?? Campbell's colleagues thought he was nuts. "Don't go there." But go there he did...and beyond. In this fascinating 45-minute talk, Campbell describes his journey from dairy rancher and animal-protein advocate...to vegan and disease prevention researcher. Campbell's famous research showed that cancer tumor growth could be turned on -- and turned off -- just by raising or lowering animal protein intake. Watch: http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/01/meat-dairy-cause-cancer-video.html Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 6 13:54:19 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 12:54:19 -0800 Subject: [GJM] MUST WATCH VIDEO: Meat and Dairy Cause Cancer Message-ID: <001601caa76e$c68b4ea0$53a1ebe0$@net> http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/01/meat-dairy-cause-cancer-video.html This is Professor T. Colin Campbell PhD's FULL presentation at the 2003 VegSource Healthy LifestyleExpo. In the 45 minute talk, Professor Campbell discusses the powerful evidence demonstrating that animal protein is one of the most carcinogenic substances people are regularly exposed to. Only 2 to 3 percent of cancers are attributable to genes. The rest has to do with lifestyle, and diet is the primary driver behind several common cancers. This is what the life's work reveals of celebrated professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at CornellUniversity and one of the directors of the China Project -- T. Colin Campbell, PhD. His first epiphany came in the 1970's when he found liver cancer was associated with a diet high in animal protein. The Great American Diet causing cancer?? Campbell's colleagues thought he was nuts. "Don't go there." But go there he did...and beyond. In this fascinating 45-minute talk, Campbell describes his journey from dairy rancher and animal-protein advocate...to vegan and disease prevention researcher. Campbell's famous research showed that cancer tumor growth could be turned on -- and turned off -- just by raising or lowering animal protein intake. Watch: http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/01/meat-dairy-cause-cancer-video.html Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 6 15:07:58 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 14:07:58 -0800 Subject: [GJM] An outstanding Power Point Presentation from Roshanna Sidney Evans Message-ID: <002c01caa779$0f797560$2e6c6020$@net> Roshanna Sidney Evans posted this Power Point Presentation to "The Spirit Bank Exchange" on The Differencemakers a NING-based Community of which I am a member. I found it to be an outstanding presentation and am forwarding it for your consideration and enjoyment. Please download the following Advice-1.pps to your computer for viewing. Those not having Power Point or a different version from what is used here may not be able to view this. This could be turned into a Flash presentation using the free ispring program which would make it available to all users. www.ispringsolutions.com/ With love and in gratitude Roshanna for all that you do. Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 6 15:45:56 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 14:45:56 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Endgame: Peak Oil Message-ID: <003401caa77e$60c7b8a0$225729e0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Everything I am reading points to the fact that we must re-localize and move into local currencies as the economy tanks. Yet I am getting no respons either here or locally that people are willing to take the steps necessary to ensure their future. What's going on here? -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 11:46 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Endgame: Peak Oil Endgame: Peak Oil http://www.inteldaily.com/2010/02/endgame-peak-oil/ February 5, 2010 by John Michael Greer (The Intelligence Daily) - I've mentioned more than once in these essays the foreshortening effect that textbook history can have on our understanding of the historical events going on around us. The stark chronologies most of us get fed in school can make it hard to remember that even the most drastic social changes happen over time, amid the fabric of everyday life and a flurry of events that can seem more important at the time. This becomes especially problematic in times like the present, when apocalyptic prophecy is a central trope in the popular culture that frames a people's hopes and fears for the future. When the collective imagination becomes obsessed with the dream of a sudden cataclysm that sweeps away the old world overnight and ushers in the new, even relatively rapid social changes can pass by unnoticed. The twilight years of Rome offer a good object lesson; so many people were convinced that the Second Coming might occur at any moment that the collapse of classical civilization went almost unnoticed; only a tiny handful of writers from those years show any recognition that something out of the ordinary was happening at all. Reflections of this sort have been much on my mind lately, and there's a reason for that. Scattered among the statistical noise that makes up most of today's news are data points that suggest to me that business as usual is quietly coming to an end around us, launching us into a new world for which very few of us have made any preparations at all. Here's one example. Friends of mine in a couple of midwestern states have mentioned that the steady trickle of refugees from the Chicago slums into their communities has taken a sharp turn up. There's a long history of dysfunction behind this. Back in 1999, Chicago began tearing down its vast empire of huge high-rise projects, promising to replace them with less ghastly and more widely distributed housing for the poor. Most of the replacements, of course, never got built. When the waiting list for Section 8 rent subsidies, the only other option available, got long enough to become a public relations problem, the bureaucrats in charge simply closed the list to new applicants; rumors (hotly denied by the Chicago city government) claim that poor families in Chicago were openly advised to move to other states. Whether for that reason or simple economic survival, a fair number of them did. Fast forward to the middle of 2009. Around then, facing budget deficits second only to California, the state of Illinois quietly stopped paying its social service providers. In theory, the money is still allocated; in practice, it's been more than six months since Illinois preschools, senior centers, food banks, and the like have received a check from the state for the services they provide, and many of them are on the verge of going broke. Subsidized rent has apparently taken an equivalent hit. Believers in free-market economics have been insisting for years that the end of rent subsidies would let the free market reduce rents to a level that people could afford, but I don't recommend holding your breath; this is the same free market, remember, that gave the United States some of the world's worst slums in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The actual effects have been instructive. Squeezed between sharply contracting benefits and a sharply contracting job market, many of Chicago's poor are hitting the road, heading in any direction that offers more options. Forget the survivalist fantasy of violent hordes pouring out of the inner cities to ravage everything in their path; today's slum residents are instead becoming the Okies of the Great Recession. In the process, part of business as usual in the United States is coming to an end. Illinois is far from the only state that backed itself into a corner by assuming that rising tax revenues from a bubble economy could be extrapolated indefinitely into the future. 41 US states currently face budget deficits. California has received most of the media attention so far, a good deal of it focused on the political gridlock that has kept the state frozen in crisis for years. Behind the partisan posturing in Sacramento, though, lies a deeper and harsher reality. The state of California is essentially bankrupt; nearly all the mistakes made by the once-wealthy states of the Rust Belt as they slid down the curve of their own decline have been faithfully copied by California as it approaches its destiny as the Rust Belt of the 21st century. I wonder how many local governments in neighboring states have drawn up plans for dealing with the tide of economic refugees once California can no longer pay for its welfare system, and the poor of Los Angeles and other California cities join those of Chicago on the road? I could go on, but I think the point has been made. State governments are the canaries in our national coal mine; their tax receipts are one of the very few measures of economic activity that aren't being systematically fiddled by the federal government. The figures coming out of state revenue offices strike a jarring contrast with the handwaving about "green shoots" and an imminent return to prosperity heard from Washington DC and the media. Across the country, every few months, states that have already cut spending drastically to cope with record declines in tax income find that they have to go back and do it all over again, because their revenue - and by inference, the incomes, purchases, business activity, and other economic phenomena that feed into taxes - has dropped even further. Now it's true that state budgets get hit whenever the economy goes into recession, and keep on hurting even when the recession is supposed to be over, but compared to past examples, the losses clobbering state funding these days are off the scale, and a great many programs that have been fixtures of American public life for as long as most of us have been living are facing the chopping block. A different reality pertains within the Washington DC beltway. Where states that fail to balance their budgets get their bond ratings cut and, in some cases, are having trouble finding buyers for their debt at less than usurious interest rates, the federal government seems to be able to defy the normal behavior of bond markets with impunity. Despite soaring deficits, not to mention a growing disinclination on the part of foreign governments to keep on financing the same, every new issuance of US treasury bills somehow finds buyers in such abundance that interest rates stay remarkably low. A few weeks ago, Tom Whipple of ASPO became the latest in a tolerably large number of perceptive observers who have pointed out that this makes sense only if the US government is surreptitiously buying its own debt. The process works something like this. The Federal Reserve, which is not actually a government agency but a consortium of large banks working under a Federal charter, has the statutory right to mint money in the US. These days, that can be done by a few keystrokes on a computer, and another few keystrokes can transfer that money to any bank in the nation. Some of those banks use the money to buy up US treasury bills, probably by way of subsidiaries chartered in the Cayman Islands and the like, and these same subsidiaries then stash the T-bills and keep them off the books. The money thus laundered finally arrives at the US treasury, where it gets spent. It may be a bit more complex than that. Those huge sums of money voted by Congress to bail out the financial system may well have been diverted into this process - that would certainly explain why the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have stonewalled every attempt to trace exactly where all that money went. Friendly foreign governments may also have a hand in the process. One way or another, though, those of my readers who remember the financial engineering that got Enron its fifteen minutes of fame may find all this uncomfortably familiar - and it is. The world's largest economy has become, in effect, the United States of Enron. Plenty of countries in the past have tried to cover expenses that overshot income by spinning the presses at the local mint. The result is generally hyperinflation, of the sort made famous in the 1920s by Germany and more recently by Zimbabwe. That I know of, though, nobody has tried the experiment with a national economy in a steep deflationary depression, of the sort that has been taking shape in America and elsewhere since the real estate bubble crashed and burned in 2008. In theory, at least in the short term, it might just work; the inflationary pressures caused by printing money wholesale could conceivably cancel out the deflationary pressures of a collapsing bubble and a contracting economy - at least for a while. The difficulty, of course, is that pumping the money supply fixes the symptoms of economic failure without treating the causes, and in every case I know of, governments that resort to it end up caught on a treadmill that requires ever larger infusions of paper money just to maintain the status quo. Sooner or later, as the amount of currency in circulation outstrips the goods and services available to buy, inflation spins out of control, the currency loses most or all of its value, and the economy grinds to a halt until a new currency can be issued on some sounder basis. In 1920s Germany, they managed this last feat by taking out a mortgage on the entire country, and issued "Rentenmarks" backed by that mortgage. In the wake of the late housing bubble, that seems an unlikely option here, though no doubt some gimmick will be found. It's crucial to realize, though, that this move comes at the end of a long historical trajectory. From the early days of the industrial revolution into the early 1970s, the United States possessed the immense economic advantage of sizeable reserves of whatever the cutting-edge energy source happened to be. During what Lewis Mumford called the eotechnic era, when waterwheels were the prime mover for industry and canals were the core transportation technology, the United States prospered because it had an abundance of mill sites and internal waterways. During Mumford's paleotechnic era, when coal and railways replaced water and canal boats, the United States once again found itself blessed with huge coal reserves, and the arrival of the neotechnic era, when petroleum and highways became the new foundation of power, the United States found that nature had supplied it with so much oil that in 1950, it produced more petroleum than all other countries combined. That trajectory came to an abrupt end in the 1970s, when nuclear power - expected by nearly everyone to be the next step in the sequence - turned out to be hopelessly uneconomical, and renewables proved unable to take up the slack. The neotechnic age, in effect, turned out to have no successor. Since then, for most of the last thirty years, the United States has been trying to stave off the inevitable - the sharp downward readjustment of our national standard of living and international importance following the peak and decline of our petroleum production and the depletion of most of the other natural resources that once undergirded American economic and political power. We've tried accelerating drawdown of natural resources; we've tried abandoning our national infrastructure, our industries, and our agricultural hinterlands; we've tried building ever more baroque systems of financial gimmickry to prop up our decaying economy with wealth from overseas; over the last decade and a half, we've resorted to systematically inflating speculative bubbles - and now, with our backs to the wall, we're printing money as though there's no tomorrow. Now it's possible that the current US administration will be able to pull one more rabbit out of its hat, and find a new gimmick to keep things going for a while longer. I have to confess that this does not look likely to me. Monetizing the national debt, as economists call the attempt to pay a nation's bills by means of a hyperactive printing press, is a desperation move; it's hard to imagine any reason that it would have been chosen if there were any other option in sight. What this means, if I'm right, is that we may have just moved into the endgame of America's losing battle with the consequences of its own history. For many years now, people in the peak oil scene - and the wider community of those concerned about the future, to be sure - have had, or thought they had, the luxury of ample time to make plans and take action. Every so often books would be written and speeches made claiming that something had to be done right away, while there was still time, but most people took that as the rhetorical flourish it usually was, and went on with their lives in the confident expectation that the crisis was still a long ways off. We may no longer have that option. If I read the signs correctly, America has finally reached the point where its economy is so deep into overshoot that catabolic collapse is beginning in earnest. If so, a great many of the things most of us in this country have treated as permanent fixtures are likely to go away over the years immediately before us, as the United States transforms itself into a Third World country. The changes involved won't be sudden, and it seems unlikely that most of them will get much play in the domestic mass media; a decade from now, let's say, when half the American workforce has no steady work, decaying suburbs have mutated into squalid shantytowns, and domestic insurgencies flare across the south and the mountain West, those who still have access to cable television will no doubt be able to watch talking heads explain how we're all better off than we were in 2000. Those of my readers who haven't already been beggared by the unraveling of what's left of the economy, and have some hope of keeping a roof over their heads for the foreseeable future, might be well advised to stock their pantries, clear their debts, and get to know their neighbors, if they haven't taken these sensible steps already. Those of my readers who haven't taken the time already to learn a practical skill or two, well enough that others might be willing to pay or barter for the results, had better get a move on. Those of my readers who want to see some part of the heritage of the present saved for the future, finally, may want to do something practical about that, and soon. I may be wrong - and to be frank, I hope that I'm wrong - but it looks increasingly to me as though we're in for a very rough time in the very near future. John Michael Greer is the author of the widely read blog The Archdruid Report and two books on peak oil and the future of industrial society, The Long Descent and The Ecotechnic Future. From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 6 16:48:05 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 15:48:05 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Endgame: Peak Oil Message-ID: <003c01caa787$0a053f20$1e0fbd60$@net> -----Original Message----- From: TradingPostPaul [mailto:tradingpost at riseup.net] Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 3:04 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Re: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Endgame: Peak Oil I don't know, Mary. I guess we have to have a lot more the Okies of the Great Recession for people to wake from the American Dream. *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 2/6/2010 at 2:45 PM mary rose wrote: >Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS > >Everything I am reading points to the fact that we must re-localize and >move >into local currencies as the economy tanks. Yet I am getting no respons >either here or locally that people are willing to take the steps necessary >to ensure their future. What's going on here? > From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 7 01:48:34 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 00:48:34 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Endgame: Peak Oil - Comment from Carlo Ami Message-ID: <000001caa7d2$909c3ed0$b1d4bc70$@net> -----Original Message----- From: Carlo [mailto:carlo at yourpausebutton.com] Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 9:47 PM To: mary rose Cc: FixGov at yahoogroups. com; 'Discussion Forum for Global Justice' Subject: Re: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Endgame: Peak Oil What is going on, Mary Rose? What is going on is that we are being pushed to the point that we will collectively choose to be aware of what is in front of us to see: that we are ruled by banks via a puppet government, that the religions so many of us subscribe to inhibit our deepest, loving expression, and that the popularity of these religions means we have put a large part of our faith in false gods while we have lost faith in our own selves, in our own power. Apparently, we are not yet willing to see what is right in front of us. How far are we going to collectively put our heads down the rabbit hole? We are going to find out this year. We are in the middle of a collective game in which each of us is a player. This is the game: We, as the powerful beings that we are, get to decide whether we are, indeed, powerful beings or if we are the insecure, fearful ego that pretends to be us. And it is the answer to this question that will decide whether we are to survive as a culture of Earth People. It appears, for the moment, that we have been defining ourselves as our fearful, avoiding, limited selves. It appears that, despite the warnings we have been given, despite the numerous creative ways that the Universe (maybe God?!) has been attempting to wake us up, that we are for the moment, more comfortable in a state of blindness. We see all the signs of a collapsing economy, but rather than look at it with clarity, we are preoccupied with our soap operas, with which team will win the game tomorrow, with our own petty ways of finding apparent differences between each other, with our beer and our artificial comfort foods. What we have shown more clearly recently is that we, as a society, are completely asleep. The Universe---God, if you will--is giving us wake-up calls. We are so busy bailing water out of our personal sinking ships that we are not seeing that the larger ship we all sail upon is sinking. And that the only reason it is sinking is that we refuse, collectively, to see that it IS sinking and that we, the People, have the power to make it much more buoyant, light, alive: a true expression of our Loving Power. The Shift that we are in the middle of is a shift of loving power: no blood need be shed, no violence need be wrought. All that we have to do is wake up to our power, a power much greater than those who sometimes seem to be calling the "real world" shots right now. While I have been surprised by the basic silence after the recent landmark decision by our so-called "Supreme Court" to allow corporations, both domestic and foreign, to basically buy our governments, I am very clear that if this wake-up call is not heeded, then the Universe will find another more creative, more painful way of attempting to wake us up. If the very real prospect of being governed by the will of the corporate money interests is not enough to wake us up, I wonder what the next raise will be in this poker game. All the truly strange things we have been witnessing on the part of our government, our financial institutions and our geophysical environment are all wake-up calls. Let's wake up! We are being asked to see that our governments are largely false: they and the media are basically owned by the bankers. If you do not see this, you are not paying attention. We are being called to see that our organized religions are mostly false, that they, too, are run by people whose agenda is counter to the true blessing of their sheep-like flock. We are here to become united in love. Most religion, by design, divides us yet almost no one will stand up and speak this truth. Mohammad was a gangster. The story of Christ's life has been largely deleted from the bible to serve the interests of those concerned with money and power. Wearing the mask of righteousness, most organized religions betray the faith of their blind flock. Please open your eyes. Use the Internet to do a little research. Search terms like "Bible contradictions" and "Qu'ran contradictions". To suggest that the words in these books are the word of a Supreme Being is to suggest that the Supreme Being is quintessentially schizophrenic. Really. Search these. You will be amazed. The so-called faithful can have no meaningful reply. None. This has been staring you in the face and you have not wanted to look. You have feared the judgment of your peers and the judgment of a false god who does not exist. There is no All-Loving god who would condemn his people to an eternity of torture. To believe such a thing is the ultimate act of spiritual stupidity and fearfulness. If we are, indeed, smarter than the apes, then we are too smart to believe such ignorant ideas. But it seems that we communally sit here like stupid monkeys and accept that somehow the highly-edited words of men who lived thousands of years ago are somehow the word of God. How stupid are we? I do not call for your anger or violence in any way. I do suggest that you call upon the innate courageous, loving being that you are at depth. If you do not feel that you are there already, I suggest that you consider becoming truly conscious, as a gift to your Self and a gift to your world. This is what will win us our loving world back. So what will you do and think now: Deny? Delude? Distract? Consider me a quack? Ask your heart, maybe, how you might best respond. Time is short. Please do not be wasting too much time thinking about it with your fearful head. Please, rather, listen to your heart. Let it guide, calm and empower you. It IS a facet of who you really are. And calmly let your elected representatives know what you are no longer willing to put up with. Calm wins the day. - Carlo Ami YourPauseButton.com mary rose wrote: > Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS > > Everything I am reading points to the fact that we must re-localize and move > into local currencies as the economy tanks. Yet I am getting no respons > either here or locally that people are willing to take the steps necessary > to ensure their future. What's going on here? > > -----Original Message----- > From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net > [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of > TradingPostPaul > Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 11:46 AM > To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net > Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Endgame: Peak Oil > > > Endgame: Peak Oil > http://www.inteldaily.com/2010/02/endgame-peak-oil/ > February 5, 2010 by John Michael Greer From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 7 15:09:46 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 14:09:46 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [Fwd: [Fwd: UNITED BREAKS GUITARS!! Message-ID: <003301caa842$78eac480$6ac04d80$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS This is hilarious. Thanks David. From: David West [mailto:dgwest7 at gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2010 9:00 PM To: undisclosed-recipients: Subject: [Fwd: [Fwd: UNITED BREAKS GUITARS!!]] Thanks to Bill S. _____ A musician named Dave Carroll recently had difficulty with United Airlines. United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a flight. Dave spent over 9 months trying to get United to pay for damages caused by baggage handlers to his custom Taylor guitar. During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was left with no choice other than to create a music video for Youtube exposing their lack of cooperation. The Manager responded : "Good luck with that one, pal". So he posted a retaliatory video on Youtube. The video has since received over 7.5 million hits. United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted settlement in exchange for pulling the video. Naturally his response was: "Good luck with that one, pal". Taylor Guitars sent the musician 2 new custom guitars in appreciation for the product recognition from the video that has lead to a sharp increase in orders. Here's the video .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo &NR=1 _____ It's now had almost eight million views, and the follow-up at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-UoERHaSQg has had almost a million. This is a perfect example of POWER_TO_THE_PEOPLE, and will hopefully encourage many more to point out the unfair behaviour of Governments, Corporations and Institutions. Let's all work on changing the paradigm from fear to love. This even brought a tear to my eye when I realised the motivation for the second song, and the portrayal of the people v. the ogres. Why don't these powerful yet nasty people realise that we are all one! Best regards David, with a special thanks to Bill S. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Mon Feb 8 09:35:25 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 08:35:25 -0800 Subject: [GJM] A couple of worthwhile quotes Message-ID: <003901caa8dc$ec8c4e50$c5a4eaf0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I live by forgiveness, and fit into the second one very well. Where are you? What is your life about? M R Forgiveness is the economy of the heart - forgiveness saves the expense of anger, cost of hatred, and waste of spirits. Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Steven Jobs Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Mon Feb 8 15:18:44 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 14:18:44 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] America Is Not Yet Lost By PAUL KRUGMAN Message-ID: <008601caa90c$e73d5ae0$b5b810a0$@net> -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 9:06 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] America Is Not Yet Lost By PAUL KRUGMAN America Is Not Yet Lost By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: February 7, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/opinion/08krugman.html We've always known that America's reign as the world's greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic. What we're getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we're paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we're re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland. A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting "I do not allow!" This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century. Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison. Last week, after nine months, the Senate finally approved Martha Johnson to head the General Services Administration, which runs government buildings and purchases supplies. It's an essentially nonpolitical position, and nobody questioned Ms. Johnson's qualifications: she was approved by a vote of 94 to 2. But Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, had put a "hold" on her appointment to pressure the government into approving a building project in Kansas City. This dubious achievement may have inspired Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama. In any case, Mr. Shelby has now placed a hold on all outstanding Obama administration nominations - about 70 high-level government positions - until his state gets a tanker contract and a counterterrorism center. What gives individual senators this kind of power? Much of the Senate's business relies on unanimous consent: it's difficult to get anything done unless everyone agrees on procedure. And a tradition has grown up under which senators, in return for not gumming up everything, get the right to block nominees they don't like. In the past, holds were used sparingly. That's because, as a Congressional Research Service report on the practice says, the Senate used to be ruled by "traditions of comity, courtesy, reciprocity, and accommodation." But that was then. Rules that used to be workable have become crippling now that one of the nation's major political parties has descended into nihilism, seeing no harm - in fact, political dividends - in making the nation ungovernable. How bad is it? It's so bad that I miss Newt Gingrich. Readers may recall that in 1995 Mr. Gingrich, then speaker of the House, cut off the federal government's funding and forced a temporary government shutdown. It was ugly and extreme, but at least Mr. Gingrich had specific demands: he wanted Bill Clinton to agree to sharp cuts in Medicare. Today, by contrast, the Republican leaders refuse to offer any specific proposals. They inveigh against the deficit - and last month their senators voted in lockstep against any increase in the federal debt limit, a move that would have precipitated another government shutdown if Democrats hadn't had 60 votes. But they also denounce anything that might actually reduce the deficit, including, ironically, any effort to spend Medicare funds more wisely. And with the national G.O.P. having abdicated any responsibility for making things work, it's only natural that individual senators should feel free to take the nation hostage until they get their pet projects funded. The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session. Don't hold your breath. As it is, Democrats don't even seem able to score political points by highlighting their opponents' obstructionism. It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as a person, is a vote for paralysis. But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries. Sure enough, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, accused Mr. Shelby of "silliness." Yep, that will really resonate with voters. After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon penned a song that eventually - after the country's post-World War I resurrection - became the country's national anthem. It begins, "Poland is not yet lost." Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it. From maryrose333 at att.net Mon Feb 8 21:04:56 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 20:04:56 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: US Citizens on US Government Assassination List, Secret Bankers Meeting, Flight 253 Strangeness, More Message-ID: <001701caa93d$44046b80$cc0d4280$@net> From: PEERS: WantToKnow.info Email List [mailto:emaillist at peerservice.org] Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 9:14 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: US Citizens on US Government Assassination List, Secret Bankers Meeting, Flight 253 Strangeness, More To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this list (one email every few days) or to reply to this message, see end of email This message is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/10/100208_secret_bankers_meeting_citizens_assassination_list Bookmark and Share Dear friends, Below are key excerpts of important news articles which include revealing information on US citizens being targeted on a US government assassination list, a secret global bankers meeting in Australia, Flight 253 suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab being allowed to keep his visa after terror warning against him, and more. Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails to function, click here . The most important sentences are highlighted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word , we can and will build a brighter future . With best wishes, Tod Fletcher and Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team Special Note: For a funny and inspiring four-minute video clip of a former KKK member telling how an unusually kind African-American man eventually transformed him, click here . For those interested in spirituality and universal connections, you will likely enjoy Fred's essay titled "Spiritual Eyes" at this link . And for an inspiring six-minute CNN clip on an innovative program bringing clowns into children's hospitals in Israel, click here . _____ License to Kill? Intelligence Chief Says U.S. Can Take Out American Terrorists February 3, 2010, ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/license-kill-intelligence-chief... The director of national intelligence affirmed rather bluntly today that the U.S. intelligence community has authority to target American citizens for assassination if they present a direct terrorist threat to the United States. "We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community; if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee. "Whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American ... is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved." Blair explained. According to U.S. officials, only a handful of Americans would be eligible for targeting by U.S. intelligence or military operations. The DNI said that Internet and social media sites have become critical to terrorism recruitment efforts. "The homegrown radicalization of people in the United States is a relatively new thing." Blair said U.S. intelligence was rapidly working to counter the emerging problem. Note: To read a valuable commentary on Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair's claimed "war exception" to the Constitution, permitting assassination of American citizens by the US military and intelligence services without judicial review or legal process of any kind, click here . For the views of several legal experts, click here. _____ Terror suspect allowed to keep visa by intelligence officials January 27, 2010, Detroit News http://detnews.com/article/20100127/NATION/1270405/Terror-suspect-kept-visa... The State Department didn't revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed. Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist. "Revocation action would have disclosed what they were doing," Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Since the failed attack, criticism has swirled around leaders of the U.S. intelligence community who have indicated they were warned by the suspect's father about a month before the flight of a potential terror threat, but failed to stop Abdmutallab, despite other warning signs like the fact that he purchased a one-way ticket to Detroit with cash. Note: So federal counterterrorism officials stopped the bomber's visa from being revoked. Hmmmm... Clearly there is more going on in this case than "failure to connect the dots." Why aren't other major media reporting this important story? Kurt Haskell, a key eyewitness passenger who almost lost his life, has written a powerfully revealing blog piece on what he thinks is really going on, available here . For more on this key case, click here . _____ Secret summit of top bankers February 6, 2010, Herald Sun (Australia's largest circulation daily newspaper) http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/world-bankers-meet... The world's top central bankers began arriving in Australia yesterday as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets. Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at a secret location, the Herald Sun reports. Organised by the Bank for International Settlements last year, the two-day talks are shrouded in secrecy with high-level security believed to have been invoked by law enforcement agencies. The arrival of the high-powered gathering coincided with a fresh meltdown on world sharemarkets, sparked by renewed concerns about global growth and sovereign debt. Fears countries including Greece, Portugal, Spain and Dubai could default on debt repayments combined with disappointing US jobs data to spook investors. "This does feel like '08 and '07 all over again whereby we had these sort of little fires pop up and they are supposedly contained but in reality they are not quite contained,'' said H3 Global Advisors chief executive Andrew Kaleel. Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the secret deliberations by the highest levels of government and private elites in their attempts to bail out the biggest financial corporations, click here. _____ Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows: David Reilly January 29, 2010, Bloomberg News http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039 &sid=aaIuE.W8RAuU The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists. After this week?s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all. Wednesday?s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials. We?re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG?s bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny. The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Fed at the time of the AIG moves. The hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn?t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve. This impenetrability comes in handy since the bank is the preferred vehicle for many of the Fed?s bailout programs. It?s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation?s central bank. Note: For lots more from reliable sources on the secret deliberations by the highest levels of government and private elites in their attempts to bail out the biggest financial corporations, click here. _____ 1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for a Real 9/11 Investigation January 25, 2010, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth http://www.ae911truth.org/info/152 AE911Truth will hold a press conference on Friday, February 19, at 11:00 AM at the Marines Memorial Club and Hotel in San Francisco. We will announce and honor the milestone of our achievement of obtaining 1,000 architects and engineers petitioning for a real investigation into the destruction of the 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers. The press conference will include a large-screen scrolling display of all 1,000 A/E's; statements by Richard Gage, AIA, founder of AE911Truth and several petition signers; and a short ten-minute presentation of "9/11: Blueprint for Truth" ? the explosive evidence for the engineered destruction of the 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers. A press kit including the AE911Truth DVD will be made available to all attendees. We will also be inviting various leaders in the 9/11 Truth movement to this milestone event. We are working with We Are Change and other 9/11 Truth organizations to deliver hardcopy petition evidence press kits to every member of Congress. Join us on February 19 in San Francisco to honor this remarkable achievement and meet some of those who have made AE911Truth one of the most respected voices in the 9/11 Truth movement. Note: For a powerful 10-minute video clip by the founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, click here . WantToKnow team member, Dr. David Ray Griffin, and Dr. Steven Jones will deliver keynote speeches at the press conference luncheon at noon. _____ U.S. citizen in CIA's cross hairs January 31, 2010, Los Angeles Times http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/31/world/la-fg-cia-awlaki31-2010jan31 The CIA sequence for a Predator strike ends with a missile but begins with a memo. Usually no more than two or three pages long, it bears the name of a suspected terrorist, the latest intelligence on his activities, and a case for why he should be added to a list of people the agency is trying to kill. No U.S. citizen has ever been on the CIA's target list. But that is expected to change as CIA analysts compile a case against a Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico but now resides in Yemen. He is a U.S. citizen and until recently was mainly known as a preacher espousing radical Islamic views. Awlaki's status as a U.S. citizen requires special consideration, according to former officials familiar with the criteria for the CIA's targeted killing program. But while Awlaki has not yet been placed on the CIA list, the officials said it is all but certain that he will be. The CIA has carried out Predator attacks in Yemen since at least 2002, when a drone strike killed six suspected Al Qaeda operatives traveling in a vehicle across desert terrain. The agency knew that one of the operatives was an American, Kamal Derwish, who was among those killed. Derwish was never on the CIA's target list, officials said, and the strike was aimed at a senior Al Qaeda operative. Note: As the last few sentences of this long report indicate, assassination of their own citizens by US military and intelligence agencies has been going on for years. For many key reports from reliable sources on assassination as state policy, click here. _____ Drug firms 'drove swine flu pandemic warning to recoup ?billions spent on research' January 27, 2010, Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246370/Drug-firms-drove-swine-flu-pandemic... Drug companies manipulated the World Health Organisation into downgrading its definition of a pandemic so they could cash in on a swine flu outbreak, it is claimed. An inquiry heard yesterday that the WHO allegedly softened its criteria for declaring a H1N1 flu pandemic last spring - just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak. Critics said the decision was driven by pharmaceutical companies desperate to recoup the billions of pounds they had invested in researching and developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares in 2006 and 2007. As a result, millions of people have been vaccinated against a mild illness, and money that could have been used to prevent and treat major killers such as heart disease has been squandered. The claims, which emerged during the first of several Council of Europe hearings into the handling of the swine flu pandemic, were strongly rejected by the WHO. Following the organisation's declaration of a pandemic, the Department of Health warned of 65,000 deaths, set up a special advice line and website, and suspended normal rules so anti-flu drugs could be given without prescription. But with just 250 or so deaths in Britain and 14,000 worldwide, the WHO is being asked to account for its actions. Note: For lots more on the swine flu "false pandemic" from reliable sources, click here. _____ Justice Official Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo Probe January 29, 2010, Newsweek magazine blog http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/01/29/holder-under-fire.aspx An upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the ?torture? memos of professional-misconduct allegations. NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors ? Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor ? violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed ?poor judgment,? say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action?which, in Bybee?s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry. Note: The Obama administration continues to uphold the illegal policies introduced by the Bush/Cheney regime. For lots more on the realities of the fraudulent "war on terrorism", click here. _____ Obama budget seeks 13.4 percent increase for National Nuclear Security Administration February 3, 2010, Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020203884.html President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget blueprint calls for an increase in funding of more than 13 percent for the agency that oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, a greater percentage increase than for any other government agency. The $11.2 billion request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) represents a 13.4 percent increase for the agency from the previous fiscal year. Most agencies across the rest of the government saw either no increase in the spending plan announced this week or a single-digit percentage increase. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who has actively followed negotiations over a new nuclear treaty with Russia, said the increase in the budget was "a definite improvement over previous years." Other observers already see the new budget as a boon for arms-control advocates. Note: So the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama, is increasing the budget for nuclear weapons more than any other agency. Kind of ironic, isn't it? For the real reasons behind this, read what one of the most highly decorated US generals ever had to say about the real forces behind war at this link . _____ Obama Acts to Ease Way to Construct Reactors January 30, 2010, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/science/earth/30nuke.html The Obama administration [has] moved vigorously on two fronts ... to promote nuclear power, proposing a tripling of federal loan guarantees for new projects and appointing a high-level commission to study what to do with nuclear waste. Administration officials confirmed that their 2011 federal budget request next week would raise potential loan guarantees for the projects to more than $54 billion, from $18.5 billion. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been saying for weeks that the administration would seek a greater amount of guarantees; commercial investment has been hard to come by because there is so much uncertainty about the cost and schedule for building plants. When President Obama said in his State of the Union address on [January 27] that the country should build ?a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,? it was one of the few times he got bipartisan applause. Opponents have complained that loan guarantees for projects that cannot attract commercial investment amounted to ?nuclear socialism.? Note: The US administration is allocating billions in loan guarantees for risky nuclear power plants in 2010, yet only $320 million for solar energy research, which is on track to become cheaper than fossil fuel energy generation before long. Could corporate largess have an influence in this? For lots more, click here. _____ Can Bosses Do That? As It Turns Out, Yes They Can January 29, 2010, NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123024596 Did you know you could be fired for not removing a political sticker from your car ? or even having a beer after work? Lewis Maltby says it's more than possible ? it has happened. His new book, Can They Do That? explores rights in the workplace. As he tells NPR's Ari Shapiro, "Freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment ? but only where the government is concerned. What most Americans generally don't know is that the Constitution doesn't apply to private corporations at all." In terms of monitoring its employees, the list of things a corporation can't do is a short one ? it's basically confined to eavesdropping on a personal oral conversation, Maltby said. "Anything else is open season." And outside the workplace, personal blogs or social media pages on services like Twitter or Facebook offer no refuge. Asked if workers can be fired for things they write on those sites, Maltby said, "Absolutely. Happens every day. I've been getting calls from people for 20 years who've been abused in all sorts of ways," Maltby said. "When I tell them, 'Sorry, you don't have any legal rights,' they literally don't believe me," Maltby said. _____ Study: Segregation rife at charter schools February 5, 2010, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/04/MNBN1BSOIL.DTL De facto segregation is alive and well in public schools in virtually every state, but is more common in charter schools - an educational option increasingly endorsed in state and national reform efforts, according to a [new] national study. The trend is particularly severe for African American students, the UCLA researchers found. Nearly 3 out of 4 black students who attend charters are in "intensely segregated" schools with student populations that are at least 90 percent minority, according to the study by the UCLA Civil Rights Project . That's twice the rate of regular public schools. Almost a third of those black students are in what the researchers called "apartheid schools," where 0 to 1 percent of their classmates are white. These are "the very kind of schools that decades of civil rights struggles fought to abolish in the South," researchers said. _____ Capability Surprise January 2010, U.S. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2010-10-Capability_Suprise_Vol_2.pdf Deception [is reliant] on the close control of information, running agents (and double-agents) and creating stories that adversaries will readily believe. In an era of ubiquitous information access, anonymous leaks and public demands for transparency, deception operations are extraordinarily difficult. Nevertheless, successful strategic deception has in the past provided the United States with significant advantages that translated into operational and tactical success. Successful deception also minimizes U.S. vulnerabilities, while simultaneously setting conditions to surprise adversaries. Thus, strategic deception capabilities and plans must perforce be highly classified. Deception cannot succeed in wartime without developing theory and doctrine in peacetime. In order to mitigate or impart surprise, the United States should develop more robust interagency deception planning and action prior to the need for military operations. To be effective, a permanent standing office with strong professional intelligence and operational expertise needs to be established. Note: The above excerpts can be found on pages 77 and 78. For a powerful two-page summary of a top general's description of how the American public is deceived into supporting war, click here . _____ Cleaners 'worth more to society' than bankers - study December 14, 2009, BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8410489.stm Hospital cleaners are worth more to society than bankers, a study suggests. The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation , says hospital cleaners create ?10 of value for every ?1 they are paid. It claims bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy. They reportedly destroy ?7 of value for every ?1 they earn. Meanwhile, senior advertising executives are said to "create stress". The study says they are responsible for campaigns which create dissatisfaction and misery, and encourage over-consumption. By contrast, child minders and waste recyclers are also doing jobs that create net wealth to the country. Eilis Lawlor, spokeswoman for the New Economics Foundation, said: "Pay levels often don't reflect the true value that is being created. As a society, we need a pay structure which rewards those jobs that create most societal benefit rather than those that generate profits at the expense of society and the environment". _____ Research in a Vacuum: DARPA Tries to Tap Elusive Casimir Effect for Breakthrough Technology October 12, 2009, Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=darpa-casimir-effect-research The Casimir effect governs interactions of matter with the energy that is present in a vacuum. Success in harnessing this force could someday help researchers develop low-friction ballistics and even levitating objects that defy gravity. For now, the U.S. Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched a two-year, $10-million project encouraging scientists to work on ways to manipulate this quirk of quantum electrodynamics. Vacuums generally are thought to be voids, but Hendrik Casimir believed these pockets of nothing do indeed contain fluctuations of electromagnetic waves. He suggested [that] as the boundaries of a region of vacuum move, the variation in vacuum energy (also called zero-point energy) leads to the Casimir effect. Recent research done at Harvard University, Vrije University Amsterdam and elsewhere has proved Casimir correct ? and given some experimental underpinning to DARPA's request for research proposals. Note: Debunkers of the new energy movement have long claimed that zero point energy is a theoretical construct which cannot have practical applications. This article shows that attitudes are now shifting. For lots more reliable information on what's still hidden from the public on the new energy front, click here . _____ Cat predicts 50 deaths in RI nursing home February 1, 2010, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7129952/Cat-predicts... A cat [named Oscar] with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book . Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor at Brown University, said that five years of records showed Oscar rarely erring, sometimes proving medical staff at the New England nursing home wrong in their predictions over which patients were close to death. Dr Dosa first publicised Oscar's gift in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007. Since then, the cat has gone on to double the number of imminent deaths it has sensed and convinced the geriatrician that it is no fluke. When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar "charged out" and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat's judgement was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days. Far from recoiling from Oscar's presence, now they know its significance, relatives and friends of patients have been comforted and sometimes praised the cat in newspaper death notices and eulogies, said Dr Dosa. "People were actually taking great comfort in this idea, that this animal was there and might be there when their loved ones eventually pass. He was there when they couldn't be," he said. _____ Bookmark and Share Final Note: WantToKnow.info believes it is important to balance disturbing cover-up information with inspirational writings which call us to be all that we can be and to work together for positive change. Please visit our Inspiration Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/inspirational for an abundance of uplifting material. See our archive of revealing news articles at www.WantToKnow.info/indexnewsarticles Your tax-deductible donations, however large or small, help greatly to support this important work. To make a donation by credit card, check, or money order: www.WantToKnow.info/donationswtk Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the nonprofit PEERS network: www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all To respond to this message, visit www.WantToKnow.info/contactus.php To subscribe to or unsubscribe from the WantToKnow.info list (one email every few days): www.WantToKnow.info/subscribe _____ Change email address / Leave mailing list Powered by YourMailingListProvider -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Tue Feb 9 05:55:59 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 04:55:59 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: A couple of worthwhile quotes - Peter Challen Message-ID: <001a01caa987$728246e0$5786d4a0$@net> Peter writes: From: Peter Challen [mailto:peterchallen at googlemail.com] Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 8:43 AM To: mary rose Cc: FixGov at yahoogroups. com; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Subject: Re: A couple of worthwhile quotes and what make you of 'Forgiveness is finally letting go of all hope for a better past.' I heard the words but not the name of the author. There is enduring wisdom there it seems to me. Peter Hi Peter - thanks for your response. From where I sit, in the real world (quantum) everything is happening at one time - there is no past, present or future - it is only our "perception" that makes it seem so. So, if all that really exists and matters is "the moment now" which is the message of Eckhart Tolle, then we need to let go of everything else and just live and enjoy the moment - letting there be light in that moment. However, this is my response today in this moment and is subject to change. With love and in gratitude for all that you do On 8 February 2010 16:35, mary rose wrote: Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I live by forgiveness, and fit into the second one very well. Where are you? What is your life about? M R Forgiveness is the economy of the heart - forgiveness saves the expense of anger, cost of hatred, and waste of spirits. Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Steven Jobs Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -- "Financially, the World is living on drafts upon the future: Economically, it is living on the Products of the past." unknown -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 10 04:03:46 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:03:46 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Fw: [MacroScan] GDAE, Partners Launch TripleCrisisBlog Message-ID: <640957.80301.qm@web27405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- On Wed, 10/2/10, erf at vsnl.com wrote: From: erf at vsnl.com Subject: [MacroScan] GDAE, Partners Launch TripleCrisisBlog To: networkideas at lists.riseup.net, macroscan at lists.riseup.net Date: Wednesday, 10 February, 2010, 6:49 Economists Launch Blog on ?Triple Crises? in Finance, Development, and Environment TripleCrisisBlog to bring global perspectives to policy debate ? On February 1, new voices joined the policy debate on the global crises in finance, development, and the environment. The ?TripleCrisisBlog,? with an initial roster of economic analysts from nine countries, was launched by the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts University (USA), India?s Economic Research Foundation (ERF), and the Heinrich Boell Foundation-U.S. The initiative is chaired by GDAE?s Kevin P. Gallagher and ERF?s Jayati Ghosh. ? ?Crises are not new to the world economy, nor to developing countries,? Gallagher and Ghosh write in their introductory post. ?Indeed, our current predicament is a convergence of at least three crises: in global finance, development, and environment.? These areas are seemingly disparate but actually interact with each other in forceful ways to reflect major structural imbalances between finance and the real economy; between the higher income and developing economies; between the human economic system and the earth?s ecosystems.? This blog seeks to contribute to a more open and global dialogue around these three crises: about how they interact, and how they can collectively be solved.? ? The TripleCrisisBlog starts with an unprecedented diversity of analysts from the global North and South. In addition to Gallagher and Ghosh, the roster includes: Jeff Madrick, Sanjay Reddy, Mehdi Shefaeddin, Charles Abugre, Martin Khor, Alejandro Nadal, Matias Vernengo, Adil Najam, CP Chandrasekhar, Jim Boyce, Ilene Graebel, Gerhard Schick, Timothy A. Wise, Lyuba Zarsky, and Frank Ackerman. Ghosh and Gallagher will co-chair the project, with Wise serving as "managing editor." ? ?While there are a number of commendable blogs on various aspects of these three crises,? note Gallagher and Ghosh, ?this blog will examine all three crises and from a global perspective not often found in mainstream media outlets.? ? Visit the TripleCrisisBlog. Read more on GDAE?s Globalization and Sustainable Development Program. Follow GDAE's Globalization Program on Facebook. Get notified of new posts on Twitter, Facebook, or RSS. ___________________________________________________________________________ If you would like to be removed or added to the list of people receiving periodic notices of GDAE's publications and events, please email gdae at tufts.edu or change your email subscription information on our web site at: http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/mailing_list.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 10 06:01:40 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: 10 Feb 2010 13:01:40 +0000 Subject: [GJM] " Robin Hood" tax campaign launched  - Yahoo! News UK Message-ID: Robert Searle (dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk) has sent you a news article X-Originating-IP: 217.12.6.109 -------------------- Personal message text: -------------------- "Robin Hood" tax campaign launched?? http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20100210/tuk-uk-britain-banktax-fa6b408.html ============================================================ From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 10 06:15:37 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:15:37 GMT Subject: [GJM] BBC E-mail: Ex-IMF economist warns on UK debt Message-ID: <20100210_131537_085640.dharao4@yahoo.co.uk> Robert Searle saw this story on the BBC News website and thought you should see it. ** Ex-IMF economist warns on UK debt ** Britain should be seen in the same category of highly indebted countries such as Greece, a leading economist says. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/business/8503090.stm > ** BBC Daily E-mail ** Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all in one daily e-mail < http://www.bbc.co.uk/email > ** Disclaimer ** The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have?been verified. If you do not wish to receive such e-mails in the future or want to know more about the BBC's Email a Friend service, please read our frequently asked questions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/4162471.stm From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 10 06:15:44 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:15:44 GMT Subject: [GJM] BBC E-mail: Ex-IMF economist warns on UK debt Message-ID: <20100210_131544_059992.dharao4@yahoo.co.uk> Robert Searle saw this story on the BBC News website and thought you should see it. ** Ex-IMF economist warns on UK debt ** Britain should be seen in the same category of highly indebted countries such as Greece, a leading economist says. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/business/8503090.stm > ** BBC Daily E-mail ** Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all in one daily e-mail < http://www.bbc.co.uk/email > ** Disclaimer ** The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have?been verified. If you do not wish to receive such e-mails in the future or want to know more about the BBC's Email a Friend service, please read our frequently asked questions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/4162471.stm From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 10 07:34:01 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:34:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Uk lawmakers call for EU carbon "floor price." Message-ID: <597572.85763.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> UK lawmakers call for EU carbon 'floor price' [de] [fr] Published: 09 February 2010 Stricter caps on greenhouse gas emissions and a price 'floor' are needed to deliver green investment, an influential parliamentary committee in the UK said yesterday (8 February), calling on the government to intervene. Background Since 2005, some 10,000 large industrial plants in the EU have been required to buy and sell permits to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. On 23 January 2008, the European Commission proposed?to revise the EU's emissions trading scheme (EU ETS; see?EurActiv LinksDossier) for the period 2013-2020,?revamping the Union's main instrument for fighting climate change?to meet its objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. The proposal, part of a wider climate and energy 'package' of legislation, suggested capping emissions to 21% below 2005 levels by 2020 and expanding the scheme to include more industrial sectors. Under the revised scheme, electricity producers will need to buy 100% of their CO2 emission permits at auction by 2020. More on this topic LinksDossier:EU Emissions Trading Scheme News:EU agrees billions to fund renewables, CCS The Environmental Audit Committee issued a report arguing that the current EU carbon price of around ?15 per tonne are too low to drive investment in green technologies and energy efficiency. According to studies, the price would have to be at least ?100 per tonne in order to trigger enough investment for shifting to a low-carbon society. Carbon prices under the EU's emissions trading scheme (EU ETS; see EurActiv LinksDossier) have "collapsed" in the wake of the economic crisis, undermining the scheme for the period 2008-2012 after gross over-allocation in the first trading period, the committee said.?Permit prices fell from ?29/tCO2 to only??8/tCO2?between July 2008 and February 2009. "Emissions trading should be helping us to combat climate change, but at the moment the price of carbon simply isn't high enough to make it work," said Tim Yeo MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee. The report warned that the problem could be carried over to the post-2012 period, despite further tightening of the scheme that will see Western European electricity utilities have to start buying all their allowances at auction. As firms were allocated more credits than they can use in the recession, banking these surplus allowances could continue to undermine the scheme, it said. Moreover, half of the cuts in emissions could be met with offset credits between 2008 and 2020, showed?a paper by the National Audit Office commissioned for the report. The committee said it had evidence that some companies could meet all their requirements to curb emissions for the second trading period without making any cuts themselves. "If the government wants to kick-start serious green investment, it must step in to stop the price of carbon flat-lining," Yeo said. Towards a carbon 'floor price'? The committee called on the UK government to press the EU to tighten the ETS cap to be more in line with climate science, as well as to review it regularly. It added that ministers should investigate the possibility of giving companies financial incentives to encourage them to cancel their allowances voluntarily. The report also asked the government to work with the European Commission and other member states to roll out a floor price for the EU ETS, which increases progressively with the market carbon price. The Commission has not been favourable to intervention in the carbon market, because it believes that the financial crisis will only have a temporary impact on allowances (EurActiv 03/03/09). The lawmakers stressed that the UK must act even without EU support. They thus urged ministers to explore the possibility of introducing a carbon tax in the UK and curbing the number of allowances. "If necessary, the UK should be prepared to act in these areas unilaterally, to demonstrate a continuing leadership role on tackling climate change," the committee said. Cautious about international market? The report stated that the EU ETS will ultimately have to be merged with other cap-and-trade systems that are sprouting up in other parts of the world to be an effective climate protection tool. But it urged the EU to exercise caution in linking with systems that hand out emissions allowances more generously or subsidise their low-carbon businesses more heavily. A level playing field could be guaranteed with "some sort of carbon 'exchange rate'," according to the committee.? "The government, with its European partners, would need to ensure that schemes are not merged without such an 'exchange rate' being carefully calibrated," it underlined. The EU has set its sights on establishing an OECD-wide carbon market by 2015, with a transatlantic link as the first step. But US President Barack Obama's plans to get a federal cap-and-trade system through the Senate have run into trouble, and similar political hurdles are being experienced in Australia. Next Steps By 30 June 2010: Commission to publish absolute Community-wide?amount of allowances for 2013.? By Dec. 2010: Commission to publish estimated amount of allowances to be auctioned in the third phase. 2013: Revised scheme due to enter into force. Links Governments UK Environmental Audit Committee: Fourth Report: The role of carbon markets in preventing dangerous climate change UK Environmental Audit Committee: EU carbon market failing to deliver vital green investment - MPs warn (8 February 2009) European Union European Commission: Emission Trading System (EU ETS) Letters To The Editor Reflecting on enzymes and climate change Geraldine Edwards Critical time for animals in EU laboratories Michelle Thew, European Coalition to End Animal Experiments Send a Letter To The Editor Ad('1-3750086-062010|DefaultCenter'); Sponsors Advertising Ad('3-3750086-062010|DefaultCenter'); EU Press Releases ORGALIME Commission Consultation on the Future ?EU 2020? Strategy - COM (2009) 647/3 CEEMET EU 2020 STRATEGY - An Agenda for European Manufacturing in a changing world ORGALIME Accessibility following the Design for All principles Send us your press release Agenda 23 February 2010: Climate Protection following Copenhagen - What comes next? 24 February 2010: GAS for Europe ? Green, Abundant, Secure 03 March 2010 - 05 March 2010: Second Day of Metallurgy 22 March 2010: Water 2030 ? who cares? Communicate your event EurActors & Content Partners APEAL Athenora Consulting CEFIC CEMBUREAU EUREAU Eurometaux EWP Orgalime Yellow Pages Political PartiesConsultanciesEU Projects list Advertising Ad('4-3750086-062010|DefaultCenter'); Europeans challenge Europe Brian Gardner Report Highlight Farm Policy Dilemma elinorkruse 3rd Forum for the Future of Agriculture at The Square, Brussels. ARE Mich?le Sabban organise le ? Sommet de la Mer Noire ? ? Paris agricultureforum Welcome to the Forum for the Future of Agriculture 2010 euromove Developing countries? interests lie with the EU in achieving a solution to the threat of climate change -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 10 10:43:00 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:43:00 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Re: A couple of worthwhile quotes Message-ID: <003901caaa78$b668f650$233ae2f0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS As Co-learners Laura - thanks for sharing. With love and in gratitude for all that you do. From: Laura Lynn [mailto:laura.lynn33 at yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 8:22 AM To: mary rose Subject: Re: A couple of worthwhile quotes Thank you. I most definitely fit into the "crazies" catagory, LOL!!! I know I am here to imagine, heal, explore, create, inspire, and to (((((PUSH))))) the human race forward! And I love that about me. Thank you for reminding me that I do have purpose, and I should be doing what I feel is right in my heart and soul. Thank you so much Mary. We share this beautiful day with all the others in this world today; we all feel the magical qualities it shares with us. My break is over but I will write more what is going on in my neck of the woods soon.... big plans turning into reality more and more everyday! Blessings. All is aware and awake with Love'n'Light for ALL!!!!!! (((((((((((PEACE))))))))))) _____ From: mary rose To: "FixGov at yahoogroups. com" ; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 10:35:25 AM Subject: A couple of worthwhile quotes Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I live by forgiveness, and fit into the second one very well. Where are you? What is your life about? M R Forgiveness is the economy of the heart - forgiveness saves the expense of anger, cost of hatred, and waste of spirits. Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Steven Jobs Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail..com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 10 14:05:59 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:05:59 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Re: A couple of worthwhile quotes Message-ID: <006301caaa95$16f27d40$44d777c0$@net> From: Mary Nelson [mailto:m_nelson at aperdat.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 10:09 AM To: 'mary rose' Subject: RE: Re: A couple of worthwhile quotes We need to seriously consider the difference between being a "crazy" as stated here, which means...what?....."radical or progressive or liberal or.....? and pathology - sociopathology/psychopathology which defines our true "enemy" which uses the vehicle of the Corporate Form to destroy, well, finally, the life systems of Earth. Sincerely, MaryN Mary, thank you for your comments. IMHO, what you fail to include here is "religion" which, from where I sit today, is the worst "crazy-maker" of all. Then you have monetized politics as well as the debt-based monetary system. Take your pick because there are a lot of sources for our collective insanity. And what I feel "crazy" as used in this instance means is the courage it takes for someone to step out and face the "lions" in their dens - demanding that they come out of the closet and into the light. Certainly those who do so are among the lowest paid people on the planet from my experience and are often judged and maligned as well since we are people who are ahead of our time. Then at some point in the future we are re-discovered and our names made famous. I am well aware that I would be worth far more to the parade if I were lying in a coffin and viewed as "someone who gave their life for a cause" rather than a live person working for social justice and earth rights who gets caught in the cross-fire and has to crawl through the muck in order to become recognized in the end. Buckminster Fuller was one of the few who have been recognized in their own time. And, as I write this, Mary, I am aware of the countless hours you have spent attempting to bring the light to shine on truth, and have done so without compensation or expectations of receiving any great reward, especially monetary. Be well, with love and in gratitude for all that you do. _____ From: mary rose [mailto:maryrose333 at att.net] Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 9:43 AM To: FixGov at yahoogroups. com; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Subject: FW: Re: A couple of worthwhile quotes Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS As Co-learners Laura - thanks for sharing. With love and in gratitude for all that you do. From: Laura Lynn [mailto:laura.lynn33 at yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 8:22 AM To: mary rose Subject: Re: A couple of worthwhile quotes Thank you. I most definitely fit into the "crazies" catagory, LOL!!! I know I am here to imagine, heal, explore, create, inspire, and to (((((PUSH))))) the human race forward! And I love that about me. Thank you for reminding me that I do have purpose, and I should be doing what I feel is right in my heart and soul. Thank you so much Mary. We share this beautiful day with all the others in this world today; we all feel the magical qualities it shares with us. My break is over but I will write more what is going on in my neck of the woods soon.... big plans turning into reality more and more everyday! Blessings. All is aware and awake with Love'n'Light for ALL!!!!!! (((((((((((PEACE))))))))))) _____ From: mary rose To: "FixGov at yahoogroups. com" ; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 10:35:25 AM Subject: A couple of worthwhile quotes Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I live by forgiveness, and fit into the second one very well. Where are you? What is your life about? M R Forgiveness is the economy of the heart - forgiveness saves the expense of anger, cost of hatred, and waste of spirits. Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Steven Jobs Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail..com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 10 14:20:48 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:20:48 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Save Our Democracy from a Hostile Corporate Takeover Message-ID: <006901caaa97$2a594ec0$7f0bec40$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS While Republicans are in the minority by a long haul as far as the majority of "we-the-people" are concerned, but they still reign supreme on the Supreme Court and as such are still the controlling force over the lives of the rest of us. How is this happening and what can we do about it? Is there something wrong with the system itself? From: Democrats.com [mailto:activist at democrats.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 10:37 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Save Our Democracy from a Hostile Corporate Takeover Dear Mary Rose In January, five radical Republicans on the Supreme Court overturned 100 years of American law. They gave huge corporations a Constitutional right to spend unlimited amounts of money to elect candidates at all levels, from Mayor to President. As President Obama declared in his State of the Union address, this ruling will "will open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people." In 2009, the Chamber of Commerce spent $145 million to defeat healthcare and global warming laws - twice as much as the Democratic Party. In November, they could spend 10 or 100 times as much simply to defeat all Democrats. This radical ruling could destroy American Democracy if we do not act in time for this November's elections. Please join us in pledging First Amendment to Save our Democracy: http://www.democrats.com/save-our-democracy?cid=ZGVtczM5MDY0N2RlbXM%3D * Support a Constitutional Amendment clarifying the First Amendment right of free speech belongs to people, not Corporations * Support legislation to prohibit political spending by Corporations with any foreign shareholders * Support legislation requiring shareholders in non-foreign Corporations to unanimously approve political expenses * Support the Fair Elections Now Act to match small campaign contributions with public funds, creating a level playing field for candidates who refuse to accept Corporate contributions * Buy only from Corporations which oppose political spending * Vote only for candidates who join me in taking this pledge Please join us in pledging to Save our Democracy: http://www.democrats.com/save-our-democracy?cid=ZGVtczM5MDY0N2RlbXM%3D Thanks for all you do! Bob Fertik p.s. our friends at the Peace Team are giving away these bumper stickers : - Corporations Are NOT The People - Impeach The Supreme Court 5 ##### Forward this message to everyone you know! Subscribe to our email Activist Alerts by creating a free Democrats.com account: http://www.democrats.com/user/register For more frequent updates, follow @BobFertik and @DavidCNSwanson on Twitter or become a Facebook Fan: http://www.facebook.com/democratscom Unsubscribe from our Activist Alerts: http://archive.democrats.com/unsub.cfm?email=maryrose333 at att.net &fieldname=L16 Unsubscribe from all Democrats.com email lists: http://archive.democrats.com/unsub.cfm?email=maryrose333 at att.net &fieldname=L1 Please join our nationwide movement to keep Corporations out of politics. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 10 14:23:33 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:23:33 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: my highest recommendation Message-ID: <006e01caaa97$879cbc20$96d63460$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS For your consideration. From: info at mindvalleymail2.com [mailto:info at mindvalleymail2.com] On Behalf Of Vishen Lakhiani Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 9:45 AM To: Mary Subject: my highest recommendation Hi Mary, We've been discussing the concept of "intuition" a lot on FinerMinds lately. Over 26,578 readers visited our "How Intuitive are you Quiz" and 765 readers submitted really cool stories of their own experiences with intuition. In short - intuition is hot stuff right now. One of my long-term goals to bring the concept of intuitive functioning to businesses and schools. I think every child needs to grow up learning to tap into the "still voice within". And as the owner of a multi-million dollar business that has doubled in size every year for the last 3 years I have openly given talks and presentation on how meditation and intuition are a big part of my decision-making process. My sixth sense is as real as real to me as my sense of smell or hearing. Excuse me if I sound a little blunt here...but if you're not fully using your natural intuition at a level 4 staged (based on the feedback, most of our readers are at level 1 or 2), than you're missing out on something really amazing. A man born blind, will never now the difference between light and dark and the beauty and colors of the world he would miss. In the same way, unless you've experienced it -- you'll never know the inspiration, guidance, creativity and genius that intuition can bring into your life. Unless.... you're using it frequently. I got interested in intuition way back in 1991 when I attended a Silva Method class. My story is well known and was the subject of a recent webinar. 2 days in that class changed my life. And since last year I had been working with the Silva Method folks to help them design their newest program on training people to function as highly intuitive beings. The program "The Silva Intuitive System" launched last week and is on offer till Friday 11:59pm EST before the price goes up to regular retail. I've done this program. Attended their classes. And recommended it to everyone I know (who was was open minded enough to listen). Folks -- check this out. It has my highest recommendation and is one of the best products I've ever been involved with as a designer and publisher. Here's the link >>>> Remember that scene from the movie "Slumdog Millionaire" where a beggar child has his eye blinded by his master. A truly sad scene. But all of us have had our "third eyes" blinded by the ingrained belief that our schooling system, our religions, superstition and our cultures have placed on us in regards to human intuition. Let's get those "third eyes" opened up. Here's the link >>>> Vishen MindValley LC 14525 South West Millikan Way #31545 , C 2010 All rights reserved. _____ To report abuse, remove your name from our list or edit your contact information, please select this link -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 10 14:51:39 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:51:39 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Roundup Ready Alfalfa coming to a field near you! Message-ID: <007f01caaa9b$7be3cd20$73ab6760$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS For your consideration. We must stop Monsanto and all genetically engineered food and food related products. And, we must do it now. Thanks Deki. With love and in gratitude for all that you do. M R From: DekiFox at aol.com [mailto:DekiFox at aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 1:10 PM To: DekiFox at aol.com Subject: Roundup Ready Alfalfa coming to a field near you! {Thanks to Robynne for tracking Monsanto!) Stop the Approval of Monsanto's GE Alfalfa! Roundup Ready Alfalfa may be coming to a field near you! Send your comment to USDA/APHIS by February 16th, 2010 http://www.aphis.usda.gov/newsroom/content/2009/12/alfalfa.shtml >From the USDA/APHIS fact sheet about RR alfalfa: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today announced the availability of a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) that evaluates the potential environmental effects of deregulating alfalfa genetically engineered (GE) to be resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, known commercially as Roundup. This GE alfalfa is commonly referred to as Roundup Ready (RR) alfalfa." Docket ID: APHIS-2007-0044 / Agency: APHIS The environmental impact statement (EIS) for Roundup Ready alfalfa is still in the comment phase and there?s time for you to get involved by posting your recommendation about whether or not APHIS should again deregulate the use of Monsanto's genetically engineered alfalfa seeds J101 and J163. I urge you to express your objection to deregulation because the EIS is saying the equivalent of no problem; go ahead and deregulate. I didn't read the whole 1,476 pages of the EIS; I just browsed around and then read the Executive Summary, which reads in part: (page 23) In summary, the impacts analyses in this DEIS have not found any significant impacts of GT alfalfa on the biological properties of alfalfa Although glyphosate may likely increase in alfalfa agriculture due to the adoption of GT alfalfa, the number and use of other, more toxic herbicides will decrease, and there is no significant impact of glyphosate use on weediness of alfalfa, glyphosate-resistant weeds, human health and safety, land use or the physical environment. In my opinion, Glyphosate (Round Up) is nasty stuff and Monsato is bringing their Frankenstein-touch to yet another basic grain (alfalfa) crop we can't afford to lose to genetic engineering. I urge you to stand in opposition to this report while there is still time for you to comment directly. Feel free to use all or part of the comment I posted (copy below), or just say NO! To view the draft EIS, and/or to comment by February 16th, 2010, visit the APHIS Web site. http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#documentDetail?R=0900006480a6b7a1 You can also post your comment through the Food and Water Watch website, if you prefer: http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2027 ~~~~~~~~~~ My Post ~~~~~~~~~~ To The Approval Committee ~ You have before you Docket: APHIS-2007-0044 and I suggest you do not deregulate the use of Monsanto's genetically engineered alfalfa seeds J101 and J163. I care about the integrity of the food I eat and what is available for my community. I am concerned that organic and other non-genetically engineered crops are being contaminated by this genetically engineered alfalfa. It is ridiculous that the Environmental Impact Statement dismissed the likelihood and significance of such contamination. Do not dismiss organic consumers' interests in maintaining the integrity of organic crops. To deregulate Monsanto's seeds J101 and J163 would be a gross miscalculation by the USDA of the widespread anger at such ongoing pandering to corporate interests. The approval of genetically engineered alfalfa, will inevitably lead to contamination of crops such as the organic alfalfa used as cow feed for the production of organic milk, and organic beef. I recognize the proclamations in favor of these "better" seeds and their profitability, but I want you to recognize the importance of human health and safety by maintaining the regulation of alfalfa seeds J101 and J163 and the still unknown dangers of glyphosate in it's effects on the human endocrine system, for starters. The EIS conclusion that use of seeds J101 and J163 would minimize the use of other, more toxic herbicides is outrageous considering that we have only begun to see and study the dangers of glyphosate. Before you deregulate these seeds, consider as well that the extensive use of such an essential crop as alfalfa will impact the water table environment beyond the scope that was considered in the recent EIS study, contaminating our precious drinking water. Your USDA mandate is to protect the people of the United States by representing our public health and well-being. I call on you to remember your mandate and hold it above the interests of corporate profits. Among others who are continuing to research the dangers that concern me, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently re-assessing the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in these Roundup Ready Alfalfa seeds, for the first time in over 15 years. I think that the USDA should wait for this new EPA assessment before it even considers approving this GE alfalfa. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. Deki Fox ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ARTICLE: http://www.truthabouttrade.org/news/latest-news/15448-rr-alfalfa-back-in-spotlight Roundup Ready Alfalfa Back In Spotlight Western Farm Press / By Aaron Kiess January 13, 2010 Deki Fox Lake Geneva, Wisconsin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 10 15:22:24 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:22:24 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: ACT NOW! Food Bills to Kill Supplements! Message-ID: <008901caaa9f$c38a6770$4a9f3650$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS While I very much support what the Natural Solutions Foundation is doing, and commend them for bringing this urgent matter to our attention, and urge anyone receiving this message to support it as well, I also cannot help but voice a protest at being addressed as "Mouse Warriors". Please, this is an insult to the intelligence of those being called upon to assist in this campaign to allow Health Freedom. From: Natural Solutions Foundation [mailto:dr.laibow at gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 10:00 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: ACT NOW! Food Bills to Kill Supplements! McCain attack on nutrients raises furor! Help us to victory! Natural Solutions Foundation Emergency Health Freedom Action eAlert The Voice of Global Health FreedomT www.HealthFreedomUSA.org www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org Permalink: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4642 NEWS FLASH: 02/09/10 - NYS Withdraws Bill Allowing Secret Kid Vaccinations Without Parental Knowledge or Consent - Bill No. S04779 was slated for vote today, but the Push Back uproar was so loud that no vote was held and the bill was withdrawn from consideration. MESSAGES FROM GEN. BERT & DR. RIMA -- Thanks to all the Mouse Warriors who pushed back this atrocity. But remember, this idea, promulgated in a recent Rand Corporation contract report for Big Pharma, WILL be back again. And we'll be ready, again! URGENT INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR HEALTH AND FREEDOM Take Supplements or Herbs? Not For Long if McCain Has His Way! McCain Bill S 3002 to Kill Supplement Access Generates Huge Opposition! Take Action Now for Each Member of Your Family and Pass It On to Everyone You Know http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26 714 There's a deeply welcomed Internet furor building over Senator John McCain's new bill to restrict dietary supplements while giving the FDA MORE power to abuse. And, as always, Natural Solutions Foundation is at the head of the Health Freedom Parade: - our Action Item has been posted on the main pages of web sites such as www.CampaignforLiberty.com and www.GaryNull.com ! There are other Action Items following our lead by at least half a dozen organizations. That's all to the good. Take them, too! The trustees of Natural Solutions Foundation, http://www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, have been warning for years that federal government power brokers have a plan to force Americans to give up their health freedoms and submit to centralized, internationalized restrictions on what we can choose to nourish our health and that of our families. It is, after all, the same plan being used to destroy the dollar and our other freedoms. GMOs are part of the problem as are dangerous vaccines, but right now the immediate threat lies in two companion phony "food safety" bills in the US Senate. WE Dare Call It "Conspiracy"! If you've been following health freedom in recent years you've seen some of the extraordinary reports by our own Dr Rima from the international Codex Alimentarius (World Food Code) meetings where attacks on health and freedom are often launched. Five years ago she warned about "Nutricide" - the intentional destruction of the body of knowledge about nutrition and health and the equally intentional deaths of large numbers of people through food manipulation. Well over a half million people have seen that presentation. In that video she warned that the plan was for Codex controls to be implemented by the end of the first decade of the new millennium. Mandated under nutrition was to be instituted through Codex and billions would die of what WHO and FAO call the "preventable, non-communicable epidemic diseases of under nutrition: cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke diabetes and obesity". This past November you saw Dr Rima expose the genocidally low "daily reference values" Codex wants to impose on nutrients. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P30Itrfhn8o - The Theater of the Absurd. While your "Push Back" last year stalled Sen Tom Harkin's disastrous "Food Safety" [sic] bill, S 510, that would have led to the suppression of family farms and ranches, natural agriculture, community gardens and the like, there is an effort being made by the usual power brokers (e.g., Big Pharma's lackeys in both parties in the US Senate) to move their agenda forward by introducing yet another bogus "food safety" bill, this time S 3002, the "Dietary Supplement Safety [sic] Act" (DSSA) which would mandate the most important part of the Codex nutrient control system, the "approved ingredient list" for the US AND give the already bloated and deadly FDA power to take ANY nutrients off the market reneging on existing legislative protection for them. This would be, in fact, exactly like the system imposed over the past few years in Europe, resulting in the complete loss of many nutrients (vitamins, herbs, minerals and amino acids) and, for those that remain, tremendous reductions in potency. NutraIngredients.com, a leading wellness industry site, reports that the European Food Safety Agency has rejected 80% of the "dossiers" seeking ingredient approval. Eighty percent of our nutrients could be taken off the market too! We know for sure that high doses of fluoride will be permitted, but real nutrients are to be reduced, as they are in Europe, to totally ineffective levels. What's left? Pharmaceuticals. Period. That's what Americans face - for sure- if the disastrous McCain bill is adopted. We predict that something even worse is actually intended to take place: McCain's bill will be merged with the companion Harkin "safety bill" S 510 and both our foods AND our supplements will become subject to more political power for the FDA to abuse. This is, you will recall, the same FDA that regularly approves drugs which prove so deadly that, within just a few years, half of them are quietly removed from the market. The same FDA which whitewashes mercury in vaccines, protected vaccine manufacturers from all liability, allows profound personal conflict of interest in the regulators who approve drugs and vaccines, refuses to allow GMO labeling.. Need we go on? This is one of the most dangerous and corrupt agencies in the US, and these bills would give it enough power to destroy what remains of either health or freedom, all at the behest of companies like Monsanto, Merck and their malignant ilk. McCain introduced the bill last Thursday. The next day, the Natural Solutions Foundation sent an emergency Health Freedom Action eAlert to the www.HealthFreedomUSA.org list. We were, as far as we know, the first health freedom group to take action on this disastrous proposal by Senator McCain, who would seem to be securing his retirement pay with Big Pharma. You've responded as we knew you would, riding your Freedom Mouse, generating over 75,000 emails to the Senate and President, since Friday night, saying "NO!" to the fake "safety" bills. We've seen clear evidence on the Internet that this issue is "going viral!" This means people are sending this information to all their social, personal, business and other contacts, beginning the process of generating an avalanche of public sentiment against the restrictions these bills would impose. Thank you. Please keep doing so. The issue is by no means dead and our continued action is urgent. Take this Action Item Once For Each Member of Your family: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26 714 Please email it to your contact list and ask them to do the same. Paste the link above into your email to your list. Read More About The McCain bill, S 3002: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4608 The "Food Safety" bill, S 510: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4014 DISSING Health Freedom With the McCain bill's apt acronym, DSSA ("DISS-sa") we see the agenda playing out to our detriment, unless we take every step possible to stop this gambit to force through fake food and supplement "safety" bills. If they pass, the only thing safe will be Big Pharma and Big Agribiz, Big Biotech, Big Chema and Big Medica profits. Learning from Europe's Health Freedom Loss Why is an "approved list" so bad? Here is what our own Counsel Ralph Fucetola has to say about this threat to our health choices, "The "Accepted Dietary Ingredient List" is especially troubling since such a code provision moves us away from our Common Law Right to access the foods we choose to a Civil Law (that is, Codex Alimentarius) regulation of what we may choose. Under the Common Law what is not explicitly forbidden is allowed; under the Code ("Civil Law"), whatever is not permitted is forbidden. This "lawyer's distinction" is of the greatest significance in preserving our Liberty." Only those things on the list will be permitted. The list is very, very short and the doses are very, very low. A spokesperson for the Life Extension Foundation wrote about another aspect of the loss of health freedom which this bill assures, the vibrant nutrient marketplace: "If it were not for the technological advances made possible by private enterprise, the adverse effects of governmental ineptitude would have rendered this nation insolvent decades ago. Said differently, if it were not for the increases in productivity and reductions in costs made possible by free enterprise, government waste and fraud would have already destroyed us. " So it is very simple: take the Action Item - http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26 714 Please take action once for each person in your family and enlist all your contacts to do likewise. What happens if you don't? The US will be "HARMonized" with the disastrous European Food Supplements Directive, under which, for example, colloidal and nano silver were taken off the market on January 1, 2010, homeopathic remedies are increasingly illegal to purchase in Germany, nutrients are less and less available and Europeans' freedom to chose natural, safe, effective treatments have been virtually destroyed. We need to protect Health Freedom in America and take back Health Freedom in Europe! It's time to turn PUSH BACK into TAKE DOWN! Yours for Global Health and Freedom, General Bert Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Ret.) President Natural Solutions Foundation. PS - Please make your Tax Exempt recurring donation here, http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189 , now. If you appreciate the leadership of the Natural Solutions Foundation, it's time to set up a recurring donation to the fund our vital work. Click here: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189 Special funding: Make a donation ending in the number 6 to earmark your donation for our legal fund, supporting projects like our Stop the Shot Law Suit to prevent FDA from authorizing H1N1 or any other influenza vaccination. And here are important Dr Rima Recommends messages We've started to develop a new network, just to bring you the best of Dr Rima Recommends, www.DrRima.net - we'll feature various outstanding items from our www.Organics4U.org and www.NaturalSolutionsMarketplace.org pages, but don't forget those pages either! Remember, the EPA and FDA are, in a separate action, trying to take nano and colloidal silver off the market, just as the European Food Supplements Directive has succeeded in doing there. Why? Because silver is the universal antibiotic and would destroy a vast pharmaceutical market if enough people knew about it. After investigation, I personally recommend the nano silver available at www.Nutronix.com/naturalsolutions , Silver Biotics. I would start laying in a supply now. Although the product carries an "expiration date", there is no evidence of which I am aware to suggest that Silver Biotics has a significantly limited shelf life. Cognitive Enhancement? The best way to control your own mind! General Bert and I continue experiencing extraprdomary results with our Cognitive Enhancement Pack (me) and Senior Cognitive Enhancement Pack (Gen. Bert) which are literally astonishing. I know supplementation and neurological enhancement very, very well. I have never seen (or experienced) anything like this. You know how busy we are; how much we rely on our ability to multitask and react quickly to challenges... The name says it all: COGNITIVE. ENHANCEMENT. That's the story, in two words. Here are the other two words to the story: Try Them! Dr. Rima's Cognitive Enhancement Packs: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4558 Or visit our new Dr Rima Recommends Network link, www.DrRima.net Support your health and your health freedom with Valley of the Moon Coffee, http://nsfcoffeedeal.com or http://www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org The Dr. Rima Reports: Your Health, Your Way TUNE IN Every Week! Wednesday 8-10 PM Eastern Think vaccine schedules are just for children? Think again! www.TheFreedomLink.org Archived at: http://www.thefreedomlink.org/Dr_Rima_Reports.php and at www.HealthFreedomRadio.com Don't Miss This Week's Incredible Guest, Paul G. King, PhD, February 10, 2010: World Famous Mercury Expert. These are emergencies we must respond to, battles we must win, victories we must achieve. Yours in health and freedom, Dr. Rima Rima E. Laibow MD Natural Solutions Foundation www.HealthFreedomUSA.org www.GlobalHealthFreedomUSA.org Food Freedom eJournal www.FoodFreedomeJournal.org International Decade of Nutrition www.InternationalDecadeofNutrition.org Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org Valley of the Moon Coffee www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org Virtual Malls Supporting Health Freedom www.DrRima.net www.Organics4U.org www.NaturalSolutionsMarketplace.org PS - If you haven't received them, here are the permalinks to some of the last couple eBlasts. We always archive our Action eAlerts on the Health Freedom Blog at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org eBlasts Being Blocked; McCain Bill Attacks DSHEA! http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4615 Can't Lose for Winning if we PUSH BACK! http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4595 War Council: from Push Back to Take Down! http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4548 Unsubscribe: www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/healthfreedomusa/unsubscribe.jsp Manage: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/profile/login.jsp?redirect=%2Fo%2F5 68%2Fprofile%2Findex.jsp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 10 15:34:46 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:34:46 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Absolutely Must Read: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education Message-ID: <008e01caaaa1$776d7880$66486980$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS IMHO, the author of this article: John Taylor Gatto, along with our own Marion Brady, is a "crazy." -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 3:54 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education Take Back Your Education http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/learn-as-you-go/take-back-your-education by John Taylor Gatto Sep 09, 2009 More and more people across America are waking up to the mismatch between what is taught in schools and what common sense tells us we need to know. What can you do about it? Nobody gives you an education. If you want one, you have to take it. Only you can educate you-and you can't do it by memorizing. You have to find out who you are by experience and by risk--taking, then pursue your own nature intensely. School routines are set up to discourage you from self-discovery. People who know who they are make trouble for schools. To know yourself, you have to keep track of your random choices, figure out your patterns, and use this knowledge to dominate your own mind. It's the only way that free will can grow. If you avoid this, other minds will manipulate and control you lifelong. One method people use to find out who they are becoming, before others do, is to keep a journal, where they log what attracts their attention, along with some commentary. In this way, you get to listen to -yourself instead of listening only to others. Another path to self-discovery that seems to have atrophied through schooling lies in finding a mentor. People aren't the only mentors. Books can serve as mentors if you learn to read intensely, with every sense alert to nuances. Books can change your life, as mentors do. I experienced precious little of such thinking in 30 years of teaching in the public junior high schools of Manhattan's ultra-progressive Upper West Side. I was by turns amused, disgusted, and disbelieving when confronted with the curriculum-endless drills of fractions and decimals, reading assignments of science fiction, Jack London, and one or two Shakespeare plays for which the language had been simplified. The strategy was to kill time and stave off the worst kinds of boredom that can lead to trouble-the trouble that comes from being made aware that you are trapped in irrelevancy and powerless to escape. Institutionalized schooling, I gradually realized, is about obedience in exchange for favors and advantages: Sit where I tell you, speak when I allow it, memorize what I've told you to memorize. Do these things, and I'll take care to put you above your classmates. Wouldn't you think everyone could figure out that school "achievement tests" measure no achievement that common sense would recognize? The surrender required of students meets the primary duty of bureaucratic establishment: to protect established order. It wasn't always this way. Class-ical schooling-the kind I was lucky enough to have growing up-teaches independent thought, appreciation for great works, and an experience of the world not found within the confines of a classroom. It was an education that is missing in public schools today but still exists in many private schools-and can for you and your children, too, if you take time to learn how to learn. On the Wrong Side of the Tracks In the fall of 2009, a documentary film will be released by a resident of my hometown of Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Laura Magone's film, "One Extraordinary Street," centers on a two-mile-long road that parallels polluted Pigeon Creek. Park Avenue, as it's called, is on the wrong side of the tracks in this little-known coal-mining burg of 4,500 souls. So far Park Avenue has produced an Army chief of staff, the founder of the Disney Channel, the inventor of the Nerf football, the only professional baseball player to ever strike out all 27 enemy batsmen in a nine-inning game, a winner of the National Book Award, a respected cardiologist, Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, and the writer whose words you're reading. Did the education Monongahela offered make all these miracles possible? I don't know. It was an education filled with hands-on experience, including cooking the school meals, serving them individually (not cafe-teria-style) on tablecloths, and cleaning up afterward. Students handled the daily maintenance, including basic repairs. If you weren't earning money and adding value to the town by the age of seven, you were considered a jerk. I swept out a printing office daily, sold newspapers, shoveled snow, cut grass, and sold lemonade. Classical schooling isn't psychologically driven. The ancient Greeks discovered thousands of years ago that rules and ironclad procedures, when taken too seriously, burn out imagination, stifle courage, and wipe the leadership clean of resourcefulness. Greek education was much more like play, with studies undertaken for their own sake, to satisfy curiosity. It assumed that sane children want to grow up and recognized that childhood ends much earlier than modern society typically allows. We read Caesar's Gallic Wars-in translation between fifth and seventh grades and, for those who wanted, in Latin in ninth and tenth grades. Caesar was offered to us not as some histor-ical relic but as a workshop in dividing and conquering superior enemies. We read The Odyssey as an aid to thinking about the role of family in a good life, as the beating heart of meaning. Monongahela's education integrated students, from first grade on, into the intimate life and culture of the town. Its classrooms were free of the familiar tools of official pedagogy-dumbed-down textbooks, massively irrelevant standardized tests, insanely slowed-down sequences. It was an education rich in relationships, tradition, and respect for the best that's been written. It was a growing-up that demanded real achievement. The admissions director at Harvard College told The New York Times a few years ago that Harvard admits only students with a record of distinctive accomplishment. I instantly thought of the Orwellian newspeak at my own Manhattan school where achievement tests were the order of the day. What achievement? Like the noisy royalty who intimidated Alice until her head cleared and she realized they were only a pack of cards, school achievement is just a pack of words. A Deliberate Saboteur As a schoolteacher, I was determined to act as a deliberate saboteur, and so for 30 years I woke up committed to making the system hurt in some small way and to changing the destiny of children in my orbit in a large way. Without the eclectic grounding in classical training that I had partially absorbed, neither goal would have been possible. I set out to use the classical emphasis on qualities and specific powers. I collected from every kid a list of three powers they felt they already possessed and three weaknesses they might like to remedy in the course of the school year. I pledged to them that I'd do my level best inside the limitations the institution imposed to make time, advice, and support available toward everyone's private goals. There would be group lessons as worthwhile as I could come up with, but my priorities were the opportunities outside the room, outside the school, even outside the city, to strengthen a power or work on a weakness. I let a 13-year-old boy who dreamed of being a comic-book writer spend a week in the public library-with the assistance of the librarian-to learn the tricks of graphic storytelling. I sent a shy 13-year-old girl in the company of a loudmouth classmate to the state capitol-she to speak to her local legislator, he to teach her how to be fearless. Today, that shy girl is a trial attorney. If you understand where a kid wants to go-the kid has to understand that first-it isn't hard to devise exercises, complete with academics, that can take them there. But school often acts as an obstacle to success. To go from the confinement of early childhood to the confinement of the classroom to the confinement of homework, working to amass a record entitling you to a "good" college, where the radical reduc-tion of your spirit will continue, isn't likely to build character or prepare you for a good life. I quit teaching in 1991 and set out to discover where this destructive insti-tution had come from, why it had taken the shape it had, how it managed to beat back its many critics for a century while growing bigger and more intrusive, and what we might do about it. School does exactly what it was created to do: It solves, or at least mitigates, the problem of a restless, ambitious labor pool, so deadly for capitalist economies; and it confronts democracy's other deadly problem-that ordinary people might one day learn to un-divide themselves, band together in the common interest, and take control of the institutions that shape their lives. The present system of institutionalized schooling is a product of two or three centuries of economic and political thinking that spread primarily from a militaristic state in the disunited Germanies known as Prussia. That philosophy destroyed classical training for the common people, reserving it for those who were expected to become leaders. Education, in the words of famous economists (such as William Playfair), captains of industry (Andrew Carnegie), and even a man who would be president (Woodrow Wilson), was a means of keeping the middle and lower classes in line and of keeping the engines of capitalism running. In a 1909 address to New York City teachers, Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said, "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity to forgo the privilege of a liberal education." My job isn't to indict Woodrow or anyone else, only to show you how inevitable the schools you hate must be in the economy and social order we're stuck with. Liberal education served the ancient Greeks well until they got too rich to allow it, just as it served America the same way until we got too rich to allow it. What Can You Do About All This? A lot. You can make the system an offer it can't refuse by doing small things, individually. You can publicly oppose-in writing, in speech, in actions-anything that will perpetuate the institution as it is. The accumulated weight of your resistance and disapproval, together with that of thousands more, will erode the energy of any bureaucracy. You can calmly refuse to take standardized tests. Follow the lead of Melville's moral genius in Bartleby, the Scrivener, and ask everyone, politely, to write: "I prefer not to take this test" on the face of the test packet. You can, of course, homeschool or unschool. You can inform your kids that bad grades won't hurt them at all in life, if they actually learn to master valuable skills and put them on offer to the world at large. And you can begin to free yourself from the conditioned fear that not being accepted at a "good" college will preclude you from a comfortable life. If the lack of a college degree didn't stop Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Michael Dell (Dell Computer), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA), Warren Avis (Avis Rent-a-Car), Ted Turner (CNN), and so many others, then it shouldn't be too hard for you to see that you've been bam-boozled, flummoxed, played for a sap by the propaganda mills of schooling. Get rid of your assumptions. If you are interested in education, I've tried to show you a little about how that's done, and I have faith you can learn the rest on your own. Schooling operates out of an assumption that ordinary people are biologically or psychologically or politically inferior; education assumes that individuals are sovereign spirits. Societies that don't know that need to be changed or broken. Once you take responsibility for your own education, you'll join a growing army of men and women all across America who are waking up to the mismatch schools inflict on the young-a mismatch between what common sense tells you they'll need to know, and what is actually taught. You'll have the exquisite luxury of being able to adapt to conditions, to opportunities, to the particular spirits of your kids. With you as educational czar or czarina, feedback becomes your friend and guide. I've traveled 3 million miles to every corner of this country and 12 others, and believe me, people everywhere are gradually waking up and striking out in new directions. Don't wait for the government to say it's OK, just come on in-the water's fine. John-Taylor-Gatto.jpgJohn Taylor Gatto wrote this article for Learn as You Go, the Fall 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Gatto was a New York State Teacher of the Year. An advocate for school reform, Gatto's books include Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and Weapons of Mass Instruction. From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 10 17:14:50 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:14:50 -0800 Subject: [GJM] What is a Common Good Bank? and much more. Message-ID: <001a01caaaaf$7e736190$7b5a24b0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Thanks to Roshanna Evans, a member of both the Co-learner?s and the DifferenceMaker?s list for posting information on what she calls: ?The Spirit Bank Exchange? to the DifferenceMakers website where, as a member, I discovered it. The discussion led to this post: http://commongoodbank.com/ What Is A Common Good Bank?? Common good banks are designed to be the corner posts of a new economic system -- a democratic, community-based system that can spread quickly to give everyone a home, healthy food, and satisfying work. This is not just another bank with a social mission. This is A SOCIAL MISSION WITH A BANK! * All profits go to schools and other nonprofits. * Depositors decide what the bank should invest in. * Free local credit card processing for local businesses. * Micro-loans for new businesses and community projects. * A full range of secure, FDIC-insured banking services. * Committed to sustainability and economic justice. Once the first common good bank opens, any community ANYWHERE can start one in just a few days, with no need for a bank building. ( How?) Together common good bank communities can make a better world for everyone. What do you find compelling about the common good bank plan? Comment by Mary Rose: My comment on this is with regard to ?all profits go to schools and other non-profits.? With regard to ?schools? as previously discussed in an article just posted, John Taylor Gatto wrote to the affect that schools as we know them today are pass?. And what I have been proposing are ?Community Learning and Information Centers? (CLICs) which are designed as ?hands-on experiential places of learning? where all members of the community regardless of age are brought together to learn how to re-localize their community meaning: creating self-realizing, interdependent, and sustainable communities with food sovereignty being the cornerstone of freedom for the people living within them. The ?Community? in essence becomes the learning center/classroom and all residents pool knowledge as Co-learners to design a curriculum that best suits the needs of the community, not one designed to make corporations rich as are our present elementary schools and Ivy-league institutions of higher learning. It is time to go ?back to basics? and redesign the system in ways that are ?life-enhancing? and work in the best interests of all concerned not just a privileged few. PLEASE GO TO THE WEBSITE AND REVIEW THE COMMENTS TO THIS POST AS THEY ARE MOST VALUABLE. http://commongoodbank.com/ For more clarity, I am posting Roshanna?s vision of a Spirit Bank Exchange as posted on the DifferenceMakers website: http://www.differencemakers.com.au/group/thespiritbankexchange? Comments on this entire dialog most appreciated. Roshanna: About a year ago I attended an intriguing conference on wealth dynamics that had caught my attention with the hook that lasting wealth is what you have when everything else is gone. It stuck. I didn't see it reflected in any presentation at the conference but I knew the idea was true. It resonated with my deepest beliefs that our inner wealth is the only lasting wealth and it is exponentially inestimable in terms of value-reward. I logged 'a spirit bank' in the back of my consciousness and went on my way. I let the idea simmer. I made notes. I talked to friends and colleagues who loved the idea. When I took into consideration individuality, uniqueness, genetic resourcefulness and flexibility as well as the numerous categories and strategies of human resource amplification we are capable of as a species I figured inner wealth had the potential of infinite value. I didn't know how to bring it to the earth, how to structure it to make it real. The other day I was consulting with Hearts on Fire, a group headed by Bob Ballard that deals with the homeless and homelessness. After our discussion, which happened to address issues of finance and resources I was doing some other business when a light bulb went on inside my head. Why not begin the Spirit Bank Exchange with the homeless and emarginated members of our society, those who already have little or nothing 'material' and therefore are in a perfect situation to recognize and capitalize on their inner resources, or inner wealth. (Comment from M. R.: ?This idea intrigues me in several ways: 1) I am an Advisory Board Member with the HEARTS OF FIRE PROJECT working with Bob Ballard to integrate it with FUTURE DAWNING ENTERPRISES and eventually link everyone up with the TRANSITIONUS MOVEMENT so we are organized, organized, organized, but not to the point where we have stifled the creativity of what Paul Hawken refers to as ?BLESSED UNREST? in his book by the same name. 2) I have been homeless myself, and 3) see the homeless as being the first ones through the gate into the future in terms of lifestyle as they have nothing to lose, whereas others may hold the perspective that they have much to lose since they are still invested in the old economy and many will hold on tight to their comfort zone rather than make a healthy change until forced to do so. 4) I have discussed at length with Reinhold Ziegler of Pacific Synergy and Vern Woolf of Holodynamics as to exactly how we can design these Community Learning and Information Centers with the new: Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS program I am currently designing, being the basic guideline/plan/discussion forum that moves us in the right direction with individuals who are participating designing their own curriculum as suits their needs and those of the earth which serves as our life support system. It is anticipated that once the COMMUNITY LEARNING AND INFORMATION CENTERS (CLICS) are in place, and as learning begins, the centers will naturally morph into SUSTAINABLE LIVING COMMUNITIES which we will call HABITATS IN HARMONY as they become networked together via the Internet and form a database and information exchange program whereby all new aspirants to learning and creating may go to ensure that they are not ?re-creating the wheel? but are evolving new and unique concepts relative to sustainable living. CLICs are also designed as both information gathering and dissemination centers so that a large database is available to researchers and others in order to determine ?what is working (best) and what is not working? so that any action needed to clear the swamp of alligators takes place before the crisis occurs. For instance if crop failures in one area are known prior to the time of the peak of crisis, nearby communities who may have an oversupply can begin sending food supplies early enough to stave off famine. This also gets us into the position whereby food and other supplies are following ?need? and not the almighty dollar, thus returning social justice as an attribute to humanity. More later on this.) ROSHANNA again: After all, we are talking about that ?genius? within we fall back on when all else has failed and we feel beyond empty. It is our active, liquid core, our pilot light, that keeps the furnace running in the face of our belief there is no more heat, no more energy to tap. It is the smile that rises effortlessly because our facial muscles are preset for joy and success instead of failure and destitution. it is the primordial pulse of aliveness and self assurance that drives us beyond reason, beyond doubt, beyond hope, beyond belief, beyond fact and limitation to harness our particular personhood and fulfill our purpose which is written in the terms and conditions of being human. Manifest our destiny. Step out. Step up. Harness your potential. Shape the Self. Connect. Share. Combine. Co-create. Manifest. Thrive. Inner wealth is a utility that can generate and accrue value exponentially through experience and service. We are organically designed as an interdependent intranet of systems and subsystems capable of increasing capability of single and complex unit capacity and competency, capable of cross referencing and co-creating new combinations from unexpected resourcing as well as establishing new seed structures that will give us larger license in personal potential as well as creative responsiveness to global environmental shifts. Okay...now for the birthing process.... Help me breathe life into life! Your feedback, input, inquiry, brainstorming, spreading the idea to others to come join us here....All of it is appreciated. My first burps... What it will offer:: 1. Empower the Human Spirit in very real, tangible acts of enrichment. 2. Motivation to develop Self and ones innate FINANCES (Fun/Inspiring/Naturally/Aliveness/Neural Connectedness/Cellular Intelligence/Exciting/Sublime Success) their tools/talents/skills/knowledge/intelligence/ 3. The Spirit Bank Exchange should have a multi-tiered design that accommodates a data repository of human resources cross-referenced on multiple levels. Everyone enters as an Individual member. They will fill out a my-page Spirit Bank Exchange account. Families can join and invest in each other. Groups can form from individuals who discover shared purpose or who are already a group and as such seek to share service as well as improve their individual and collective potential. Communities. Looking for 'intrinsic value that gives utility to resource, makes exchange and/or acquisition/apprenticeship possible between private parties as well as companies. 4. Wealth - Wonder/Acumen/Loyalty/Trust/Health WHY HAVE A SPIRIT BANK EXCHANGE It would anchor intent, action, results through the operating power of human organics, innate intelligence (spirit/mind/body/soul/sense/and the unscripted) and human dynamics in a way that would recover human healthiness and wholesomeness in a vital and vibrant way as well as measure global economy and ecology. It would bring verve, vitality and creativity back into the motivational value of thought/action/results. It would generate economy by natural trading/bartering/educating/empowering/and ripple effect. It would have no religious, cultural or ideological connotations. It would be strictly measured by human leadership...which is action/interaction/community strength. It would manifest in multiple ways that pass through hands, word of mouth exchanges, art, music, movement, it would harness the innate potential that allows us to realize what we need, because it is 'stamina', insight, intent, passion, wonder, neural connectedness, solidarity, thriving, genius at play...and it grounds our beings through and through to what we do, how we relate, what we express and achieve privately, publically, and globally. It can play out through heart/mind/body teaching/training/educating/inspiring/leading/apprenticeships. Children can hold accounts as well. Perhaps businesses, schools, etc can open accts, not just the individuals comprising them, this would ''spiritize' their real contribution to humanity... Everyone is a spirit banked in a body so why not create a living social system that harnesses , empowers and harvests it with powerful returns!. cid:image001.gif at 01CAAA5F.E67AC120Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 11 04:10:08 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk) Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:10:08 -0500 Subject: [GJM] An article from Seeking Alpha has been sent to you Message-ID: <4b73e590f2ded_4f1d158e15b97fcc88b6@sa00-s00004.tmail> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 11 04:24:14 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:24:14 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] A View from the Trenches, Jan 7th 2010....Dont forget Greece... Message-ID: <62531.44285.qm@web27403.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> A View from the Trenches, January 7th, 2010: "Don't forget Greece" Please, click here to read this article in pdf format: january-7-2009 Yesterday, I attended the Economic Club of Canada?s 2010 Economic Outlook event, presented by the chief economists of Canada?s largest banks (W. Jestin, Bank of Nova Scotia; Craig Wright, Royal Bank of Canada; Don Drummond, TD Bank Financial Group; Sherry Cooper, BMO Capital Markets and Avery Shenfeld, CIBC World Markets). In one sentence, the collective outlook was of cautious optimism, favoring emerging markets, the Canadian dollar, equities (not bonds), subject to no escalation in sovereign risk. I was comforted to hear that some of the speakers shared my view that relevant volatility was still to be expected in 2010 (refer: www.sibileau.com/martin/2009/12/15 ?Confusion wanes?) However, I see the picture for sovereign risk looking uglier by the day. Below, I have attached a chart (source: Bloomberg) with the credit default swap spreads (5-yr tenor) for the National Bank of Greece SA (NBG) and Greece (sovereign). As you can see, the spread of NBG has closely followed that of Greece. NBG is one of the banks (together with Alpha, Piraeus, EFG and Imi) that participated in Greece?s EUR2BN private placement, on Dec 15th. Since then and given Greece?s fiscal outlook, it has become more evident that the government can only access the private debt market. Furthermore, on January 5th, Mr. Spyros Papanicolaou, managing director of Greece?s Public Debt Management Agency confirmed the intention of the government to find financial support in that market. What does this mean? It means that the deposits of Greece?s citizens are used to finance Greece?s fiscal deficit. Greek depositors may believe their guaranteed investment certificates are liquid instruments, but in fact, they are being directed to buy sovereign debt nobody else wants to buy? Should this be of concern? When this same situation unfolded in Argentina, in 1999-2000, it ended with the collapse of the financial system in December 2001. However, Argentina?s banks could not be bailed out, because the Peso was convertible in US dollars. Argentina?s Central Bank could not do ?quantitative easing?. Can Greece carry out quantitative easing? No, because the funds lent to the government are in Euros. Therefore, the final solvency of Greece?s banks rests on the willingness of the European Central Bank to act as lender of last resort, if needed. This is exactly what is weakening the Euro lately. The chart below also shows that since the statements made by Mr. Papanicolaou, the correlation between NBG and Greece?s spreads has broken, with a wider NBG risk and tighter sovereign risk. This clearly shows the transfer of sovereign risk to Greece?s financial system. Perhaps, rather that ?transfer?, ?infection? is the better word here. In my view, if the European Central Bank validates this situation, both spreads should converge to a lower level. If it doesn?t, they should converge to a higher level. The contagion is undoubtedly a fact, and under any scenario, this situation will continue to weight heavily on the Euro. There is a lot of moral hazard at stake here as well, as other countries potentially embarked on the same path attentively watch things unfold. Nothing good can or will come of this. Trade accordingly. Martin Sibileau ? The comments expressed in this website and daily letters are my own personal opinions only and do not necessarily reflect the positions or opinions of my employer or its affiliates. All comments are based upon my current knowledge and my own personal experiences. You should conduct independent research to verify the validity of any statements made in this website before basing any decisions upon those statements. In addition, any views or opinions expressed by visitors to this website are theirs and do not necessarily reflect mine. My comments provide general information only. Neither the information nor any opinion expressed constitutes a solicitation, an offer or an invitation to make an offer, to buy or sell any securities or other financial instrument or any derivative related to such securities or instruments (e.g., options, futures, warrants, and contracts for differences). My comments are not intended to provide personal investment advice and they do not take into account the specific investment objectives, financial situation and the particular needs of any specific person. Posted: Thu, Jan 7 2010 9:57 AM by Tincho Sibileau | with 1 comment(s) Comments Friedrich Dominicus said: "Nothing good can or will come of this" You are absolutly right, nothing good can come out of that debts. It's unproductive it's not investing but trying to go on living over one means. But I can tell you what will happen, they will take it by black-mailing their population. And/or even more perfide the will, freeze the accounts of their people. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 12 03:12:54 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:12:54 GMT Subject: [GJM] BBC E-mail: Taxpayers' cash 'funding corrupt deals' Message-ID: <20100212_101254_004428.dharao4@yahoo.co.uk> Robert Searle saw this story on the BBC News website and thought you should see it. ** Taxpayers' cash 'funding corrupt deals' ** A secretive government department is using taxpayers' money to underwrite questionable overseas deals. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/file_on_4/4066913.stm > ** BBC Daily E-mail ** Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all in one daily e-mail < http://www.bbc.co.uk/email > ** Disclaimer ** The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have?been verified. If you do not wish to receive such e-mails in the future or want to know more about the BBC's Email a Friend service, please read our frequently asked questions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/4162471.stm From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 12 04:37:07 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:37:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Aiding Haiti: Lets get it right this time Message-ID: <168931.81573.qm@web27405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Aiding Haiti: Let?s get it right this time Timothy A. Wise Before I joined the Global Development and Environment Institute in 1999, I was the executive director at Grassroots International, a Boston-based aid organization.? With a focus on structural change and empowerment, Grassroots started an emergency program in Haiti after the first ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991.? Later, we watched up close as the large US-funded aid effort, after Aristide?s return in 1994, undermined Haitian government priorities, undercut food production, and weakened civil society institutions. The aid empowered foreign aid agencies and multinationals rather than Haiti?s people.? We documented the aid disaster with a report: ?Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy.? Will history repeat itself in Haiti now?? The outpouring of private aid, much of it from the pockets of people in the US, has been encouraging.? But what should donors and agencies support if they want to avoid repeating history?? Aid goes not to projects or services but first to service providers, to agencies themselves.? And aid is power.? Those who get more aid end up stronger than those who don?t.? When the crisis is over, who do we want to be stronger as an institution, and therefore better able to address or avert such crises in the future? Here are a few guidelines I came up with: ? 1.????? Support agencies that build local capacities and institutions? Some aid agencies, including most of the largest and best-known in the US, are ?operational?, that is, they set up offices in-country and provide services themselves, often hiring large numbers of local residents to work for them.? Operational agencies often weaken local institutions, drawing qualified staff out of relatively weak local organizations. Wherever possible, support agencies that work primarily through local partner institutions. ? ? 2.????? Support privately funded initiatives, not government contractors ? The US government is the largest aid provider in the US and it contracts much of that work out to US-based aid agencies.? More than half the budgets of many of the largest US-based aid agencies come from the US government.? So what?? Well, first, private money is relatively less important to such efforts, which tend to be multimillion-dollar activities.? Second, those agencies naturally tend to be accountable mainly to the US government, not to its private donors nor, more important, to the local communities they serve.? Third, official US aid programs are among the most political in the world, often hewing to State Department objectives and guidelines first and humanitarian guidelines and needs second (or third or fourth).? ? ? 3.????? Buy local and support regional economic development ? Procurement is everything, a massive stimulus program.? The question is, whose economy is it going to stimulate? USAID brags that 75% of all its aid comes back to the US ? paying US consultants, buying US products, etc. As Ecuador?s President Rafael Correa said when he visited Haiti: ?There is a lot of imperialism among the donors. They donate first, but most of it goes back to them.?? Government ?and private aid should stimulate the Haitian economy. ? 4.????? Agriculture matters ? Sure, Haiti needs food aid right now. It also needs agricultural investment and protection for its farmers from the low prices caused by food aid and unregulated imports. In the 1990s, food aid poured in, trade liberalization opened the borders to subsidized US rice, and Haiti?s rice production fell dramatically. ? 5.????? Small is beautiful ? The aid industry is dominated by the largest agencies, which compete for and win government contracts.? The last things Haiti needs are aid agencies with more resources and power in-country than the government. ? 6.????? Rebuild government institutions ? Private aid often comes with an anti-government bias. Haiti?s government has, quite literally, been reduced to rubble. Aid should prioritize efforts to build strong, responsive government institutions.? Early reports showed precious little funding going to the Haitian government. Aid should also respond to Haitian government priorities, such as agricultural development. In the 1990s, less than 5% of US aid went to agriculture even though it was the government?s highest priority. In the meantime, creditors should cancel Haiti?s $891 billion debt, not just restructure it. ? Disasters often generate strong movements for social change, and the recovery effort itself is important not only economically but politically. This time, let?s not feed dependency and starve democracy. Note: The Center for Economic and Policy Research has launched a new blog: Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Aiding Haiti: Let?s get it right this time", url: "http://triplecrisis.com/aiding-haiti-lets-get-it-right-this-time/" }); ShareThis -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 12 09:48:56 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:48:56 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Absolutely Must Read: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education Message-ID: <00a401caac03$7a73a8c0$6f5afa40$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Thanks to Mario for this message. With love and in gratitude for all that you do. I will see if I can reach Gatto direct and get all of us linked up and working together to address this issue. P.S. For those new on the list and IMHO: "crazy" essentially means someone who is a real "change maker" and is going for it against all odds and is intent on taking down all barriers - it is the person who never gives up. From: mario [mailto:mario at newliteracy.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 1:41 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: FW: Absolutely Must Read: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education Hi Mary, a good one from John Taylor Gatto. No doubt you've said as much yourself. What happens in our schools or institutions Sit where I tell you, speak when I allow it, memorize what I've told you to memorize, or Here are the Words. Read. Here is Language. Study. reverberates in all other places and workplaces and institutions of the realm. Everything is top down. We have no means to develop a vernacular and cognitive language that reflects our being in the world. Voices are being heard that say to take our children out of school, whereas others lambast mickey mouse degrees. The need for positive change is not channelled. It'd be good to know if you can contact Gatto yourself so that we can compare notes. As I said before I have this file "Education of the Essentials" that questions education today whilst proposing an education as if people mattered. I attach the same for your convenience. The file is also available online http://www.newliteracy.co.uk/files/nl-educ-essentials.pdf and you may either way forward this to Gatto. best mario - - - - - Mario Molinari New Literacy 10 Marsham St Maidstone Kent ME14 1EP 01622 662524 077 99 264031 www.newliteracy.co.uk _____ From: Peter Challen [mailto:peterchallen at googlemail.com] Sent: 11 February 2010 08:10 To: mario Subject: Fwd: Absolutely Must Read: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education FYI Greetings. Peter ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: mary rose Date: 10 February 2010 22:34 Subject: Absolutely Must Read: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education To: "FixGov at yahoogroups. com" , discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS IMHO, the author of this article: John Taylor Gatto, along with our own Marion Brady, is a "crazy." -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 3:54 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education Take Back Your Education http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/learn-as-you-go/take-back-your-education by John Taylor Gatto Sep 09, 2009 More and more people across America are waking up to the mismatch between what is taught in schools and what common sense tells us we need to know. What can you do about it? Nobody gives you an education. If you want one, you have to take it. Only you can educate you-and you can't do it by memorizing. You have to find out who you are by experience and by risk--taking, then pursue your own nature intensely. School routines are set up to discourage you from self-discovery. People who know who they are make trouble for schools. To know yourself, you have to keep track of your random choices, figure out your patterns, and use this knowledge to dominate your own mind. It's the only way that free will can grow. If you avoid this, other minds will manipulate and control you lifelong. One method people use to find out who they are becoming, before others do, is to keep a journal, where they log what attracts their attention, along with some commentary. In this way, you get to listen to -yourself instead of listening only to others. Another path to self-discovery that seems to have atrophied through schooling lies in finding a mentor. People aren't the only mentors. Books can serve as mentors if you learn to read intensely, with every sense alert to nuances. Books can change your life, as mentors do. I experienced precious little of such thinking in 30 years of teaching in the public junior high schools of Manhattan's ultra-progressive Upper West Side. I was by turns amused, disgusted, and disbelieving when confronted with the curriculum-endless drills of fractions and decimals, reading assignments of science fiction, Jack London, and one or two Shakespeare plays for which the language had been simplified. The strategy was to kill time and stave off the worst kinds of boredom that can lead to trouble-the trouble that comes from being made aware that you are trapped in irrelevancy and powerless to escape. Institutionalized schooling, I gradually realized, is about obedience in exchange for favors and advantages: Sit where I tell you, speak when I allow it, memorize what I've told you to memorize. Do these things, and I'll take care to put you above your classmates. Wouldn't you think everyone could figure out that school "achievement tests" measure no achievement that common sense would recognize? The surrender required of students meets the primary duty of bureaucratic establishment: to protect established order. It wasn't always this way. Class-ical schooling-the kind I was lucky enough to have growing up-teaches independent thought, appreciation for great works, and an experience of the world not found within the confines of a classroom. It was an education that is missing in public schools today but still exists in many private schools-and can for you and your children, too, if you take time to learn how to learn. On the Wrong Side of the Tracks In the fall of 2009, a documentary film will be released by a resident of my hometown of Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Laura Magone's film, "One Extraordinary Street," centers on a two-mile-long road that parallels polluted Pigeon Creek. Park Avenue, as it's called, is on the wrong side of the tracks in this little-known coal-mining burg of 4,500 souls. So far Park Avenue has produced an Army chief of staff, the founder of the Disney Channel, the inventor of the Nerf football, the only professional baseball player to ever strike out all 27 enemy batsmen in a nine-inning game, a winner of the National Book Award, a respected cardiologist, Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, and the writer whose words you're reading. Did the education Monongahela offered make all these miracles possible? I don't know. It was an education filled with hands-on experience, including cooking the school meals, serving them individually (not cafe-teria-style) on tablecloths, and cleaning up afterward. Students handled the daily maintenance, including basic repairs. If you weren't earning money and adding value to the town by the age of seven, you were considered a jerk. I swept out a printing office daily, sold newspapers, shoveled snow, cut grass, and sold lemonade. Classical schooling isn't psychologically driven. The ancient Greeks discovered thousands of years ago that rules and ironclad procedures, when taken too seriously, burn out imagination, stifle courage, and wipe the leadership clean of resourcefulness. Greek education was much more like play, with studies undertaken for their own sake, to satisfy curiosity. It assumed that sane children want to grow up and recognized that childhood ends much earlier than modern society typically allows. We read Caesar's Gallic Wars-in translation between fifth and seventh grades and, for those who wanted, in Latin in ninth and tenth grades. Caesar was offered to us not as some histor-ical relic but as a workshop in dividing and conquering superior enemies. We read The Odyssey as an aid to thinking about the role of family in a good life, as the beating heart of meaning. Monongahela's education integrated students, from first grade on, into the intimate life and culture of the town. Its classrooms were free of the familiar tools of official pedagogy-dumbed-down textbooks, massively irrelevant standardized tests, insanely slowed-down sequences. It was an education rich in relationships, tradition, and respect for the best that's been written. It was a growing-up that demanded real achievement. The admissions director at Harvard College told The New York Times a few years ago that Harvard admits only students with a record of distinctive accomplishment. I instantly thought of the Orwellian newspeak at my own Manhattan school where achievement tests were the order of the day. What achievement? Like the noisy royalty who intimidated Alice until her head cleared and she realized they were only a pack of cards, school achievement is just a pack of words. A Deliberate Saboteur As a schoolteacher, I was determined to act as a deliberate saboteur, and so for 30 years I woke up committed to making the system hurt in some small way and to changing the destiny of children in my orbit in a large way. Without the eclectic grounding in classical training that I had partially absorbed, neither goal would have been possible. I set out to use the classical emphasis on qualities and specific powers. I collected from every kid a list of three powers they felt they already possessed and three weaknesses they might like to remedy in the course of the school year. I pledged to them that I'd do my level best inside the limitations the institution imposed to make time, advice, and support available toward everyone's private goals. There would be group lessons as worthwhile as I could come up with, but my priorities were the opportunities outside the room, outside the school, even outside the city, to strengthen a power or work on a weakness. I let a 13-year-old boy who dreamed of being a comic-book writer spend a week in the public library-with the assistance of the librarian-to learn the tricks of graphic storytelling. I sent a shy 13-year-old girl in the company of a loudmouth classmate to the state capitol-she to speak to her local legislator, he to teach her how to be fearless. Today, that shy girl is a trial attorney. If you understand where a kid wants to go-the kid has to understand that first-it isn't hard to devise exercises, complete with academics, that can take them there. But school often acts as an obstacle to success. To go from the confinement of early childhood to the confinement of the classroom to the confinement of homework, working to amass a record entitling you to a "good" college, where the radical reduc-tion of your spirit will continue, isn't likely to build character or prepare you for a good life. I quit teaching in 1991 and set out to discover where this destructive insti-tution had come from, why it had taken the shape it had, how it managed to beat back its many critics for a century while growing bigger and more intrusive, and what we might do about it. School does exactly what it was created to do: It solves, or at least mitigates, the problem of a restless, ambitious labor pool, so deadly for capitalist economies; and it confronts democracy's other deadly problem-that ordinary people might one day learn to un-divide themselves, band together in the common interest, and take control of the institutions that shape their lives. The present system of institutionalized schooling is a product of two or three centuries of economic and political thinking that spread primarily from a militaristic state in the disunited Germanies known as Prussia. That philosophy destroyed classical training for the common people, reserving it for those who were expected to become leaders. Education, in the words of famous economists (such as William Playfair), captains of industry (Andrew Carnegie), and even a man who would be president (Woodrow Wilson), was a means of keeping the middle and lower classes in line and of keeping the engines of capitalism running. In a 1909 address to New York City teachers, Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said, "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity to forgo the privilege of a liberal education." My job isn't to indict Woodrow or anyone else, only to show you how inevitable the schools you hate must be in the economy and social order we're stuck with. Liberal education served the ancient Greeks well until they got too rich to allow it, just as it served America the same way until we got too rich to allow it. What Can You Do About All This? A lot. You can make the system an offer it can't refuse by doing small things, individually. You can publicly oppose-in writing, in speech, in actions-anything that will perpetuate the institution as it is. The accumulated weight of your resistance and disapproval, together with that of thousands more, will erode the energy of any bureaucracy. You can calmly refuse to take standardized tests. Follow the lead of Melville's moral genius in Bartleby, the Scrivener, and ask everyone, politely, to write: "I prefer not to take this test" on the face of the test packet. You can, of course, homeschool or unschool. You can inform your kids that bad grades won't hurt them at all in life, if they actually learn to master valuable skills and put them on offer to the world at large. And you can begin to free yourself from the conditioned fear that not being accepted at a "good" college will preclude you from a comfortable life. If the lack of a college degree didn't stop Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Michael Dell (Dell Computer), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA), Warren Avis (Avis Rent-a-Car), Ted Turner (CNN), and so many others, then it shouldn't be too hard for you to see that you've been bam-boozled, flummoxed, played for a sap by the propaganda mills of schooling. Get rid of your assumptions. If you are interested in education, I've tried to show you a little about how that's done, and I have faith you can learn the rest on your own. Schooling operates out of an assumption that ordinary people are biologically or psychologically or politically inferior; education assumes that individuals are sovereign spirits. Societies that don't know that need to be changed or broken. Once you take responsibility for your own education, you'll join a growing army of men and women all across America who are waking up to the mismatch schools inflict on the young-a mismatch between what common sense tells you they'll need to know, and what is actually taught. You'll have the exquisite luxury of being able to adapt to conditions, to opportunities, to the particular spirits of your kids. With you as educational czar or czarina, feedback becomes your friend and guide. I've traveled 3 million miles to every corner of this country and 12 others, and believe me, people everywhere are gradually waking up and striking out in new directions. Don't wait for the government to say it's OK, just come on in-the water's fine. John-Taylor-Gatto.jpgJohn Taylor Gatto wrote this article for Learn as You Go, the Fall 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Gatto was a New York State Teacher of the Year. An advocate for school reform, Gatto's books include Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling and Weapons of Mass Instruction. -- "Financially, the World is living on drafts upon the future: Economically, it is living on the Products of the past." unknown -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: nl-educ-essentials.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 564928 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 12 10:00:37 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:00:37 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Article by Marion Brady Message-ID: <00bb01caac05$18256bc0$48704340$@net> Thanks Marion, with love and in gratitude for all that you do. -----Original Message----- From: Marion Brady [mailto:mbrady22 at cfl.rr.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 6:58 AM To: mary rose Subject: Article FLORIDA THINKS February 11, 2010 FIRING SILVER BULLETS OR BLANKS TO IMPROVE SCHOOLS? By Marion Brady Bill Gates says that big, impersonal schools are obstacles to improved learner performance. He's right. His foundation has poured major money into a "small schools initiative," but thus far nothing much of educational consequence has resulted. Eli Broad says that better leadership is the key to improved learner performance, and the Broad Foundation has put up significant money to train new ones. Obviously, good leaders are essential, but thus far, Broad-trained leaders haven't introduced any revolutionary new approaches to educating. Jeb Bush, echoing the late Milton Friedman, says bringing market forces to bear shapes schools up. The market-based reforms he put in place in Florida led to teachers and schools being graded, compared, labeled, rewarded and punished. But cut through the political hype and the statistical game playing, and it's clear that after more than a decade, nothing of academic consequence has changed. Indeed, misapplied, market forces are counterproductive. Rigor Overrated Policymakers in Tallahassee, like those in most other state capitals and Washington, have long argued the merits of greater rigor. They've pushed for more math, more science, more Advanced Placement courses, more International Baccalaureate programs, and more testing. But neither the evidence nor common sense suggest that "raising the rigor bar" for learners who can't clear the bars already in place will improve schools. Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Jeb Bush and the policymakers in state capitals and Washington aren't the only ones with ideas about what's wrong with schools, and what would set them straight. Op-eds nationwide read about the same: End social promotion! Put all kids in uniform! Disband teacher unions! Close down schools of education! Get tough on parents! Expel the troublemakers! Give everybody vouchers! Put mayors in charge! Abolish tenure! Bring back corporal punishment! Convert all schools to charters! Increase spending! Adopt pay-for-performance schemes! Check around, and it turns out that somewhere, all these "reform" strategies and many others have been tried and have made little or no difference. That's because - as most educators know but those actually running the big show refuse to admit - the main reason for poor learner performance is childhood poverty. Take away the test scores of kids on free and reduced lunch - those least likely to have had adequate health care, least likely to have had good diets, least likely to have had stable, stress-free home environments, least likely to have been exposed to books and rich, varied conversation, least likely to have traveled, least likely to have had music or other kinds of private lessons - take away their test scores and the average of those left will be right up there with the best, not just in the United States but in the world. Of the 21 richest countries in the world, the United States ranks next to last in average measures of childhood well-being. And, according to the Anna E. Casey Foundation, on that near-bottom-of-the-barrel world list, Florida ranks about midway between New Hampshire and Minnesota at the top of the bottom, and Mississippi and Louisiana at the bottom of the bottom. There's a problem, all right, but it isn't a problem that can be addressed by telling teachers to suck it up and get on with the job. How to Make the Best of a Bad Situation Neither the nation nor the state has the collective will and brains to make a dent in childhood poverty, but I have an education-specific suggestion that could help make the best of a bad situation. Several years ago, to illustrate a point I wanted to make in a column written for the Orlando Sentinel, I went to my nearest middle school and asked to see copies of the eighth-grade math, science, language arts and social-studies textbooks. The school obliged. Sitting in the school's reception area, I counted the terms in the glossaries of the four books, rightly assuming that they represented what experts thought every kid should know. One thousand, four hundred and sixty-five! That's how many terms were in the glossaries of just those four textbooks. That's 1,465 main ideas for 14-year-olds to learn in a school year, an average of about eight new ones a day. That's not just ridiculous; it's insane. In the real, adult world, an author who's trying to get just ONE new idea across assumes it will take a whole book. (Think Malcolm Gladwell and The Tipping Point, or Alexis de Tocqueville and Democracy In America.) 19th-Century Tool Outdated for 21st Americans, philosophically predisposed to think short-term, and more concerned with individual than with the general welfare, aren't going to do anything about childhood poverty. But that doesn't have to mean that it is impossible to make radical improvements in educating. Information overload is just one of at least 20 problems with the familiar "core curriculum," the static, 19th-century intellectual tool the young are being handed to guide them through the 21st. Clinging to that curriculum is a recipe not just for educational but for societal disaster. If education policymakers in Tallahassee and Washington knew what they were doing, instead of demanding national standards and tests keyed to a curriculum generated in an era long past and no longer relevant, they'd be calling for an emergency national conference to rethink what's being taught, and why. For those who want to learn more about Marion, here is his home page link: http://www.marionbrady.com/ From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 12 10:19:29 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:19:29 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Local Food Movement Sweeps into Southern California Message-ID: <00bc01caac07$c4902510$4db06f30$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS FYI and consideration. If you do not live in So. Calif. and do not have an organization such as this in your area please consider getting one started. We must work at the local level to assure that "all are fed." I ordered a 15 lb. box of organic food from the Golden Share food coop (www.goldenshare.com) this month. Price: $20.00. Golden Share services So. California. So, those living in this region check the site for pick-up locations and order directly from the site. Other packages are available at very reasonable prices. Ordering food directly from the farmer eliminates processing and packaging and saves on energy use. Thanks to Michael Dimrock for sending this info to the Co-learners list. With love and in gratitude to everyone for all that we do together. From: Michael R. Dimock [mailto:mail at rocnetwork.org] Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 12:59 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Local Food Movement Sweeps into Southern California roc logo Dear Supporter, Last month nearly 50 regional leaders from Monterey to San Diego met in Los Angeles to launch an effort to provide healthier food access for the region and establish more local and reliable markets for the region's farmers, ranchers, packers and processors. The leaders, who represented farms, distribution facilities, businesses, schools, NGO's and government entities, were part of the Los Angeles Urban-Rural Roundtable convened by Roots of Change. The attendee's are broken out into four workgroups: * Regional Agriculture and Food System Economic Vitality; * Better Access to Fresh and Healthy Food for All ; * Natural Resources and Environmental Stewardship ; and * Building a Regional Foodshed Identity . We invite anyone to add their voice to these work group sessions by submitting a comment at the bottom of each group page. Your ideas will be brought to the participants for review during the next meeting on February 25-26th. In April, the Roundtable will submit policy and program recommendations to the LA Food Policy Task Force, appointed by Mayor Villaraigosa. Learn more about the Roundtable, and read a letter from Mayor Villaraigosa to the first session. ROC is expanding the breadth of our board, and invites you to learn more about the recent additions Daniela Simunov We welcome Daniela Simunovic, one of three new members of the ROC Stewardship Council. Daniela has worked as a Community Organizer for the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment in Delano, California since 2006. Read her full biography, and learn more about our Stewardship Council. Sincerely, Michael R. Dimock President, Roots of Change Roots of Change, 221 Kearny Street, 3rd Floor San Francisco, California 94108 www.rootsofchange.org This email was sent to tiffany at rocnetwork.org by tiffany at rocnetwork.org. Click here to unsubscribe Roots of Change | 221 Kearny Street | 3rd Floor | San Francisco | CA | 94108 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 12 15:45:32 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:45:32 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Absolutely Must Read: FW: Take Back Your Education - David West Message-ID: <00f701caac35$508f4050$f1adc0f0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS David West is an Englishman living in China. From: David West [mailto:dgwest7 at gmail.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 9:22 AM To: mary rose Subject: Re: FW: Absolutely Must Read: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education Dear Mary, It is at times like this that we should be questioning the fundamentals that most people accept as fact, but are not fact. There is no reason why people should go to school at all. By spending 6 or more hours per day 5 days per week, for fifteen years or more sitting on a chair facing a white board, we learn one thing. We learn how to sit on a chair facing a white board. All the rest is someone else's say so, and totally theoretical so we experience nothing, and hence learn nothing. If we examine the reasoning of Tavistock House back in the 60s, when they set about destroying the family unit by making mum go out to work, we discover that the below-par education is by design. Experience in an ethnic village where the kids do not have to go to school, taught me that by the time the kids are 14, they can make their own clothes, grow their own food and build their own house. Most so-called educated kids never learn practicalities of life like this, because they are busy learning how to sit in a classroom. At this juncture, we will not even consider the differences of health and fitness between an active youngster and a school student. If we are considering a restructuring of society, I would ask everyone to really think very deeply, and really consider what benefit our current institutions are. I hold that we would be better off without ALL of them (unless of course we currently work for one of them.) My thoughts have led me to a point where I believe society would be considerably happier if there were no schools, and all learning was done 'on the job'. However, I also don't believe there should be any jobs. People's work should be primarily for themselves, and not for someone else. Once people are sufficiently organised that they are able to satisfy their own survival needs, then any excess labour could be used in a voluntary way - no bosses. Best regards David Comment from M.R. David, thanks for your contribution - with love and in gratitude for who you are and what you do. David, like you I believe both schools and jobs are obsolete. That grand man R. Buckminister Fuller believed that the TV was the best way to distribute information/education and now with TV and computers morphing into one whereby communication can become a two-way street, why send anyone off to school except for those who are going into medicine, especially involving surgery, or other fields where we can't afford mistakes and need for people to be well versed in their field before practicing on anyone or anything, it appears that getting online and choosing what one wants to learn about is the best of all worlds. Especially when we are facing a "jobless society" due to advances in technology that can do the work better, faster and at less cost than the human labor force? It appears to me that asking someone else to "work for you" is dehumanizing - what I feel we are going to see is more and more cooperatives whereby everyone in the business is an owner and there are no more "capitalists" who reap the rewards from someone else's back-breaking labor. And when I think of this, the example that pops up is WalMart where the workers are treated like "s-t" and the owners become multi-multi-millionaires. I also see the so-called "crazies" as people who will do volunteer work simply because they love what they do. I can't help but think about the National Institute of Health as I write this. For a real look at this institution, Dr. Candace Pert's book "Molecules of Emotion" is a real eye-opener as how to what gets funded and what doesn't in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies with much of what needs to be funded, say in the case of cancer or HIV, not getting any because the ROI on the dollar is not sufficient. While Candace writes about being the first to discover opiods in the brain, she also tells the games her supervisors played to take credit away from her and stifle research on AIDS that showed promise of a cure. This is a must read book along with Dr. Bruce Lipton's "The Biology of Belief - The Science of How Thoughts Control Life." (There is another sub-title here but I like this one best.) Some people are in this "for the money" and some for humanity and the earth. What is also interesting about "education" is how the present system was brought into the U.S. from Prussia by the Rockefellars and the Morgans so as to serve to make "robots" of those working on the assembly lines where there was no room for creative thinking. For the assembly line to be successful, the creative mind had to be broken down. This has been accomplished by "teaching" to the left hemisphere of the brain - the logical linear side - in our educational systems; so rather than create spaces where hands of experiential learning can take place, we have the person in the front of the room who stuffs information into the minds of young people. In his book: "The Biology of Transcendence - A Blueprint of the Human Spirit," Joseph Chilton Pearce writes that approximately 75 % of the population of the U.S. today is left-brain oriented which makes us a decidedly lopsided society. Something very obvious when we look at our social systems, and, in particular the political and monetary systems. In her book: "Smart Moves: Why Learning is Not All In The Head" biologist Dr. Carla Hannaford states that almost all children are born as "whole brain" thinkers; however, by the time the child is 7 years old, due to parental, religious, and scholastic programming in the modern world, we see a very definite trend toward the left-brain orientation. However, let me add here that I am not presenting the whole big picture on this and it pays to read both "Smart Moves" and Hannaford's other book: "The Dominance Factor - How Knowing Your Dominant Eye, Ear, Brain, Hand & Foot" Can Improve Your Learning" as she explains how there are really 32 different "dominance profiles" and how this information weighs in as to how personality is formed due to each profile being sculpted by the information allowed into the system by the sensory screens of each profile. Now, the bit about the sensory screens is not revealed in Hannaford's work - one has to have read Vern Woolf's research into this area in order to understand how this takes place. So, it is necessary to get his book: "The Dance of Life - Transform Your World Now" and read the section related to Hannaford's work. Mary rose wrote: Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Thanks to Mario for this message. With love and in gratitude for all that you do. I will see if I can reach Gatto direct and get all of us linked up and working together to address this issue. P.S. For those new on the list and IMHO: "crazy" essentially means someone who is a real "change maker" and is going for it against all odds and is intent on taking down all barriers - it is the person who never gives up. -- "Financially, the World is living on drafts upon the future: Economically, it is living on the Products of the past." unknown -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 12 16:34:38 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:34:38 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] The Lobbying-Media Complex Message-ID: <010c01caac3c$2ab0b740$801225c0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS How the media manipulates the public by obfuscating the facts and releasing "half truths" has been a pet peave of mine since the early 1990's when I got on a list headquartered in London and hosted by a well known English journalist who saw talent in me and encouraged me to write. Back then I was writing as to how the Saudi's had funded research on nuclear power and wanted a return on their investment. And how, if the U.S. became energy independent the Saudi's would become paupers in 20 years. So, we have to understand why the U.S. has never become energy independent and why it won't do so now and why some are still promoting nuclear power even though there is nothing clean about it and it doesn't make financial sense. The real truth is seldom told. If it were, there is no way the filthy rich elite could remain rich and elite. Yet, millions of people around the world sit every day glued to their TV sets gobbling up every tidbit of news candy fed them as if it were fudge, butterscotch bits, and divinity. Time to tune out folks, turn it off and get real. How sickeningly sad. Thanks to those like "Crazy" Trading Post Paul, who unpaid for his work searches the net for what has proven to be valid over the years. Or Fred Burks, former translator for both presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who resigned his position and began the online "Want to Know" news magazine to expose the truth. Fred gets paid when the donations come in -- otherwise he dips into a dry well. Did you really believe we had a two-party system and that the vote was ever "not rigged" by the Shadow Government (read bankers) that operate behind the scenes and pull the strings? And, now that we all know, what do we do about it? My answer is re-localize, re-localize, re-localize, get those local currencies in place, and your kitchen garden growing. If you are dependent upon a job and the job disappears you are like a snowball in hell. Remember food sovereignty is the cornerstone of freedom and if you don't have that you are SOL. So, whether in pots on your patio, on your roof, in a community garden or? grow, grow, grow as if your life depended upon it -- it probably does. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 11:45 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] The Lobbying-Media Complex This demonstrates why we need ten thousand lists and websites passing on hard information and independent analysis. In general, networks and newspapers are wholly owned subsidiaries of U.S.A. Inc. The Lobbying-Media Complex By Sebastian Jones February 11, 2010 This article appeared in the March 1, 2010 edition of The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/jones President Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state's former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were "modest things" the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to "take his green agenda and blow it out of the box." The first step, Ridge explained, was to "create nuclear power plants." Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an "innovation setter" that would "create jobs, create exports." As Ridge counseled the administration to "put that package together," he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren't told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings. Moments earlier, retired general and "NBC Military Analyst" Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional "three- to ten-year effort" and "a lot of money." Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. The first year is locked in at $644 million, but the additional four options are subject to renewal, contingent on military needs and political realities. In a single hour, two men with blatant, undisclosed conflicts of interest had appeared on MSNBC. The question is, was this an isolated oversight or business as usual? Evidence points to the latter. In 2003 The Nation exposed McCaffrey's financial ties to military contractors he had promoted on-air on several cable networks; in 2008 David Barstow wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the New York Times about the Pentagon's use of former military officers--many lobbying or consulting for military contractors--to get their talking points on television in exchange for access to decision-makers; and in 2009 bloggers uncovered how ex-Newsweek writer Richard Wolffe had guest-hosted Countdown With Keith Olbermann while working at a large PR firm specializing in "strategies for managing corporate reputation." These incidents represent only a fraction of the covert corporate influence peddling on cable news, a four-month investigation by The Nation has found. Since 2007 at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials--people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests--have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure of the corporate interests that had paid them. Many have been regulars on more than one of the cable networks, turning in dozens--and in some cases hundreds--of appearances. For lobbyists, PR firms and corporate officials, going on cable television is a chance to promote clients and their interests on the most widely cited source of news in the United States. These appearances also generate good will and access to major players inside the Democratic and Republican parties. For their part, the cable networks, eager to fill time and afraid of upsetting the political elite, have often looked the other way. At times, the networks have even disregarded their own written ethics guidelines. Just about everyone involved is heavily invested in maintaining the current system, with the exception of the viewer. While lobbyists and PR flacks have long tried to spin the press, the launch of Fox News and MSNBC in 1996 and the Clinton impeachment saga that followed helped create the caldron of twenty-four-hour political analysis that so many influence peddlers call home. Since then, guests with serious conflicts of interest have popped up with alarming regularity on every network. Just examine their presence in coverage of the economic crash and the healthcare reform debate, two recent issues that have engendered massive cable coverage. As the recession slammed the country in late 2008 and government bailouts followed, lobbyists and PR flacks took to the air with troubling regularity, advocating on behalf of clients and their interests while masquerading as neutral analysts. One was Bernard Whitman, president of Whitman Insight Strategies, a communications firm that specializes in helping "guide successful lobbying, communications and information campaigns through targeted research." Whitman's clients have included lobbying firms like BGR Group and marketing/PR firms like Ogilvy & Mather, which in turn have numerous corporate clients with a vested interest in shaping federal policies. Whitman is a veteran of the Clinton era and when making television appearances continues to be identified for work he did almost a decade earlier. According to its website, Whitman Insight Strategies has worked for AIG to "develop, test, launch, and enhance their consumer brand," and continues to assist the insurance giant "as it responds to ongoing marketplace developments." Whitman Strategies has also posted more than 100 clips of Bernard Whitman's television appearances on a YouTube account. During a September 18, 2008, Fox News appearance to discuss Sarah Palin, Whitman proceeded to lambaste John McCain for proposing to "let AIG fail," saying that this demonstrated "just how little he understands the global economy today." On March 25, 2009, in the midst of a scandal over AIG's executive bonuses, Whitman appeared on Fox News again. "The American people were understandably outraged about AIG," he began. "Having said that, we need to move beyond anger, frustration and hysteria to really get down to the brass tacks of solving this economy," he advised the public. In neither instance was Whitman's ongoing work for AIG mentioned. Another person with AIG ties is Ron Christie, now at the helm of his own consultancy. While working at Republican-leaning firm DC Navigators, now Navigators Global, from 2006 through September 2008, Christie was registered to lobby on behalf of the insurance giant, lobbying filings show. During that period, AIG shelled out $590,000 to DC Navigators. On September 18, 2008, Christie went on Hardball to discuss the government's response to AIG's near implosion days earlier. He was introduced only as a Republican strategist. As Chris Matthews mocked a presidential press conference on the financial crisis held earlier that day, Christie interrupted to say President Bush was "smart to have gotten a former person from Goldman Sachs who is a very bright man, who understands the markets and liquidity." Christie was referring to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who had once been the chair and CEO of Goldman Sachs and who played a pivotal role in the AIG bailout. "This is not a political sideshow. This is putting the right person in his administration to deal with this crisis," Christie said. Bigger players were on AIG's payroll, too: shortly after receiving its first bailout, in 2008, AIG hired PR mega-firm Burson-Marsteller to handle "controversial issues." In April 2009, B-M hired former White House press secretary Dana Perino, already an established TV pundit. A month later she was picked up as a contributor to Fox News, where she has had occasion to discuss the economic meltdown. This past July, for example, Perino joined a roundtable on Fox Business Network's Money for Breakfast, which briefly noted her affiliation with B-M but neglected to mention its link to AIG. When a fellow guest commented that AIG had been "highly regulated" before the crash, Perino pounced, suggesting that current financial reform efforts demonstrate how "Washington has a tendency to overreact in a crisis." When Gary Kalman of USPIRG suggested that regulations had, in fact, been rolled back for decades, Perino scoffed, "I don't think there are many business people who would actually agree with that." (Whitman, Christie and Perino did not return requests for comment.) Another conflict of interest plagued the televised debate over how to reform healthcare. Terry Holt, once a spokesman for the Republican National Committee and for House minority leader John Boehner, has also been, on and off since 2003, a lobbyist for the health insurance trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. When he and three other Republican operatives formed communications and lobbying firm HDMK in 2007, one of their first clients was AHIP. On March 5, 2009, Holt, introduced simply as a Republican, told MSNBC anchor David Shuster that the Obama administration was "going to, you know, cut Medicare benefits for something like 11 million seniors to start this big healthcare reform project." By October AHIP was running ads in several states against the health reform bill that asked, "Is it right to ask 10 million seniors on Medicare Advantage for more than their fair share?" Holt also made several appearances to discuss healthcare policy on CNN, where his affiliation with insurers was cited on several occasions, starting in September, though not during a September 14 appearance on The Situation Room, when Holt discussed healthcare reform efforts. The network subsequently experienced a small scandal in October when blogger Greg Sargent revealed that political analyst Alex Castellanos, a frequent commentator on CNN, had been helping craft attack ads for AHIP--including the one that referred to the "10 million seniors" losing Medicare benefits--while discussing healthcare policy on air, identified only as a Republican strategist. When I interviewed Holt recently, he told me that there was one occasion when his work for AHIP was not mentioned on CNN, and that afterward, a producer contacted him to discuss his work for the trade group. Holt said that he believes that cable appearances "operate best with maximum transparency." "When you're addressing the public, it's a reasonable expectation that they be fully aware of your perspective--where you're coming from--and I see my obligation as informing the news organization that's asking me to appear or to comment about my standing and letting them be the judge," he said. Democratic lobbyists and corporate consultants have also made appearances to discuss health reform with no reference to their pharmaceutical or insurance company clients. On September 24, 2009, Dick Gephardt appeared on MSNBC's Morning Meeting, where he labeled the public option "not essential." Gephardt was asked by host Dylan Ratigan to discuss healthcare reform in light of his experience as a Congressman during the Clinton effort in 1993 and now simply as "an observer through this process." There was no mention of his work advising insurance and pharmaceutical interests through his lobbying firm Gephardt Government Affairs, nor any mention that Gephardt is a lobbyist for NBC/Universal. Likewise, Tom Daschle dropped by MSNBC on May 12 and July 2, 2009, and NBC's Meet the Press on August 16, 2009. At each appearance he discussed healthcare reform with no mention of his work on behalf of lobbying firm Alston & Bird, which advises insurer UnitedHealth Group. Only during a December 8 appearance on MSNBC's Dr. Nancy was Daschle finally confronted, albeit with kid gloves, about how his simultaneous work for lobbying firms on behalf of health insurers and meetings with administration officials on healthcare reform appeared to be at odds. "I certainly want to be appreciative of perception, so we're going to take great care in how we go forward," Daschle promised. A month later, on January 11, the former Senate majority leader returned to MSNBC to discuss healthcare with Andrea Mitchell. In the nearly ten-minute interview, his insurance work went unmentioned. As of this writing, healthcare and financial reform legislation have largely stalled. And although it would be foolish to argue that Daschle's TV appearances sank the public option or that Dana Perino's punditry fatally wounded a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, there can be no doubt that there is a cumulative effect from hundreds of appearances by dozens of unidentified lobbyists and influence peddlers that helps to drive press coverage and public opinion. Janine Wedel, an anthropologist in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and author of the new book Shadow Elite, told me in a recent interview that while these influence peddlers are not necessarily unethical, they "elude accountability to governments, shareholders and voters--and threaten democracy." "When there's a whole host of pundits on the airwaves touting the same agenda at the same time, you get a cumulative effect that shapes public opinion toward their agenda," she said. Frequent television news commentators are also often given access to policy-makers, who may find that they are meeting with not just a TV pundit but also a paid lobbyist. This past March, for example, the White House held an exclusive "communications message meeting" for high-profile Democratic strategists with top presidential aide David Axelrod. Of the eighteen attendees, almost all television regulars, a third were lobbyists or public relations flacks, such as Kelly Bingel, a lobbyist for AHIP and a partner at mega-firm Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, and Rich Masters, a partner at PR/lobbying outfit Qorvis Communications, where he works on behalf of trade group Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). Ultimately, no matter how often or how cleverly lobbyists and PR operatives have used cable news appearances to their business advantage, it is hard to fault them for the practice. In many cases, they have made no attempt to hide their work for corporate clients; some, like Terry Holt, have gone out of their way to inform producers and bookers of the work they're doing on behalf of clients. This leaves final responsibility in the hands of the cable news networks that invite lobbyists and corporate flacks on the air and fail to identify their affiliations. This past fall Aaron Brown, host of CNN's NewsNight from 2001 until 2005, when the network pushed him out, and currently a professor of journalism at Arizona State University, told me that he didn't think the problem was a lack of standards but a lack of enforcement. Bookers--"young, inexperienced people under a lot of pressure"--are unlikely to ask guests about potential conflicts of interest. "I think they're often derelict in vetting," says Brown. For Brown, though, the lack of disclosure is symptomatic of larger problems in cable journalism, rooted in the shift to putting numerous analysts and strategists on television as an easy, inexpensive way to fill time. It's "a lot cheaper than sending a correspondent to Afghanistan," he says. "What I find unconscionable about this is that it's not like a struggling newspaper is looking for an inexpensive way to do journalism because they have no money. These are highly successful profit centers for the corporations that they're spawned from," Brown said. Jeff Cohen, who helped found the nonprofit group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), echoes some of Brown's critiques. Cohen worked for MSNBC for several months in 2002 and published a book in 2006, Cable News Confidential, about the experience. When I asked him why men like Gephardt and McCaffrey could go on television with no reference to their consulting and lobbying, Cohen explained that, based on his experience at MSNBC, "these regulars get introduced the way they want to be introduced. "This is the key: Gephardt will always be the former majority leader of the House. Period.... These guys know they won't be identified by what they do now but instead by what their position was years or decades ago," Cohen said. Some of this has changed in recent months, with CNN starting to identify the industries some analysts work for. For its part, Fox News has long identified the lobbying or PR firms of some--though not all--guests, but the network does not give viewers any information about the kinds of clients these firms represent. (CNN would not return calls, and Fox News did not provide comment.) Then there's MSNBC, the cable network with the most egregious instances of airing guests with conflicts of interest. Only on MSNBC did Todd Boulanger, a Jack Abramoff-connected lobbyist working for Cassidy and Associates, go on a TV rehabilitation tour with no identification of his work, all while he was under investigation for corruption (he pleaded guilty in January 2009). Only on MSNBC was a prime-time program, Countdown, hosted by public relations operative Richard Wolffe and later by a pharmaceutical company consultant, former Governor Howard Dean, with no mention of the outside work either man was engaged in. And MSNBC has yet to introduce DynCorp's Barry McCaffrey as anything but a "military analyst." When I spoke with MSNBC in mid-January, the network seemed eager to prove it is fixing the problem. David McCormick, the ombudsman for NBC News, deals with questions about standards and practices at MSNBC. (Both organizations use the same policies-and-guidelines booklet, which McCormick helped develop; CNBC has more stringent disclosure requirements as a result of SEC rules.) McCormick told me that the issue of conflict of interest has been on his mind of late. He said that MSNBC intended to contact its guests and brief them on its disclosure policies, adding that "trust is a huge part of the business" and that the network relies on guests "to let us know of any potential conflicts." "We've been talking to our folks for a number of years about the importance of transparency and letting the viewers in on where folks--it could be contributors, analysts or experts that we don't pay--fit into the mosaic of a story," said McCormick. "Are we perfect about it? No." In fact, potential conflicts of interest have been a topic of concern for more than a decade. An October 1998 copy of the "NBC News Policies and Guidelines" devotes an entire chapter to "Guests/Analysts/Experts/Advocates." It states: It is essential that our viewers understand the particular perspective of all guests, analysts and experts (whether paid or not) who appear on our programs.... Our viewers need all relevant information so they can come to their own conclusions regarding the topic at hand. It is not enough to say: "John Doe of XYZ Foundation."...Likewise, it may not be enough to say Jane Doe, NBC consultant or analyst.... Disclosure may be made in copy or visually. But it must be done in a clear manner. McCormick told me that financial conflicts of interest were "in the same category as ideological or political interests," but also suggested that MSNBC's practice of posting information about guests on its website was an adequate way to air potential conflicts of interest. McCormick emphasized that this reform was "a work in progress." A few days later, on January 22, I happened to catch MSNBC's Morning Joe. Mark Penn, identified only as a Clinton administration pollster and Democratic strategist, was suggesting that the Obama administration put healthcare reform on ice. Unmentioned: Penn's role as worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller, which has an entire healthcare division devoted to helping clients like Eli Lilly and Pfizer "create and manage perceptions that deliver positive business results." At times, it begins to seem as though the problem is beyond fixing, an unfortunate but unavoidable reality of our media and political landscape, in which the lines between public service and corporate advancement are so blurred. It is clear that the pressure applied on the networks so far has not resulted in systemic change. Even in the aftermath of increasing scrutiny--particularly after David Barstow's Pulitzer Prize-winning expos?s in the Times--General McCaffrey continues to appear on television without any caveats about his work for military contractors. As Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has observed, none of the networks involved in the scandal have ever bothered to address Barstow's findings on air, and they noticeably omitted Barstow's name from coverage of the 2009 Pulitzers. "It's almost like a mysterious black hole that this issue, which is enormous, is getting no attention from the offenders themselves," the Society for Professional Journalists' ethics committee chair Andy Schotz told me recently. Jay Rosen, a media critic and journalism professor at New York University, has a different take. "More disclosure is good--I'm certainly in favor of that--but why are these people on at all?" asks Rosen. "They have views and can manufacture opinions around any event at any time." Rosen echoes something Brown mentioned to me. Watching cable news cover the 2008 election with more analysts crammed at one table than ever before--as if to ask, "How many people can we put on the set at one time?"--Brown said he was "amazed how little they had to offer." He went on, "We live in a time where there are no shortages of opinions and an incredible deficit of facts." From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 12 19:35:17 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:35:17 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Another Absolutely MUST READ: Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century Message-ID: <011f01caac55$5fc40540$1f4c0fc0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS For your information and consideration. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 12:23 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century by Ronnie Cummins and Will Allen http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20200.cfm "The catastrophic impacts of climate change are not only going to take place in the distant future. They are taking place now." - Vandana Shiva, Soil not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis ____________________________________________________ Climate Stabilization Requires a Cultural and Political Revolution The climate, energy, and political catastrophe we are facing is mind-boggling and frightening. Yet there is still time to save ourselves, to move beyond psychological denial, despair, or false optimism. There is still hope if we are willing to confront the hydra-headed monsters that block our path, and move ahead with a decisive plan of action. The inspirational message we need to deliver is that we're not just talking about drastically reducing fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution, but rebuilding society, creating in effect a New Woman and a New Man for the 21st Century. What we are witnessing are the early stages of a mass grassroots consciousness-raising and taking back of power from out-of-control corporations, banks, corporate-controlled media, and politicians. This cultural and political revolution will empower us to to carry out a deep and profound retrofitting of industry, government, education, health care, housing, neighborhoods, transportation, food and farming systems, as well as our diets and lifestyles. The scale of human and physical resources needed to turn our current suicide economy into a green economy is daunting, but absolutely necessary and achievable. The only viable roadmap for survival-an 80-90% reduction in fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050-means we must force a drastic reduction in military spending (current wars and military spending are costing us almost one trillion dollars a year). We must tax the rich and the greenhouse gas polluters, and bring our out-of-control politicians, banks, Federal Reserve System, and corporations to heel. The good news, as Van Jones and others have pointed out, is that this 21st Century green economy will not only stabilize the climate, but enable us to retrain and reemploy the U.S. workforce, including low-income youth and 16-25 million unemployed workers, as building retrofitters, solar and wind installers, recyclers, organic gardeners, farmers, nutritionists, holistic health care providers, and other green economy workers. Beyond Copenhagen: Civilization at the Crossroads The negotiators and heads of state at the December 2009 Copenhagen Climate negotiations abandoned the summit with literally no agreement on meaningful greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane) reduction, and little or no acknowledgement of the major role that industrial (non-organic) food and farming practices play in global warming. Unfortunately the statements and behavior of Copenhagen delegates, and the enormous divisions between the Global South and the industrialized nations, make it clear that galvanizing a legally binding international agreement to drastically reduce greenhouse gas pollution will be a protracted and difficult struggle. China and the United States are equally and jointly responsible for more than 40% of the current global climate destabilizing GHGs. China's emissions arise from 20% of the world's population. U.S. emissions come from 5%. Although China, India, Mexico, Brazil and other developing nations are responsible for a growing discharge of GHGs, most of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and oceans today are directly attributable to the United States and Europe's industrial and transportation emissions since the early 1900s. >From an ethical, legal, and survival perspective, North America, E.U. and Japan must lead the way. To avoid a disastrous rise in global temperature (a literal climate holocaust), the wealthy, highly industrialized nations must acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis, cut their emissions, and stop playing blame and denial games with China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and other developing nations. Major cuts by the developed nations need to start now, and they need to be deep, not 7% as President Obama proposed in Copenhagen, nor the 20% that the E.U. offered. The hour is late. Leading climate scientists such as James Hansen are literally shouting at the top of their lungs that the world needs to reduce emissions by 20-40% as soon as possible, and 80-90% by the year 2050, if we are to avoid climate chaos, crop failures, endless wars, melting of the polar icecaps, and a disastrous rise in ocean levels. Either we radically reduce CO2 and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e, which includes all GHGs, not just CO2) pollutants (currently at 390 parts per million and rising 2 ppm per year) to 350 ppm, including agriculture-derived methane and nitrous oxide pollution, or else survival for the present and future generations is in jeopardy. As scientists warned at Copenhagen, business as usual and a corresponding 7-8.6 degree Fahrenheit rise in global temperatures means that the carrying capacity of the Earth in 2100 will be reduced to one billion people. Under this hellish scenario, billions will die of thirst, cold, heat, disease, war, and starvation. If the U.S. significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, other countries will follow. One hopeful sign is the recent EPA announcement that it intends to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Unfortunately we are going to have to put tremendous pressure on elected public officials to force the EPA to crack down on GHG polluters (including industrial farms and food processors). Public pressure is especially critical since "just say no" Congressmen-both Democrats and Republicans-along with agribusiness, real estate developers, the construction industry, and the fossil fuel lobby appear determined to maintain "business as usual." During the Bush years, scientific warnings and public demonstrations against global warming were ignored or trivialized, even though many of our protests were large and well organized. Now, in theory, we finally have a Congressional majority and a President who claim to be willing to listen and take action to stop global warming. But in order to get their attention, and move from small change to major change, we are going to have to turn up the volume. We have to stop thinking that things are going to get better because Obama is right-minded. Things are going to get better if and when we force Obama and our out-of-control politicians and corporations to bend to the people's will. Beyond Copenhagen: Making Polluters Pay Instead of the weak "cap and trade" bill supported by Wall Street speculators, and passed by the House, we need a real tax on GHG pollution. Yes, we can and must directly rebate working class and poor people for increased energy costs, but hundreds of billions of dollars in GHG and corporate taxes annually must be earmarked over the next decade for green infrastructure development, including a new electric grid, a mass transition to organic agriculture, mass transit upgrades, deep retrofitting of the nation's five million commercial and 83 million residential buildings, and a crash program of alternative energy research and development. We must continue to expose the worst greenhouse gas polluters, such as utilities companies, petrochemical corporations, car manufacturers, coal and mining companies, the construction industry, and corporate agribusiness, and demand that they begin to retool their industries immediately. We must move beyond polite protest and scattered dissent and dramatically take our message to the streets and the corporate suites, Congress, state legislatures, and our local governments. The Deadly Greenhouse Footprint of American Consumers We all know in general that cars, trucks, coal and power plants, household heating and cooling, and manufacturing industries spew a majority of the greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and the oceans. But did you know that U.S. household use of fossil fuels (housing, transportation, and food) accounts for 67% of total energy consumption and 67% of GHG's emitted? 1 Heating, lighting, and cooling our poorly insulated and designed 113 million homes and apartments and running our electrical and gas appliances consumes 26.6% of total U.S. fossil fuels. Cruising in our gas guzzling (averaging 22 miles per gallon) and underutilized cars (average 1.4 passengers per journey) burns up another 23.4% of energy. Eating highly processed and packaged foods and animal products, produced on chemical and energy-intensive factory-style farms, transported over long distances, and throwing our waste foods into the garbage (rather than composting them) eats up another 17.3% of the nation's energy. The average U.S. citizen generates 19.6 tons of climate destabilizing greenhouse gases every year, more than twice as much as the European Union and Japan (9.3 tons per capita), and 7.3 times as much as the developing world (2.7 tons per capita). The Tab for Saving the U.S. from Climate Chaos: $700 Billion a Year The estimated costs over the next 40-50 years to replace coal and natural gas with solar and wind in electricity generation, at current levels of use, is $15 trillion (which is about the equivalent of U.S. GNP for one year) . 2 We must reduce fossil fuel use by 80-90% in the nation's five million commercial and 83 million residential buildings (which currently use up 40% or 40 quadrillion BTUs of our total energy), including reducing building size, changing lighting and windows, making wall, ceilings and floors as thick and as airtight as possible (R-50 or R-60), and placing furnaces and ductwork inside the retrofitted space. The estimated costs for this in future decades will amount to another $10-15 trillion This figure is based upon deep retrofitting costs of $50,000 per residential unit, and $600,000-$2,000,000 per commercial building, with two million new more compact units per year replacing old housing and business stock and meeting new 90% fossil fuel reduction standards. Converting from our current energy and chemical/GMO-intensive food and farming system (which currently accounts for 35% of our greenhouse gases and $800 billion in diet-related health care costs annually) to one which is organic, relocalized, energy-efficient, and carbon sequestering, will cost at least another $100 billion per year, or $5 trillion over 50 years. Rebuilding our mass transit systems and reorganizing personal transportation (5-15 people in high-mileage "smart jitneys" and electric cars and vans instead of 1.4 passengers in gas guzzlers, along with a massive increase in bicycle use) will cost us at least another $100 billion a year, or $5 trillion over 50 years. In other words we need to start redirecting $700 billion a year in federal expenditures away from war and corporate welfare, offer training and jobs in a giant green jobs program (similar to the Works Project Administration program of the New Deal era in the 1930s), and build a new green, full-employment economy. Where are we going to get this money? Not by raising taxes on working people and the poor, but by taxing the rich and the greenhouse gas polluting corporations, and guaranteeing loans from a new citizen-controlled Federal Reserve and banking system. A major part of this transition to an organic and low-carbon economy will require innovative public and private financing for home, transportation, food and farming retrofitting along the lines of the recent PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) program in California. 3 Under this "Slow Money" regime, homeowners, renters, businesses, and farmers can immediately start to reduce their energy bills and carbon footprints and get their homes, businesses, and farms retrofitted for no money down, with low-interest costs being added to their mortgages and tax bills over an extended 30-40 year period. Can we afford $700 billion per year? Obviously we can, although shortsighted, unsustainable corporate profits will no doubt suffer. Keep in mind that the Pentagon budget, not including the wars for oil and strategic resources in Afghanistan and Iraq, will cost us over $700 billion dollars this year. And don't forget that Obama and his advisors recently handed over approximately $12 trillion in subsidies and grants to the Wall Street criminals and pathological kleptomaniacs who rule our out-of-control financial system. Clearly, what we are proposing is chump-change compared to our recent corporate giveaways. Honest businesses, homeowners, consumers, farmers and industries that reduce their carbon footprint and help develop the green economy can and should receive substantial tax credits. Speculators, mercenaries, toxic polluters, and Masters of War can go to financial hell, where they belong. The Hidden Greenhouse Gas Damage of Food Inc. Although transportation, industry, and energy producers are significant polluters, few people understand that the worst U.S. greenhouse gas emitter is "Food Incorporated," industrial food and farming. Industrial farming accounts for at least 35% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (EPA's ridiculously low estimates range from 7% to 12%, while some climate scientists feel the figure could be as high as 50% or more). Industrial agriculture, biofuels, and cattle grazing-including whacking down the last remaining tropical rainforests in Latin America and Asia for animal feed and biofuels-are also the main driving forces in global deforestation and wetlands destruction, which generate an additional 20% of all climate destabilizing GHGs. In other words the direct and indirect impacts of industrial agriculture and the food industry are the major cause of global warming. Currently conventional (energy and chemical-intensive non-organic) farms emit at least 25% of the carbon dioxide (mostly from tractors, trucks, combines, transportation, cooling, freezing, and heating), 40% of the methane (mostly from animal gas, and manure ponds), and 96% of nitrous oxide (mostly from synthetic fertilizer manufacture and use, the millions of tons of animal manure from cattle herds, pig and poultry flocks, and millions of tons of sewage sludge spread on farms). Per ton, methane is 21 times more damaging, and nitrous oxide 310 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide , when measured over a one hundred year period. Damage is even worse if you look at the impact on global warming over the next crucial 20-year period. Many climate scientists now admit that they have previously drastically underestimated the dangers of the non-CO2 GHGs, including methane and nitrous oxide, which are responsible for at least 20% of global warming. 4 A major portion of the CO2e (all GHGs not just CO2) emitted by industrial farming comes from long distance transportation, heating, freezing, and processing. So, the more you cook from scratch, buy locally, and eat raw vegetables and fruits, the less CO2e you produce. The bottom line is that we as a society are what we eat. In the oncoming era of climate chaos and peak oil, we must make the transition to energy efficient, climate adaptable, local and regional based organic farms, urban gardens, and primarily vegetarian diets, or we will likely not survive. Almost all U.S. food and farm-derived methane comes from factory farms, huge herds of confined cows, hogs, poultry operations, as well as rotting food waste thrown into land-fills instead of being separated out of the solid waste stream and properly composted. To drastically reduce methane releases we need an immediate ban on factory farms, dairies, and feedlots. We also need mandatory separation and recycling of food wastes and green garbage at the municipal level, so that that we can produce large quantities of high quality organic compost to replace the billions of pounds of chemical fertilizer and sewage sludge which are releasing GHGs, destroying soil fertility, polluting our waters, and undermining public health. Nearly all nitrous oxide pollution comes from dumping billions of pounds of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and sewage sludge on farmland (chemical fertilizers and sludge are banned on organic farms and ranches), mainly to grow animal feed. Since about 80% of U.S. agriculture is devoted to producing meat, dairy, and animal feed, reducing agriculture GHGs means eliminating the overproduction and over-consumption of meat and animal products. Organic Farming and Ranching Can Drastically Reduce GHG Emissions The currently catastrophic, but largely unrecognized, GHG damage from chemical farms and industrial food production and distribution must be reversed. This will involve wholesale changes in farming practices, government subsidies, food processing and handling. It will require the conversion of a million chemical farms and ranches to organic production. It will require the establishment of millions of urban backyard and community gardens. If consumer pressure and grassroots mobilization geared toward changing public policies cannot force U.S. factory farmers to change the way they farm, process, and ship their products it will be almost impossible to deal with catastrophic U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. 5 On a very hopeful note, however, i f farmers do change, and make the transition to organic farming, farm and ranch land can become a significant sink or sequester pool for greenhouse gasses, literally sucking excess greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and the ozone layer and sequestering them safely in the soil, where they belong. Our planet has five pools or repositories where greenhouse gases are absorbed and stored: the oceans, the atmosphere, the soils, the forests, and hydrocarbon deposits. 6 Because U.S farm and forest soils are so degraded from chemical-intensive, mono-crop farming practices and over-logging they are only able to absorb and store half (or less) of the carbon gases than they would be capable of if they were organically managed. As a result of this reckless mismanagement, the atmosphere and the oceans are absorbing the bulk of the greenhouse gases that normally would be absorbed by farmland and forests. This has led to a catastrophic excess of GHGs in both the oceans and the atmosphere. This excess has caused changes in climate and extreme fluctuations in weather; including droughts and torrential flooding. It also causes oceanic acidification, oceanic dead zones, and dramatic declines in fish and crustacean populations. Unfortunately, when they evaluate agricultural pollutants, pro-agribusiness government bureaucrats in the EPA and USDA do not include many of the greenhouse gas emissions. They do not take into account the transportation, cooling, freezing, and heating of farm products as agricultural GHG emissions, even though our food travels an average of 1500 miles to our tables and is routinely frozen and cooled to ensure its deliverability. They don't count the CO2 and "black carbon" particle emissions from trucks, tractors, combines and other equipment used on farms. They don't count the emissions from fertilizer manufacture or use, wasteful packing, sewage sludge spread on farm and range land, or the methane emitted from factory farms and the billions of tons of rotting, non-composted food in our landfills and garbage dumps. Instead, they lump and thereby conceal all these farm and food related GHG emissions under the categories of industrial manufacture, transportation, or electrical use. As a result, the public spotlight never shines on mounting agricultural, food, garbage, and sludge pollution. Because government officials deliberately fail to evaluate the real farm and food-derived greenhouse gas emissions, they are free to act as if the emissions coming from agriculture are not significant compared to the U.S. total, even though they represent more than one-third of the total pollutants. Consequently, most lawmakers and the public don't realize how urgent it is to regulate and drastically curtail factory farm and Food Inc.'s emissions. Chemical Fertilizer and Sewage Sludge: Silent Killers The most damaging greenhouse gas poisons used by farmers and ranchers are synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and municipal/industrial sewage sludge. Obviously pesticide manufacture and use are also serious problems and generate their own large share of greenhouse gases during manufacture and use (more than 25 billion pounds per year). But, about six times more chemical fertilizer is used than toxic pesticides on U.S. farms, and an additional huge volume of sewage sludge is spread on farm and range land as well. 7 German chemical corporations developed the industrial processes for the two most widely used forms of synthetic nitrogen in the early 1900s. But, until World War II, U.S. use of synthetic nitrogen as a fertilizer was limited to about 5% of the total nitrogen applied. Up until that time most nitrogen inputs came from animal manures, composts and fertilizer (cover) crops, just as it does on organic farms today. 8 During the Second World War, all of the European powers and the U.S. greatly expanded their facilities for producing nitrogen for bombs, ammunition, and fertilizer for the war effort. Since then, the use of nitrogen fertilizer and bomb making capacity has soared. By the 1990s, more than 90% of nitrogen fertilizer used in the U.S. was synthetic. 9 According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the average U.S. nitrogen fertilizer use per year from 1998 to 2007 was 24 billion 661 million pounds. To produce that nitrogen the manufacturers released at least 6.7 pounds of greenhouse gas for every pound produced. That's 165 billion, 228 million pounds of GHGs spewed into the atmosphere every year, just for the manufacture of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. 10 And, most of those emissions are nitrous oxide, the most damaging emissions of U.S. agriculture. Besides its greenhouse gas impacts, nitrogen fertilizer has other negative environmental consequences. Two-thirds of the U.S. drinking water supply is contaminated at high levels with carcinogenic nitrates or nitrites, almost all from excessive use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. Some public wells have nitrogen at such a high level that it is dangerous and even deadly for children to drink the tap water. Nitrogen fertilizer is also the greatest contributor to the infamous "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay, the coasts of California and Oregon, and 400 other spots around the world. Since very little synthetic nitrogen fertilizer was used before 1950, all of the damage we see today occurred in the last 60 years. If we did an environmental impact statement on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer today, we would never give it a permit for agricultural use. Until it is banned for the production of food and fiber, we must impose a high carbon tax on its manufacture and use. Unfortunately, at this point, agriculture is excluded from even the weak cap and trade plan passed by the House. So, although factory farming is responsible for more greenhouse gases than any other U.S. industry, it will not be regulated under the proposed legislation designed to limit greenhouse gases, unless we demand it. We must demand that synthetic nitrogen fertilizer be highly taxed and regulated in the short term, and phased out, as soon as possible. 11 We must also demand an end to the giveaway or sales of hazardous sewage sludge in agriculture, gardening or forestry . Instead of sewage sludge-contaminated and chemical-intensive farms, organic agriculture produces safer, nutritionally superior, comparable crop yields during normal weather, as well as much greater yields under drought and heavy rain conditions, without the use of synthetic pesticides, sewage sludge, or chemical fertilizer. The Good News on Organics and Climate Change The heretofore unpublicized "good news" on climate change, according to the Rodale Institute 12 and other soil scientists, is that transitioning from chemical, water, and energy-intensive industrial agriculture practices to organic farming and ranching on the world's 3.5 billion acres of farmland and 8.2 billion acres of pasture or rangeland can sequester up to 7,000 pounds per acre of climate-destabilizing CO2 every year, while nurturing healthy soils, plants, grasses, and trees that are resistant to drought, heavy rain, pests, and disease. And as we have noted, organic farms and ranches provide us with food that is much more nutritious than industrial farms and ranches-food filled with vitamins, anti-oxidants, and essential trace minerals, free from Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), pesticides, antibiotics, and sewage sludge. In 2006, U.S. carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels (approximately 25% of the world's total) was estimated at nearly 6.5 billion tons. If a 7,000 lb/CO2/ac/year sequestration rate were achieved on all 434 million acres of cropland in the United States, nearly 1.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide would be sequestered per year, mitigating close to one quarter of the country's total fossil fuel emissions. If pastures and rangelands were similarly converted to organic practices, we would be well on our way to reversing global warming. Toxic Sludge from Municipal Sewage Treatment Plants Besides synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, unhealthy foods, pesticides, GMOs, and climate and environmentally destructive factory farm meat, a serious problem in the U.S. is the increasing use of hazardous sludge from sewage treatment plants to fertilize farm and pasture land. Sixty percent of all the sludge produced in the U.S. is currently applied to farmland that grows food for cattle and people. Estimates range from eight billion to more than 100 billion pounds. 13 A critical mass of scientific studies indicate that municipal sewage sludge routinely contains hundreds of dangerous pathogens, toxic heavy metals, flame retardants, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, pharmaceutical drugs and other hazardous chemicals coming from residential drains, storm water runoff, hospitals, and industrial plants. Poisonous sludge is currently being spread on at least 70 million acres on 140,000 (non-organic) farms and ranches across the U.S. So-called EPA "regulation" of sludge is among the worst in the world. Unless we stop this dangerous practice, the sludge industry will destroy millions of acres of farmland as well as urban land we will need for future urban gardens. Sludge is also an increasingly worrisome greenhouse gas emitter. The Organic Movement Must "Get Political" and Become a Major Player We must advocate and agitate, as well as "walk our talk" in our daily lives. We must organize a U.S. and global mass movement for the conversion of the world's 3.5 billion acres of farmland and 8.2 billion acres of rangeland and pasture to organic production as soon as possible. Organic regulations prohibit the use of synthetic nitrogen, pesticides, sludge, antibiotics, artificial hormones, GMOs, and other environmentally destructive, health-threatening, greenhouse gas emitting practices. Organic must become the norm, not just the alternative. To facilitate a mass transition to organic we must force the U.S. Congress, as well as local and state governments, to fund a great "organic transition," including the creation of thousands of cadres of organically trained extension agents, and a million new urban, community, and school gardens. Thousands of U.S. farmers have already made the transition to organic. Now a million more need to do the same. More and more farmers around the world are learning that they can significantly reduce greenhouse gas pollution and produce substantial, high quality yields by switching to organic farming practices. While we develop our alternative marketplace and pressure legislators and the regulators to act, we must urge conscientious conventional farmers to use existing federal Conservation Reserve, Conservation Security, EQUIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program), and special practice programs to help them begin the switch to organic as soon as possible. Restoring Climate Stability: Soil and More U.S. farmers, as well as farmers all over the world, have known for at least 200 years that they should replace lost soil fertility. Over the last two centuries, numerous strategies were devised in the U.S. to replace soil nitrogen and soil organic matter, without the use of chemicals. Many of these strategies are widely used today by organic and biodynamic farmers. As early as 1813, John Taylor lamented the loss of vegetable (organic) matter in the soil and felt that we were destroying our precious soil fertility by over cropping and sloppy farming practices. 14 Since the 1840s, fertilizer manufacturers and alchemists tried to convince farmers to replace fertility with store bought chemicals. But, farmers were wary of these products and the claims made by their salesmen. Other scientists argued over the years that soil with high-organic matter content was far more productive and fertile even in times of drought and excess moisture. 15 As a result, U.S. farmers traditionally replaced their organic matter with fertilizer crops, manure, and compost, and most did not buy store bought fertilizer until the 1950s. In 2007 and 2009, results similar to these conclusions were reported from studies of the Morrow agricultural experiment plots at the University of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana (the oldest continuously planted U.S. experimental farm plot). There, researchers found that continuous corn on a synthetic nitrogen fertilized plot since 1955 suffered significant carbon losses and soil nitrogen losses compared to pre-1955 when the plots were fertilized organically with manure, fertilizer crops, and compost. 16 A significant factor in the decline of these soils was the loss of organic matter, since soil organic matter both feeds soil microorganisms and the miccorhizal fungi-both vital components of a healthy soil. Since 1950, the soils of the major farming areas of the U.S. have been bombarded yearly with vast quantities of soil-killing pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, just as the Morrow plots were. The Morrow plot conclusions should be a wake-up call to farmers and synthetic fertilizer consultants. Those conclusions are that currently recommended fertilizer applications are from 40 to 190% excessive and that long-term fertility suffers when farmers depend on synthetic fertilizers and don't replace lost organic matter utilizing organic soil management. On several chemically abused pieces of ground where we farmed, and with cotton, vegetable, and corn farmers we have advised, we were able to dramatically increase the soil organic matter in three or four years from 1.5% to 3 or 4%, effectively doubling the amount of GHG sequestration while eliminating nitrate fertilizer runoff and emissions. Using a small amount of compost and growing fertilizer crops in the fall and winter months and cash-fertility crops in the spring and summer accomplished these increases. Each percentage point increase in organic matter represents a major increase in soil nitrogen, i.e., nitrogen produced by microorganisms decomposing organic matter. Each percentage increase in organic matter also enables the soil to absorb and store more carbon. Beyond Factory Farm Beef, Pork, and Poultry Along with changing the way we farm, we must also alter what we farm, and what we eat. Our excessive dependence on meat is not sustainable over the long term since, as we have noted, 80% of our agriculture is devoted to producing animals, which is the least energy efficient food. To raise meat on factory farms takes too many input calories (primarily fossil fuel), too much acreage, too much nitrogen fertilizer, as well as hazardous pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones, not to mention millions of acres of genetically modified (GM) crops. A few examples illustrate this point clearly. It takes 10 to 12 pounds of grain (corn, wheat, soy, cottonseed) to produce one pound of marketable feedlot beef (that is 5000 to 6000 pounds of grain to produce 500 pounds of meat). It takes one gallon of oil to grow and ship the feed for one pound of beef. It requires 78 calories of fossil fuel (mostly to grow the grain) to produce one calorie of protein from feedlot-produced beef. 2500 gallons of water are needed to produce a single pound of confinement beef. We all need to eat less (or better yet none) of the non-organic fatty meats that are grown in abusive feedlots, hog hotels, and poultry prisons. Just reducing U.S. meat intake by a third would reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions by one-third. And, if you replace the factory farm meat in your diet with range fed organic meat you will reduce your personal carbon footprint, strike a blow for humane treatment of farm animals, and improve your health. Meat eaters don't necessarily have to stop eating meat, they just need to understand which meat is safe and humanely raised (organic and grass-fed), and sustainable. Ultimately, if we change our eating habits, and curtail our Madison Avenue and mass media-induced need to buy and consume so many clothes and consumer products, we can significantly reduce our carbon footprint. Whether or not government bureaucrats and corporations change their behavior in the short term will be determined by the strength of U.S. and global grassroots movements . But we will never be able to build, motivate, and lead these movements unless we first start walking our talk and create viable models of organic conversion and green economics in our individual lives and in our local communities. On the other hand, changing our habits is not enough-we must demand that the Obama administration act and impose a carbon tax, including a tax on chemical agriculture. We need to demand much higher emission reduction commitments, along with an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nationalization of the big banks and financial institutions, and a restoration of democracy, starting with publicly funded elections. The remaining TARP bank rescue money should go to kick-start green energy, transportation, and sustainable agriculture projects, and to train and hire the jobless to retrofit and build the new green economy. These are strategic Main Street issues; communities want new green infrastructure, healthy food, new industries, and new quality jobs. A New Works Project Administration A modern day Works Project Administration could train and employ a massive green corps to create the green infrastructure and post-carbon economy. When FDR created the Works Project Administration in the 1930s there were about 60,000,000 workers in the labor market. Twenty-five percent, or 15,000,000 people were unemployed. Today, there are 154,400,000 workers in the labor market. The Labor Department estimates that 10.3% of the population is unemployed. Most analysts argue that the percentage is closer to 16.5%. Whoever is right, and whether it is 15.9 million or 24.7 million, more people are out of work now than during the Great Depression. And they desperately need jobs and training, just like people did during the Depression. Environmentalist Bill McKibben is right, we need to mobilize a grassroots army to demand reductions in emissions and armies of workers to convert our infrastructure to a green economy. That means you must text, twitter, e-mail, and use FaceBook, Google, YouTube and other resources to get educated about climate change. Once you understand the gravity of the situation you will be able to change your habits, inform your friends, and participate in climate change demonstrations. Get organized at the local level and then coordinate your local efforts with nationwide networks such as the Organic Consumers Association and www.350.org. Your children and grandchildren are depending on you to make their world livable. The hour is late. Note: Contact these organizations or individuals for information and to meet others in your community who are participating in efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions: Organic Consumers Association: www.organicconsumers.org Center for Food Safety/Navdanya: www.coolfoodscountdown.org www.350.org References: 1. Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change . Pat Murphy. New Society Publishers, pp. 120-127. 2.Ibid,, p. 85 3. "How innovative financing is changing energy in America" by Cisco Devries. Grist, January 27, 2010. http://www.grist.org/article/2010-01-26-how-innovative-fi... 4. "Los otros contaminantes que cambian el clima" by Jessica Seddon Wallack and Veerabhadran Ramanathan. Foreign Affairs Latinoamerica. Vol. 9 Number 4, 2009. pp. 29-40 5. Nutrient Overload: Unbalancing the Global Nitrogen Cycle . Staff of World Resources Program. 1998-1999 6. Agriculture and Climate Change: Impacts and Opportunities at the Farm Level . A Policy Position Paper of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. 2008 7. Three times more phosphorous and potash fertilizer are used than pesticides, so farmers use about 8 times as many pounds of commercial fertilizer as toxic pesticides. 8. Allen, Will, 2008. The War on Bugs, Chelsea Green, pp. 93-96, 144 9. Ibid., pp. 146-147 10.United States Department of Agriculture Fertilizer Use Statistics, 1998-2007 11. Until we stop being a military country, we will continue to make synthetic nitrogen for bombs. 12. "The Organic Revolution, How We Can Stop Global Warming" by Ronnie Cummins, and Alexis Baden-Mayer from the Organic Consumers Association. October 19, 2009 http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19404.cfm 13. The U.S. EPA estimates that 16 billion pounds of dry sludge are produced each year and that one-half of that is applied to farmland. Synagro (a division of the Carlyle Group), which is the largest distributor of sludge, contends that about 135 billion pounds of sludge are applied to farmland. 14. Taylor, John Arator, 1813, Reprint 1977, The Liberty Fund, Indianapolis 15. Wells, David, 1852. Comparison of the Organic Matter Content of Soils from Massachusetts and Ohio. Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University. 16. R.L. Mulvaney, S.A Kahn and T.R. Ellsworth, Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizers Deplete Soil Nitrogen: A Global Dilemma for Sustainable Cereal Production. Published in 2009 by The Journal of Environmental Quality. S.A Khan, R.L. Mulvaney, T.R. Ellsworth, and C. Boast. The Myth of Nitrogen Fertilization for Soil Carbon Sequestration . Published in the November/December 2007 issue of The Journal of Environmental Quality. Cawood, Matt, 2009 Why Synthetic Nitrogen is Bad for Soil Carbon Published in Stock and Land, Oct. 4. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Will Allen is an organic farmer, community organizer, activist, and writer who farms in Vermont. He is a Policy Advisor for the Organic Consumers Association. His book The War on Bugs was published by Chelsea Green in 2008. His website is www.thewaronbugsbook.com The farm website is www.cedarcirclefarm.org Ronnie Cummins is an organizer, writer, and activist. He is the International Director of the Organic Consumers Association and co-author of the book, Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers . His organization's website is www.OrganicConsumers.org Kate Duesterberg edited this article. She is an organic farmer who co-manages Cedar Circle Farm, with Will Allen, in Vermont. She previously worked as an organizer for Rural Vermont, coordinated the Center for Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Vermont, and was the managing director of the Sustainable Cotton Project. From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 13 13:47:27 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:47:27 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Absolutely Must Read: FW: Take Back Your Education - Thomas Greco Message-ID: <003301caaced$fceede60$f6cc9b20$@net> Thanks Tom. From: Thomas Greco [mailto:thg at mindspring.com] Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 2:42 AM To: mary rose; FixGov at yahoogroups. com; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Subject: Re: Absolutely Must Read: FW: Take Back Your Education - David West Ivan Illich made that case years ago in his book, Deschooling Society. Thomas Greco M.R. Thomas Greco is the author of: "The End of Currency and the Future of Civilization" His website is: Reinventing Money: www.reinventingmoney.com ----- Original Message ----- From: mary rose To: FixGov at yahoogroups. com ; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 03:45 PM Subject: FW: Absolutely Must Read: FW: Take Back Your Education - David West Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS David West is an Englishman living in China. From: David West [mailto:dgwest7 at gmail.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 9:22 AM To: mary rose Subject: Re: FW: Absolutely Must Read: FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Take Back Your Education Dear Mary, It is at times like this that we should be questioning the fundamentals that most people accept as fact, but are not fact. There is no reason why people should go to school at all. By spending 6 or more hours per day 5 days per week, for fifteen years or more sitting on a chair facing a white board, we learn one thing. We learn how to sit on a chair facing a white board. All the rest is someone else's say so, and totally theoretical so we experience nothing, and hence learn nothing. If we examine the reasoning of Tavistock House back in the 60s, when they set about destroying the family unit by making mum go out to work, we discover that the below-par education is by design. Message truncated for brevity. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 13 14:30:52 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:30:52 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Zero Point Of Systemic Collapse - comment - Trading Post Paul Message-ID: <004401caacf4$0a1a3d90$1e4eb8b0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Comment from M.R. to Paul's post below: What I am about to write here plays into both the "unschooling" issue and Paul's comment re: sustainable communities and self-contained structures. While I have written about this previously, feel it well worth repeating. And, I'm referring to Alvin Toffler's comments on the fact that it is not financially feasible to continue to build and maintain cities as we know them today when one considers all of the expense concerned with building and maintaining the roads and highway systems, and acquiring the land upon which to construct the facilities, e.g., schools, shopping malls, industrial and office complexes, etc. while also maintaining them for the eight hours or so a day which they are in use, let alone building and maintaining the transportation apparatus and system upon which to reach them. Tofler concluded it would be far cheaper to pay people to stay home. Out of this realization came Tofler's idea for the "electronic cottage" as we faced the "end of work" which is happening today and we are forced by changing climate circumstances to design a new lifestyle more appropriate for our time. So, when looked at from this perspective, we see the need to do away with school buildings and the hallowed halls of higher learning along with the commute to get there. I have not looked at this recently, but recall having posts re: the expense of maintaining roads and highways as well as how much it will cost to just bring our present school buildings up to code. And what I got from these is that it is "cost prohibitive" to do any of these things. Recall when that bridge collapsed how many articles we saw with regard to bringing the highway system up to safety standards? Even the costs to just wire the present school systems for Internet access was cost prohibitive. When Bill Ellis was with us, we talked extensively about "unschooling" with many feeling that schools really were "baby-sitting" facilities for parents who no longer wanted the job. But what is built into the system is "tenure" so it would be difficult to get rid of it. Which is why I have suggested the "Community Learning and Information Center" system which brings people of all ages in the community together in hands-on-experiential learning related what it is they need to know in order to make their community both "re-localized" and "sustainable" -- re-localized meaning: "independent". So, CLICs then operate "in addition to the regular system," however, it is intended to eventually replace this system when the time is right. We all know this is not going to happen overnight, but may happen more quickly than we feel possible simply due to the Internet and how quickly new information is coming into play. Back in the late 1990's the statistics were that 75% of all the information available today had come about in the past 25 years and at that time information was doubling every 1.5 years. So, today it is zipping by and we are missing a lot of what is vital due to information overload. How to keep up is the question of the day. However, environmental changes may also serve to slow down this onslaught and push us back into the "basics" as we start from scratch to design a new system more appropriate for our time. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 10:05 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Zero Point Of Systemic Collapse "Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant." "We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort." "If we build self-contained structures, ones that do as little harm as possible to the environment, we can weather the coming collapse. This task will be accomplished through the existence of small, physical enclaves that have access to sustainable agriculture, are able to sever themselves as much as possible from commercial culture and can be largely self-sufficient. These communities will have to build walls against electronic propaganda and fear that will be pumped out over the airwaves. Canada will probably be a more hospitable place to do this than the United States, given America?s strong undercurrent of violence. But in any country, those who survive will need isolated areas of land as well as distance from urban areas, which will see the food deserts in the inner cities, as well as savage violence, leach out across the urban landscape as produce and goods become prohibitively expensive and state repression becomes harsher and harsher." "These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours." ~~~~ Zero Point Of Systemic Collapse By Chris Hedges 12 February, 2010 http://www.countercurrents.org/hedges120210.htm Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: ?We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.? All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort. These communities, if they retreat into a pure survivalist mode without linking themselves to the concentric circles of the wider community, the state and the planet, will become as morally and spiritually bankrupt as the corporate forces arrayed against us. All infrastructures we build, like the monasteries in the Middle Ages, should seek to keep alive the intellectual and artistic traditions that make a civil society, humanism and the common good possible. Access to parcels of agricultural land will be paramount. We will have to grasp, as the medieval monks did, that we cannot alter the larger culture around us, at least in the short term, but we may be able to retain the moral codes and culture for generations beyond ours. Resistance will be reduced to small, often imperceptible acts of defiance, as those who retained their integrity discovered in the long night of 20th-century fascism and communism. We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that ? a fantasy. My analysis comes close to the analysis of many anarchists. But there is a crucial difference. The anarchists do not understand the nature of violence. They grasp the extent of the rot in our cultural and political institutions, they know they must sever the tentacles of consumerism, but they na?vely believe that it can be countered with physical forms of resistance and acts of violence. There are debates within the anarchist movement ? such as those on the destruction of property ? but once you start using plastic explosives, innocent people get killed. And when anarchic violence begins to disrupt the mechanisms of governance, the power elite will use these acts, however minor, as an excuse to employ disproportionate and ruthless amounts of force against real and suspected agitators, only fueling the rage of the dispossessed. I am not a pacifist. I know there are times, and even concede that this may eventually be one of them, when human beings are forced to respond to mounting repression with violence. I was in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia. We knew precisely what the Serbian forces ringing the city would do to us if they broke through the defenses and trench system around the besieged city. We had the examples of the Drina Valley or the city of Vukovar, where about a third of the Muslim inhabitants had been killed and the rest herded into refugee or displacement camps. There are times when the only choice left is to pick up a weapon to defend your family, neighborhood and city. But those who proved most adept at defending Sarajevo invariably came from the criminal class. When they were not shooting at Serbian soldiers they were looting the apartments of ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo and often executing them, as well as terrorizing their fellow Muslims. When you ingest the poison of violence, even in a just cause, it corrupts, deforms and perverts you. Violence is a drug, indeed it is the most potent narcotic known to humankind. Those most addicted to violence are those who have access to weapons and a penchant for force. And these killers rise to the surface of any armed movement and contaminate it with the intoxicating and seductive power that comes with the ability to destroy. I have seen it in war after war. When you go down that road you end up pitting your monsters against their monsters. And the sensitive, the humane and the gentle, those who have a propensity to nurture and protect life, are marginalized and often killed. The romantic vision of war and violence is as prevalent among anarchists and the hard left as it is in the mainstream culture. Those who resist with force will not defeat the corporate state or sustain the cultural values that must be sustained if we are to have a future worth living. From my many years as a war correspondent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Gaza and Bosnia, I have seen that armed resistance movements are always mutations of the violence that spawned them. I am not na?ve enough to think I could have avoided these armed movements had I been a landless Salvadoran or Guatemalan peasant, a Palestinian in Gaza or a Muslim in Sarajevo, but this violent response to repression is and always will be tragic. It must be avoided, although not at the expense of our own survival. Democracy, a system ideally designed to challenge the status quo, has been corrupted and tamed to slavishly serve the status quo. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul writes, a coup d??tat in slow motion. And the coup is over. They won. We lost. The abject failure of activists to push corporate, industrialized states toward serious environmental reform, to thwart imperial adventurism or to build a humane policy toward the masses of the world?s poor stems from an inability to recognize the new realities of power. The paradigm of power has irrevocably altered and so must the paradigm of resistance alter. Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity ? an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein ? for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age?s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer?s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel. We live in a culture characterized by what Benjamin DeMott called ?junk politics.? Junk politics does not demand justice or the reparation of rights. It always personalizes issues rather than clarifying them. It eschews real debate for manufactured scandals, celebrity gossip and spectacles. It trumpets eternal optimism, endlessly praises our moral strength and character, and communicates in a feel-your-pain language. The result of junk politics is that nothing changes, ?meaning zero interruption in the processes and practices that strengthen existing, interlocking systems of socioeconomic advantage.? The cultural belief that we can make things happen by thinking, by visualizing, by wanting them, by tapping into our inner strength or by understanding that we are truly exceptional is magical thinking. We can always make more money, meet new quotas, consume more products and advance our career if we have enough faith. This magical thinking, preached to us across the political spectrum by Oprah, sports celebrities, Hollywood, self-help gurus and Christian demagogues, is largely responsible for our economic and environmental collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as ?negative.? This belief, which allows men and women to behave and act like little children, discredits legitimate concerns and anxieties. It exacerbates despair and passivity. It fosters a state of self-delusion. The purpose, structure and goals of the corporate state are never seriously questioned. To question, to engage in criticism of the corporate collective, is to be obstructive and negative. And it has perverted the way we view ourselves, our nation and the natural world. The new paradigm of power, coupled with its bizarre ideology of limitless progress and impossible happiness, has turned whole nations, including the United States, into monsters. We can march in Copenhagen. We can join Bill McKibben?s worldwide day of climate protests. We can compost in our backyards and hang our laundry out to dry. We can write letters to our elected officials and vote for Barack Obama, but the power elite is impervious to the charade of democratic participation. Power is in the hands of moral and intellectual trolls who are ruthlessly creating a system of neo-feudalism and killing the ecosystem that sustains the human species. And appealing to their better nature, or seeking to influence the internal levers of power, will no longer work. We will not, especially in the United States, avoid our G?tterd?mmerung. Obama, like Canada?s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the other heads of the industrialized nations, has proven as craven a tool of the corporate state as George W. Bush. Our democratic system has been transformed into what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin labels inverted totalitarianism. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, a free press, parliamentary systems and constitutions while manipulating and corrupting internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens but are ruled by armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington, Ottawa or other state capitals who author the legislation and get the legislators to pass it. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion. Mass culture, owned and 0disseminated by corporations, diverts us with trivia, spectacles and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. ?Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,? Wolin writes. ?Economics dominates politics ? and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.? Inverted totalitarianism wields total power without resorting to cruder forms of control such as gulags, concentration camps or mass terror. It harnesses science and technology for its dark ends. It enforces ideological uniformity by using mass communication systems to instill profligate consumption as an inner compulsion and to substitute our illusions of ourselves for reality. It does not forcibly suppress dissidents, as long as those dissidents remain ineffectual. And as it diverts us it dismantles manufacturing bases, devastates communities, unleashes waves of human misery and ships jobs to countries where fascists and communists know how to keep workers in line. It does all this while waving the flag and mouthing patriotic slogans. ?The United States has become the showcase of how democracy can be managed without appearing to be suppressed,? Wolin writes. The practice and psychology of advertising, the rule of ?market forces? in many arenas other than markets, the continuous technological advances that encourage elaborate fantasies (computer games, virtual avatars, space travel), the saturation by mass media and propaganda of every household and the takeover of the universities have rendered most of us hostages. The rot of imperialism, which is always incompatible with democracy, has seen the military and arms manufacturers monopolize $1 trillion a year in defense-related spending in the United States even as the nation faces economic collapse. Imperialism always militarizes domestic politics. And this militarization, as Wolin notes, combines with the cultural fantasies of hero worship and tales of individual prowess, eternal youthfulness, beauty through surgery, action measured in nanoseconds and a dream-laden culture of ever-expanding control and possibility to sever huge segments of the population from reality. Those who control the images control us. And while we have been entranced by the celluloid shadows on the walls of Plato?s cave, these corporate forces, extolling the benefits of privatization, have effectively dismantled the institutions of social democracy (Social Security, unions, welfare, public health services and public housing) and rolled back the social and political ideals of the New Deal. The proponents of globalization and unregulated capitalism do not waste time analyzing other ideologies. They have an ideology, or rather a plan of action that is defended by an ideology, and slavishly follow it. We on the left have dozens of analyses of competing ideologies without any coherent plan of our own. This has left us floundering while corporate forces ruthlessly dismantle civil society. We are living through one of civilization?s great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all ?inevitable? utopian visions, is being exposed as a fraud. The power elite, perplexed and confused, clings to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the looming political and economic vacuum. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs led industrial nations to sacrifice other areas of human importance ? from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution ? on the altar of free trade. It left the world?s poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits ? which can never be repaid ? in human history. The massive bailouts, stimulus packages, giveaways and short-term debt, along with imperial wars we can no longer afford, will leave the United States struggling to finance nearly $5 trillion in debt this year. This will require Washington to auction off about $96 billion in debt a week. Once China and the oil-rich states walk away from our debt, which one day has to happen, the Federal Reserve will become the buyer of last resort. The Fed has printed perhaps as much as two trillion new dollars in the last two years, and buying this much new debt will see it, in effect, print trillions more. This is when inflation, and most likely hyperinflation, will turn the dollar into junk. And at that point the entire system breaks down. All traditional standards and beliefs are shattered in a severe economic crisis. The moral order is turned upside down. The honest and industrious are wiped out while the gangsters, profiteers and speculators walk away with millions. The elite will retreat, as Naomi Klein has written in The Shock Doctrine, into gated communities where they will have access to services, food, amenities and security denied to the rest of us. We will begin a period in human history when there will be only masters and serfs. The corporate forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the radical Christian right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the rage at the ruling elites and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to ruthlessly extinguish opposition movements. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order and clutching the Christian cross. Totalitarianism, George Orwell pointed out, is not so much an age of faith but an age of schizophrenia. ?A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial,? Orwell wrote. ?That is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.? Our elites have used fraud. Force is all they have left. Our mediocre and bankrupt elite is desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved. More importantly, they are trying to save themselves. All attempts to work within this decayed system and this class of power brokers will prove useless. And resistance must respond to the harsh new reality of a global, capitalist order that will cling to power through ever-mounting forms of brutal and overt repression. Once credit dries up for the average citizen, once massive joblessness creates a permanent and enraged underclass and the cheap manufactured goods that are the opiates of our commodity culture vanish, we will probably evolve into a system that more closely resembles classical totalitarianism. Cruder, more violent forms of repression will have to be employed as the softer mechanisms of control favored by inverted totalitarianism break down. It is not accidental that the economic crisis will converge with the environmental crisis. In his book The Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi laid out the devastating consequences ? the depressions, wars and totalitarianism ? that grow out of a so-called self-regulated free market. He grasped that ?fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function.? He warned that a financial system always devolves, without heavy government control, into a Mafia capitalism ? and a Mafia political system ? which is a good description of our financial and political structure. A self-regulating market, Polanyi wrote, turns human beings and the natural environment into commodities, a situation that ensures the destruction of both society and the natural environment. The free market?s assumption that nature and human beings are objects whose worth is determined by the market allows each to be exploited for profit until exhaustion or collapse. A society that no longer recognizes that nature and human life have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, commits collective suicide. Such societies cannibalize themselves until they die. This is what we are undergoing. If we build self-contained structures, ones that do as little harm as possible to the environment, we can weather the coming collapse. This task will be accomplished through the existence of small, physical enclaves that have access to sustainable agriculture, are able to sever themselves as much as possible from commercial culture and can be largely self-sufficient. These communities will have to build walls against electronic propaganda and fear that will be pumped out over the airwaves. Canada will probably be a more hospitable place to do this than the United States, given America?s strong undercurrent of violence. But in any country, those who survive will need isolated areas of land as well as distance from urban areas, which will see the food deserts in the inner cities, as well as savage violence, leach out across the urban landscape as produce and goods become prohibitively expensive and state repression becomes harsher and harsher. The increasingly overt uses of force by the elites to maintain control should not end acts of resistance. Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience understand the moral imperative to challenge systems of abuse and despotism. They should be carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are always few in number and dismissed by those who hide their cowardice behind their cynicism. But resistance, however marginal, continues to affirm life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality and alone makes hope possible. Those who carried out great acts of resistance often sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, even under the darkest night of state repression, meant to defy injustice. When the dissident Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi prison to the gallows, his last words were: ?This is for me the end, but also the beginning.? Bonhoeffer knew that most of the citizens in his nation were complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death. But however hopeless it appeared in the moment, he affirmed what we all must affirm. He did not avoid death. He did not, as a distinct individual, survive. But he understood that his resistance and even his death were acts of love. He fought and died for the sanctity of life. He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative, and his defiance ultimately condemned his executioners. We must continue to resist, but do so now with the discomforting realization that significant change will probably never occur in our lifetime. This makes resistance harder. It shifts resistance from the tangible and the immediate to the amorphous and the indeterminate. But to give up acts of resistance is spiritual and intellectual death. It is to surrender to the dehumanizing ideology of totalitarian capitalism. Acts of resistance keep alive another narrative, sustain our integrity and empower others, who we may never meet, to stand up and carry the flame we pass to them. No act of resistance is useless, whether it is refusing to pay taxes, fighting for a Tobin tax, working to shift the neoclassical economics paradigm, revoking a corporate charter, holding global internet votes or using Twitter to catalyze a chain reaction of refusal against the neoliberal order. But we will have to resist and then find the faith that resistance is worthwhile, for we will not immediately alter the awful configuration of power. And in this long, long war a community to sustain us, emotionally and materially, will be the key to a life of defiance. The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote that the exclusive preoccupation with personal concerns and indifference to the suffering of others beyond the self-identified group is what ultimately made fascism and the Holocaust possible: ?The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.? The indifference to the plight of others and the supreme elevation of the self is what the corporate state seeks to instill in us. It uses fear, as well as hedonism, to thwart human compassion. We will have to continue to battle the mechanisms of the dominant culture, if for no other reason than to preserve through small, even tiny acts, our common humanity. We will have to resist the temptation to fold in on ourselves and to ignore the cruelty outside our door. Hope endures in these often imperceptible acts of defiance. This defiance, this capacity to say no, is what the psychopathic forces in control of our power systems seek to eradicate. As long as we are willing to defy these forces we have a chance, if not for ourselves, then at least for those who follow. As long as we defy these forces we remain alive. And for now this is the only victory possible. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, is the author of several books including the best sellers War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and his latest, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. He is married to the Canadian actress Eunice Wong. They have a son, Konrad, who is also a Canadian. From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 13 22:08:11 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:08:11 -0800 Subject: [GJM] IMPORTANT: FW: [TRANSITION SOCIAL NETWORK] Survey of Social Network Members & More Message-ID: <002e01caad33$ef9f43d0$ceddcb70$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Hi Everyone: If you are not as yet signed up to the TransitionUS network, please do so and then take the survey. This begins to tell us how important it is to ?organize? and to do so in a sustainable manner. Recall that Les Squires has set up Internet headquarters in all of the U.S. states for TransitionUS so that other organizations like Future Dawning with its emphasis on bringing together the human consciousness movement with the sustainable living movement and the women?s movement, are working in a coordinated manner to manage the social transition we must make at this time so that everyone is included and getting the necessary information. Future Dawning also includes the indigenous people?s movement, the homeless and the mentally ill in the form of Hanu International founded by Kent P. Mesplay (indigenous), Hearts of Fire Project (homeless), and the Foundation for Research and Education on Substance Abuse & Mental Illness (heavy on Bipolar Disorder). Then we are also contributing the framework for the Community Learning and Information Centers (acts as a distribution network for information related to all of the above). What I see again as being of the utmost importance is that each community must become self-sufficient (re-localized) and get its local currency exchange program set up so that those in the community are not at the mercy of the national currency as it begins to fluctuate in ways that have been predicted. And, we want to be networked together so that if a crisis hits one community, for instance say a food shortage, that other nearby communities which may have a surplus can send food aid to the community in need before the crisis becomes unmanageable and people are starving. And, we do not want to rely on large fields of grain or herds of cattle to feed ourselves. What we want to consider is identifying what are ?superfoods? ? that is foods that provide the most nutrition for the buck, and that can be grown in a very small space and which can be protected from the elements so that our food supply is not dependent upon the weather or the land. We also want to be able to control the nutrient and water supply, so growing in tiered beds, hanging baskets, etc. is the ideal here and in greenhouses whenever possible. Reinhold Ziegler of Pacific Synergy sent me some photos of plants being grown in a shelf ?like arrangement containing baskets which had grow lights attached and as the baskets rotated the lights bathed all the plants in the container in their glow. Vern Woolf of Holodynamics was telling me yesterday that his group is now able to produce 20 times the normal amount produced with one gallon of water. It is important that each of us grow at least a portion of our own food so that we are reconnecting ourselves with our Earth Mother and circulating the energy of the earth up through our bodies so that we are once again connected to the whole Universe so that we regain our ?soul.? We need to plant our agricultural land with things like hemp from which 20,000 different products that are biodegradable can be manufactured with manufacturing accomplished at a very low scale. Hemp is a ?no-till? long grain which need not be fertilized and requires little water. It can also be used as food and provides for protein. Other long grains that can be grown in this manner are buckwheat and quinoa. One of the main things is to begin planting former pasture and agricultural lands with trees that will provide reforestation and act once again as carbon sinks. As noted previously, the book ?Gaviotas ? A village to re-invent the world? provides the model for this as it tells how one man, Paolo Lugari, went into the savannah of one of the most desolate of regions in the world ? Columbia, S.A. ? and planted pine trees turning this region into a lush rain forest in which the species that belong there are now returning. Large orchards of fruit, nut, coconut and date trees are desirable where appropriate. We need to begin eating more raw foods in order to obtain the raw enzymes so necessary to our health. Also by eating raw and having our ?kitchen? gardens right outside the door, we use less energy as we cut out transportation and cooking needs. When cooking is desired, solar cookers provide the necessary heat. It is my feeling that as we move into the future we will learn how to use passive solar and wind energy in a more effective manner. Life will slow down as we make this transition and people will become less stressed, working out of their ?electronic cottages? and small cooperative locally-based enterprises using the Mondragon Model in Spain. More time will be spent in family endeavors as people learn together how to live a sustainable lifestyle, yet one that is not burdened with such hard work as in the previous agricultural and industrial ages. More recreational and leisure activities will become the norm as less time is needed for work ? jobs will disappear. Religion will no longer dominate our life ? we are fast moving from this sphere into ?self-realization? and a deeper sense of self. Vern Woolf and Reinhold Zeigler are both heading up research on supplying energy needs and as the Transition Network moves into high gear, we will see more and more innovative ideas come into play. Ideas that can easily be distributed throughout the network through the Community Learning and Information Centers so that as new communities come online they will not be re-inventing the wheel, but will know ?what works and what doesn?t? in most places. Yet there will still be room for new ideas and new innovations in the fields of nanotechnology and bio-mimicry to pop through that tend to give us more power in the world, but which contribute always to sustainable living so that the heritage of our children and grand-children is not threatened as it is today. Now here is the message from Les Squires and the survey for you to take. From: TRANSITION U.S. SOCIAL NETWORK [mailto:mail at transitionus.ning.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 7:42 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: [TRANSITION SOCIAL NETWORK] Survey of Social Network Members TRANSITION U.S. SOCIAL NETWORK A message to all members of TRANSITION U.S. SOCIAL NETWORK Good day, Transitioners in the US Social Network. Have you ever wondered who your fellow Transitioners are? The values the movement really represents? Priorities? Aspirations? Goals? Most popular activities? Have you ever wondered if local activities vary by gender, locality, or culture? Or whether aspirations and goals vary by age? What would you think if topnotch researchers from a topnotch university offered to help us answer these questions? This is exactly what Paolo Parigi, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, and Rachel Gong, PhD candidate in sociology, have offered to do. To gather the data and to analyze and deliver the results. Why are they particularly interested in us? Because they believe that the Transition Movement "...promotes the coordination of individual actions and behavior in order to solve large problems, such as a new organization of the economy based on environmental sustainability". And Paolo believes this "...represents a radical departure from other social movement organizations that have instead used street demonstrations, picketing, lobbying, etc. for their actions." Wow! Where do we start? MEET THE RESEARCHERS Get to know Paolo and Rachel. Review their research interests in political sociology, historical sociology, institutions that re-invent themselves, and methods of conducting research network analysis. TAKE THE SURVEY If you agree to participate in this research, click here to take the online survey. Please consider this 30-minute survey to be your contribution to the emerging picture of who we are. In the same way that more pixels in a digital photograph make for better resolution and color, the response you make to EACH QUESTION enriches the "dots" of our collective story. Paolo and Rachel will help us connect the dots and tell our story. Anecdotally and statistically. Such a gift! ASK QUESTIONS AND MAKE SUGGESTIONS As you take the survey keep a log of questions you would like to ask during the analysis. Paste them on this link. Les Squires Transition U.S. Social Network (Ning) Transition Global Social Network (Facebook) LSquiresSkype +1 303 926 5159 Visit TRANSITION U.S. SOCIAL NETWORK at: http://transitionus.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network To control which emails you receive on TRANSITION U.S. SOCIAL NETWORK, click here -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 13 22:37:23 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:37:23 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] NetNews February 14 2010 #1 Message-ID: <003801caad38$03433370$09c99a50$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS If you do not understand why it is so important to "re-localize" your community now and get those local currency systems in place, maybe when you finish reading this, the light will have dawned. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 8:37 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] NetNews February 14 2010 #1 (Entries are excerpts from website links. See links for full articles) (How much more mainstream can it get? This is from WALL STREET JOURNAL) The Next Crisis: Prepare for Peak Oil FEBRUARY 11, 2010, 5:47 A.M. ET http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704140104575057260398292350.ht ml As Europe's leaders gather in Brussels today, they have only one crisis in mind: the debts that threaten the stability of the European Union. They are unlikely to be in any mood to listen to warnings about a different crisis that is looming and that could cause massive disruption. A shortage of oil could be a real problem for the world within a fairly short period of time. It was unfortunate for the group which chose to point this out yesterday that they should have chosen to do so on the day the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, reported that the effects of the financial downturn had led to a slight downgrade in its forecast for oil consumption this year. But the work of the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security shouldn't be disparagingly dismissed. Its arguments are well founded and lead it to the conclusion that, while the global downturn may have delayed it by a couple of years, peak oil-the point at which global production reaches its maximum-is no more than five years away. Governments and corporations need to use the intervening years to speed up the development of and move toward other energy sources and increased energy efficiency. In the first report from the task force, Lord Ron Oxburgh, a former chairman of Shell, wrote that "It is pretty clear that there is not much chance of finding any significant quantity of new cheap oil. Any new or unconventional oil is going to be expensive." He went on to quote King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia commenting on a new oil find: "Leave it in the ground...our children need it." The latest report from the Taskforce points out how much modern economies depend on oil, whether for transport, heating or even fertilizer. Demand may have peaked in the developed world but any shrinkage there, is likely to be more than outweighed by the developing countries, with their rapidly expanding appetite for energy to fuel industry needs and consumer aspirations. The International Energy Agency, in its World Energy Outlook report last year, estimated global oil demand, currently running at just over 85 million barrels a day, could reach 105 million barrels a day by 2030. The Taskforce, assimilating various opinions, believes 92 million barrels a day will be the most that global supplies will be able to generate, "unless some unforeseen giant, and easily accessible, finds are reported very soon." Obama waging economic warfare on several fronts, including Japan By Wayne Madsen Feb 12, 2010, 00:46 http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5573.shtml (WMR) -- The Obama administration has expanded its economic warfare against other countries, first reported on January 18 by WMR in the case of an authorized financial campaign against Venezuela. The Obama administration, according to WMR's Asian sources, is waging an economic warfare campaign, coupled with industrial sabotage, against Japan through a pre-planned operation directed against the Japanese automobile manufacturer, Toyota. WMR has learned that the Obama administration authorized the anti-Toyota campaign as a warning shot to Japan over its reformist government's insistence that the U.S. pull its military troops out of Okinawa. WMR has learned that Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, have decided to turn the screws on Japan, not only for auto market leverage, but also to punish Japan over the insistence by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and the newly-elected anti-U.S. military mayor of Nago on Okinawa to move the U.S. military off of Okinawa. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a former congressman from Peoria, Illinois, and who is owned and operated by Peoria-based Caterpillar, whose major competitor is Japan's Kubota Tractor Corporation, kicked off the anti-Toyota campaign when he stated that all Toyoya owners should stop driving their vehicles and return them to the dealership for a fix. LaHood was referring to a problem with some uncontrolled acceleration problems with some Toyota vehicles. However, LaHood painted a wide brush in his comments about Toyotas when the problem, which resulted in a voluntary recall of millions of Toyota vehicles, including the popular Camry and Corolla, by the Japanese auto giant, affected only a small fraction of Toyota vehicles. LaHood has also threatened Toyota with unspecified civil penalties. Asian intelligence agencies have discovered that LaHood was implementing a White House operation to grab a major portion of Toyota's market share and hand it over the General Motors and Ford. The Obama administration, through its bailout of GM, has become a virtual auto company and, therefore, is playing economic hardball with Japan. Ford also benefited from the Obama administration's stimulus package. The chief architects of the anti-Toyota campaign, according to our sources, are Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House Chief of Staff Emanuel. By increasing GM's viability at the expense of Toyota, Geithner sees a potential windfall when the federal government sells its share of GM stock to the public. The corporate media have played along with the Obama administration's anti-Toyota and anti-Japan operation by hyping the safety issues with Toyota's vehicles, especially the popular Prius hybrid vehicle. The Obama administration has decided on economic warfare against Toyota to restore GM as the world's number one auto manufacturer, a position enjoyed by GM until 2007 when Toyota overtook it in sales. The Japanese government is aware of the machinations of the Obama administration in creating the controversy about Toyota. Tokyo is also acutely aware of the ill effects the Toyota recall is having on the value of the yen vis a vis the dollar. Ironically, Toyota does not make the sensor-equipped accelerator pedal for its recalled vehicles. Elkhart, Indiana-based CTS (formerly known as Chicago Telephone Supply) manufactures the pedals for Toyota, as well as for Ford and GM. China's Jiangling Motors has complained about sticking gas pedals from CTS and the firm has developed a reputation for faulty accelerator pedals and their associated sensors. CTS's president and CEO is India-born Vinod Khilnani. Curiously, the Obama administration, which is flush with Indian-Americans at high levels, has not criticized CTS, especially since it supplied the very same accelerator pedals it manufactures for Toyota and GM to the U.S. military. WMR has learned additional details about the hype by the Obama administration over Toyota's accelerator pedals. We are informed by a knowledgeable source that the earlier problem with 2002-2004 Toyota models regarding the so-called sticking floor mat has nothing to do with Toyota Corporation, since the mats are fastened to the floorboard with clips and there's a space around each pedal. The problem occurs when a cheap substitute carpet is installed by a garage or a cheating dealer. Toyota always prefers to see its own products used inside their vehicles. WMR has also learned that the Prius brake problem is not serious and that it is caused by a difference in torque when the car switches from engine to electric motors. Some may question why the Obama administration chose to target Toyota in its economic warfare campaign and not other Japanese auto manufacturers. The major shareholder in Isuzu is GM, which the Obama administration effectively owns. In addition, Ford owns Mazda. The CTS-manufactured accelerator pedal used in Toyotas relies on an electronic pressure sensor. WMR has been informed by knowledgeable sources that the sensors are vulnerable to non-civilian frequencies. The Obama administration, fearful that military transmissions may be responsible for accelerator accidents, may have sought to jump the gun by blaming Toyota for the accelerator problems. Rise in Home-Based Businesses Tests Neighborliness http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703357104575045681306759898.ht ml?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_6 FEBRUARY 12, 2010, 9:56 P.M. ET Local Officials Search for Ways to Support Economically Squeezed Entrepreneurs While Keeping Noise, Traffic in Check The recession is causing a growing number of people to venture into home businesses, a boost for the economy but a nuisance for neighbors. As jobless people trade their desks for kitchen tables, or as businesses reduce costs by giving up commercial storefronts, cities and states are grappling with problems caused by a rise in home businesses such as traffic and noise. Officials say they want to encourage people make a living at home but also keep these serenity busters at bay. Officials in Nashville, Tenn., are discussing ways to loosen restrictions governing the operation of home businesses as high unemployment prods a growing number of entrepreneurs into offering everything from hair perms to piano lessons out of their living rooms. Nashville's planning code allows home-based businesses as long as no customers come to the house-a rule that is causing problems for front-porch barbers and others. City officials are now drafting less-stringent zoning to bring before the planning commission this month. "We've got to recognize the changing and evolving economic environment of today without changing the character of neighborhoods," said Rick Bernhardt, Nashville's planning department planning director. Unemployment in the Greater Nashville area hit 9.4% in December, compared with 6.5% a year earlier. Mr. Bernhardt estimates there are now 14,000 business with licenses that are operating illegally because they are located in residential areas, in violation of zoning codes. In New Jersey, a bill proposed last month in the state legislature would make it easier for municipalities to approve home-based businesses. As many as one-third of all people who are laid off start home ventures, Republican Rep. Jay Webber wrote when introducing the legislation. He added that he considered it important to provide a "safe haven for the temporarily unemployed" to operate. What Do Empires Do? http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/13-0 by Michael Parenti Published on Saturday, February 13, 2010 by CommonDreams.org "What is going on here?" I asked myself at the time. How is it that so many people feel free to talk about empire when they mean a United States empire? The ideological orthodoxy had always been that, unlike other countries, the USA did not indulge in colonization and conquest. The answer, I realized, is that the word has been divested of its full meaning. "Empire" seems nowadays to mean simply dominion and control. Empire---for most of these late-coming critics--- is concerned almost exclusively with power and prestige. What is usually missing from the public discourse is the process of empire and its politico-economic content. In other words, while we hear a lot about empire, we hear very little about imperialism. Now that is strange, for imperialism is what empires are all about. Imperialism is what empires do. And by imperialism I do not mean the process of extending power and dominion without regard to material and financial interests. Indeed "imperialism" has been used by some authors in the same empty way that they use the word "empire," to simply denote dominion and control with little attention given to political economic realities. But I define imperialism as follows: the process whereby the dominant investor interests in one country bring to bear their economic and military power upon another nation or region in order to expropriate its land, labor, natural resources, capital, and markets-in such a manner as to enrich the investor interests. In a word, empires do not just pursue "power for power's sake." There are real and enormous material interests at stake, fortunes to be made many times over. So for centuries the ruling interests of Western Europe and later on North America and Japan went forth with their financiers---and when necessary their armies---to lay claim to most of planet Earth, including the labor of indigenous peoples, their markets, their incomes (through colonial taxation or debt control or other means), and the abundant treasures of their lands: their gold, silver, diamonds, copper, rum, molasses, hemp, flax, ebony, timber, sugar, tobacco, ivory, iron, tin, nickel, coal, cotton, corn, and more recently: uranium, manganese, titanium, bauxite, oil, and--say it again--oil. (Hardly a complete listing.) Empires are enormously profitable for the dominant economic interests of the imperial nation but enormously costly to the people of the colonized country. In addition to suffering the pillage of their lands and natural resources, the people of these targeted countries are frequently killed in large numbers by the intruders. This is another thing that empires do which too often goes unmentioned in the historical and political literature of countries like the United States, Britain, and France. Empires impoverish whole populations and kill lots and lots of innocent people. As I write this, President Obama and the national security state for which he works are waging two and a half wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, and northern Pakistan), and leveling military threats against Yemen, Iran, and, on a slow day, North Korea. Instead of sending medical and rescue aid to Haiti, Our Bomber sent in the Marines, the same Marines who engaged in years of mass murder in Haiti decades ago and supported more recent massacres by proxy forces. The purpose of all this killing is to prevent alternative, independent, self-defining nations from emerging. So the empire uses its state power to gather private wealth for its investor class. And it uses its public wealth to shore up its state power and prevent other nations from self-developing. Greece Could Take Europe's Economy Down With It Updated: 02-12-10 10:42 PM http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/12/greece-could-take-europes_n_461109. html Updated: 02-12-10 10:42 PM But it's not just about Greece any more. Thursday's European Union summit ended with vague assurances of mutual support but did not fundamentally change the financial markets' assessment. Other countries can also be cut off from easy ECB funding, so worries have spread through the euro zone to Spain and Portugal. Ireland and Italy are also up for hostile reconsideration by the markets, and Austria and Belgium may not be far behind. The Monopolization of America by Russell Mokhiber http://corporatecrimereporter.com/barrylynn021310.htm Published on Saturday, February 13, 2010 by Corporate Crime Reporter You walk into your local convenience store and head to the cold walk-in beer room in the back. The choice is overwhelming. Budweiser, Michelob, Bud Light, Busch Light, Stella Artois, Grolsch, Kirin,Tsingtao, Corona, Negra Modelo, Rolling Rock, Widmer, Miller and Coors. In fact, all of these beers are controlled by two companies. MillerCoors under the direction of South African Breweries (SAB) and AnheuserBusch In Bev. Two multinational corporations controlling the beer choices of 300 million Americans. And it's not just beer. One single multinational corporation dominates the world supply of eyeglass stores. One dominates the milk supply. Barry Lynn goes down the list of industries. And he finds a similar story across the board. A handful of multinational corporations controlling each industry - or the supply chains of each industry. Such dominant monopolies were illegal just thirty years ago. But that all changed with Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork. A corporatist oligarchy took hold. President Obama has promised aggressive antitrust enforcement. But Lynn says it's pie in the sky. "It will take more than a lawsuit or two to overthrow America's corporatist oligarchy and restore a model of capitalism that protects our rights as property holders and citizens," Lynn argues in his new book - Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (Wiley, 2010). The Day After Tomorrow Might Have Been Yesterday http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=2853 by Matthew Berger Saturday, February 13, 2010 by Inter Press Service WASHINGTON - When the 2004 film "The Day After Tomorrow" depicted the northern United States buried under tens of feet of snow following an abrupt change in global climate patterns, it cemented the association in the public consciousness between climate change and extreme weather events. While the three feet or so of snowfall in Washington and throughout the mid-Atlantic U.S. coast this past week was a far cry from the tidal waves and walls of ice that haunted Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid in the science-fiction thriller, it has nonetheless been an exceptional event - and one that has ground the capital to an extended standstill. As Washingtonians finally dug Friday to brave clogged metro trains and icy roads on the way to the office, one of the lasting impacts of the past week is the discussions it has provoked about how climate change has impacted the current weather - and how this weather might impact the ongoing debate here over how the U.S. government should address the threat of climate change. "Record snow is not in any way, shape, or form evidence against climate science and in fact it is largely consistent with it," Joseph Romm, a former Energy Department official in President Bill Clinton's administration and the editor of the Centre for American Progress's Climate Progress blog, said Thursday. Traffickers targeting Haiti's children, human organs, PM says By Tom Evans, CNN January 28, 2010 -- Updated 0321 GMT (1121 HKT) (CNN) -- Trafficking of children and human organs is occurring in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated parts of Haiti, killed more than 150,000 people, and left many children orphans, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive said Wednesday. "There is organ trafficking for children and other persons also, because they need all types of organs," Bellerive said in an exclusive interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour. He did not give specifics, but asked by Amanpour if there is trafficking of children, Bellerive said, "The reports I received say yes." Haiti is trying to locate displaced children and register them so they can either be reunited with other family members or put up for adoption, Bellerive said. But, he said, illegal child trafficking is "one of the biggest problems that we have." Many groups appear to be legitimate, "but a lot of organizations -- they come and they say there were children on the streets. They're going to bring them to the [United] States," he said. Bellerive said he's trying to work with embassies in Port-au-Prince to protect Haiti's children from traffickers. "Any child that is leaving the country has to be validated by the embassy under a list that they give me, with all the reports," he said. Vermont's radioactive nightmare By Harvey Wasserman Feb 12, 2010, 00:38 http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5570.shtml Like a decayed flotilla of rickety steamers, at least 27 of America's 104 aging atomic reactors are known to be leaking radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer if inhaled or ingested through the throat or skin. The fallout has been fiercest at Vermont Yankee, where a flood of cover-ups has infuriated and terrified near neighbors who say the reactor was never meant to operate more than 30 years, and must now shut. In 2007, one of Yankee's 22 cooling towers simply collapsed due to rot. Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has confirmed tritium levels in a monitoring well at Vernon to be 3.5 times the federal safety standard. The leaks apparently came from underground pipes whose very existence was recently denied by VY officials in under-oath testimony at a public hearing. Vermont's pro-nuclear Republican Governor Jim Douglas has termed the event "a breach of trust that cannot be tolerated." Yankee is owned by Entergy, a Mississippi-based consortium that also owns New York's Indian Point reactor, which suffered an internal gusher of radioactive water in May, 2009. Another leak has just been found at Oconee in South Carolina. Illinois' Braidwood leaked so many millions of gallons of tritium-laced water that its owner, Exelon, was forced to buy a new municipal water system for a nearby town. Entergy says none of Yankee's tritium has been found in local drinking water or in the Connecticut River, which supplies the plant's cooling water. Vernon sits near Vermont's southeast border with Massachusetts, across the river from New Hampshire. "The existence of tritium in such low levels does not present a risk to public health or safety whatsoever," says the company's Robert Williams. But VY is just the latest of more than two dozen U.S. nuclear plants -- many built in the 1960s and '70s -- to be found with leaking tritium. Last year at New Jersey's Oyster Creek, tritium was reported leaking a second time shortly after Exelon got it a 20-year license extension. Entergy's Pilgrim reactor, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, has recently leaked tritium into the ground. The NRC's Neil Sheehan has confirmed leaks involving 27 of 104 licensed US reactors, and says that probably doesn't account for all of them. At Yankee, Oyster Creek and elsewhere, rotting pipes are the likeliest culprit, but no one is 100 percent certain. Indeed, a desperate national industry now pushing for massive federal subsidies to build new reactors may not survive a flood of elderly clunkers being forced to close by the weight of their own contamination. "This is an industry trying to build a new fleet of Titanics while the old ones are sinking," says Katz. San Francisco's Toxic Sludge - It's Good for You! http://www.prwatch.org/node/8885 Fifteen years ago, CMD's book Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! first exposed the hidden government and industry PR campaign greenwashing toxic sewage sludge as "biosolids," an invented PR euphemism used to cynically re-brand toxic waste as "fertilizer" given free to farmers. Today, unfortunately, the biosolids scam is bigger than ever. The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) reports that "San Francisco has come up with an ingenious plot to trick city residents into taking their toxic sewage sludge back and disposing of it in their own gardens. San Francisco is having Synagro, the corporate giant of the toxic sludge industry, 'compost' some of the toxic sewage sludge. Then they give it away to San Francisco's gardeners telling us it's 'high-quality, nutrient-rich, organic Biosolids Compost.' " OCA has launched a grassroots campaign calling on San Francisco's mayor to stop the practice, noting "municipal sewage sludge routinely contains thousands of dangerous pathogens, toxic heavy metals, flame retardants, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, pharmaceutical drugs and other hazardous chemicals coming from residential drains, storm water runoff, hospitals, and industrial plants." As Times Get Tough, It is Time for Beans and Rice Sunday, January 24, 2010 by: Paul Fassa, citizen journalist http://www.naturalnews.com/028007_food_shortage_costs.html With jobs getting scarce and the economy falling amidst rumors of food shortages in large communities, here is a suggestion. Use bulk rice and beans. You'll cut your food costs considerably if you shop for bulk rice and beans at your local organic food supplier. Good nutrition and high fiber, and a good deal of protein, are included. You may be surprised at how tasty this staple can be. Avoid even organic canned beans. By now you should know about the health hazards from linings inside of cans. Besides, those items have been precooked, heavily compromising their nutritional value. Don't bother with any packaged rice. You'll spend more for less without getting the best rice. Go to the bulk sections of your health food store where there are organic grains and dry beans. The combinations of olive oil and lime or lemon, or perhaps a fermented soy sauce or a liquid amino sauce, along with chopped onions or tomatoes or some finely chopped nuts or ground flax seeds over the beans and rice adds nutrition, flavor, and variety. Black beans and white rice with lots of olive oil, some chopped onions, and a generous squeeze of lime or lemon is a favorite Cuban dish. Brown rice with lentils or garbanzos is great too. Peas and chopped nuts can be used with either rice as well. Trial and error with other combinations will be inexpensive, fulfilling, and healthy. You'll be spending less for food now while keeping bulk items on hand for the future. It may be wise to start experimenting with various combinations so you'll be used to mixing and matching these basic foods for your benefit before things get worse. Reid and Obama Abandon the Jobs Front By Matthew Rothschild, February 12, 2010 http://www.progressive.org/wx021210.html What planet are Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrats on? Obama's own economic advisers say that unemployment is going to average 10 percent this year and 9.2 percent next year. And yet all that Harry Reid now is proposing to spend on a new jobs bill is $15 billion over the next decade, which is peanuts. And most of those peanuts are going directly to businesses, which is the least efficient way to stimulate the economy. There is no money to extend unemployment benefits. There is no money to extend health care coverage to the unemployed. There is no money to support state governments, which are having to make vicious cuts to balance their own budgets. There is no money to create a federal jobs program. It's as though Reid and Obama don't care that there are almost 15 million unemployed Americans right now and that this number is unlikely to get much lower any time soon. Study shows working families choose between shelter, medical care and food February 12, 2010 http://www.inteldaily.com/2010/02/study-shows-working-families-choose-betwee n-shelter-medical-care-and-food/ According to a February 2010 study by Feeding America, the largest hunger relief organization in the country, one in eight people living in the United States sought emergency food relief in 2009. Nearly half of food bank clients reported having to choose between buying food and paying for utilities or heat, yet more than one-third of these households have at least one adult who works. Thirty-nine percent of food relief clients choose between rent or a mortgage payment and food, an increase of 59 percent over 2006 figures. When it comes to choosing between medical bills or transportation and food, the numbers are similar: 34 and 35 percent, respectively. Food insecurity and hunger is growing across the United States, the wealthiest country in the world. Seventy-nine percent of households with children served by Feeding America are food insecure, meaning they do not always know where they will find their next meal. The number of children seeking food assistance has increased by 50 percent since 2006. - (PSL) My Big Fat Greek Bailout http://www.prwatch.org/node/8886 While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was on the talk shows reassuring America that the economy is healing, developments in Europe threatened to cut the legs out from under a U.S. recovery. The short story is that Greece and a number of other European Union (EU) countries are in debt, deep in debt. EU rules say member countries cannot have budget deficits that exceed three percent of GDP. Greece's debt is closer to 12 percent. They have been hiding it for years, in part relying on major U.S. banks and so-called "cross-currency swaps," complex financial instruments that allow governments to hide their debts and push their liabilities into the future. The German magazine Der Spiegel broke the story that Greece did a billion-dollar swap with Goldman Sachs in 2002 that did not show up on the nation's books as debt. Now the bill is coming due. Greece is in trouble, and EU leaders are failing to take decisive action, roiling the markets. The Euro is trading near an eight-month low against the dollar and some are predicting another major shock to the global financial system. Are We On The Verge Of An Economic War With Russia And China? http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/are-we-on-the-verge-of-an-econom ic-war-with-russia-and-china Has our exploding national debt become an economic weapon of mass destruction in the hands of the Russians and the Chinese? Have increasing tensions between East and West put us on the verge of an economic war with those two superpowers? Those who are convinced that the Russians and Chinese would never work together to collapse the U.S. economy should really consider what former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is saying in his new book. Paulson's new book is entitled "On The Brink", and in it he claims that the Russians contacted the Chinese in 2008 and proposed that both nations dump their Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds at the same time in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies by the U.S. government. Fortunately, China declined to go along with Russia's proposal at the time, but this revelation just underscores the economic danger that the United States has gotten itself into. You see, if the Chinese and the Russians had done that, it would have set off mass panic in the financial markets. It would have been an unmitigated economic disaster. Due to our greed and our reckless spending, we have gotten ourselves into a situation where China and Russia have a tremendous amount of leverage on us. Near the end of 2009, China owned U.S. Treasuries worth approximately $789 billion, and Russia owned U.S. Treasuries worth approximately $128 billion. If China and Russia decided to dump their Treasuries in unison it could literally devastate the U.S. economy. Already the Federal Reserve is having to "purchase" the vast majority of all new U.S. Treasuries. The talking heads on the cable networks claim that this kind of "Ponzi scheme" by the Fed cannot continue indefinitely, but the U.S. government is continuing to spend recklessly and nobody else is stepping up to buy our new debt. So what would happen if China and Russia suddenly decided to dump nearly a trillion in U.S. Treasuries on the market? Must re-read statement from UK's Royal Society and Met Office on the connection between global warming and extreme weather February 13, 2010 http://climateprogress.org/2010/02/13/science-met-office-and-royal-society-o n-the-connection-between-global-warming-and-extreme-weather/ We expect some of the most significant impacts of climate change to occur when natural variability is exacerbated by long-term global warming, so that even small changes in global temperatures can produce damaging local and regional effects. Year on year the evidence is growing that damaging climate and weather events - potentially intensified by global warming - are already happening and beginning to affect society and ecosystems. This includes: * In the UK, heavier daily rainfall leading to local flooding such as in the summer of 2007; * Increased risk of summer heat waves such as the summers of 2003 across the UK and Europe; * Around the world, increasing incidence of extreme weather events with unprecedented levels of damage to society and infrastructure. This year's unusually destructive typhoon season in South East Asia, while not easy to attribute directly to climate change, illustrates the vulnerabilities to such events; * Sea level rises leading to dangerous exposure of populations in, for example, Bangladesh, the Maldives and other island states; * Persistent droughts, leading to pressures on water and food resources, and the increasing incidence of forest fires in regions where future projections indicate long term reductions in rainfall, such as South West Australia and the Mediterranean. These emerging signals are consistent with what we expect from our projections, giving us confidence in the science and models that underpin them. In the absence of action to mitigate climate change, we can expect much larger changes in the coming decades than have been seen so far. That is from the November statement by the Met Office (the UK's National Weather Service [i.e. meteorological office], within the Ministry of Defence), the Natural Environment Research Council, and the UK's Royal Society (the UK's national academy of science, "the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence," founded in 1660). Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme? March 8, 2009 http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/08/ponzi-scheme-madoff-friedman-natural-c apital-renewable-resources/ Yes, homo "sapiens" sapiens have constructed the grandest of Ponzi schemes, whereby current generations have figured out how to live off the wealth of future generations. Yes, we are all in essence Madoffs (many wittingly, most not) or at least his most credulous clients. What comes next will be the subject of a multipart series. I had been planning to write something on this for a while when NYT columnist Tom Friedman interviewed me for "The Inflection Is Near?" which appears in today's New York Times: "We created a way of raising standards of living that we can't possibly pass on to our children," said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks - water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land - and not by generating renewable flows. "You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior," added Romm. "But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, 'This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate .' Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy." A few years ago I thought that aggressive action by governments around the world to push clean energy could spare the public dramatic lifestyle changes in the coming decades, but I have been convinced otherwise by * the failure of U.S. leadership [thank you George W. Bush and the conservative movement stagnation] * the remarkable shift in our understanding of climate science in the past two years (here, here, and here) * China's decision to join the Ponzi scheme full throttle and emulate our rapaciousness (see here and here), and * a recent, brilliant talk I heard (a teaser for a future post). The adults, in short, are not standing up. Sadly, most haven't even taken the time to understand that they should (see "Most opinion leaders just don't get global warming"). And so every generation that comes after the Baby Boomers are poised to experience the dramatic changes in lifestyle that inevitably follow the collapse of any Ponzi scheme. EPA's decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions is challenged The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says it will file a petition with the agency, which will probably lead to a court battle. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-chamber-epa13-2010feb13,0 ,3494159.story February 13, 2010 Reporting from Washington - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced late Friday that it would challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, setting the stage for a protracted legal battle with the Obama administration over global warming. The chamber said it was filing a petition with the agency challenging the EPA's process in determining that greenhouse gases endanger human health and are thus subject to Clean Air Act regulation. The challenge is likely to lead to a court battle. Chamber officials said they support action in Congress and international treaty negotiations to reduce greenhouse gases. But they said the EPA overreached in acting on its own and produced a flawed finding that would lead to other poorly conceived regulations in the future. An EPA spokeswoman said that although the agency had not seen the chamber's petition, the "EPA issued its endangerment finding as a result of a 2007 Supreme Court decision and after a thorough and transparent review of the soundest science available." From ceasig at gmail.com Sun Feb 14 09:09:47 2010 From: ceasig at gmail.com (Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion & Governance) Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:39:47 +0530 Subject: [GJM] Concept note for an international conference on Alternativesto Usurious and Ecologically Hostile Finance System In-Reply-To: <007001caa144$54e0b0e0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> References: <31f677a31001260241g54438b90y8e4ec038bc595285@mail.gmail.com> <007001caa144$54e0b0e0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Message-ID: <31f677a31002140809r433f225oa70fa9e9e63727ca@mail.gmail.com> Dear Rodney, I would like to thank you for your response with a statement on your position about printed money . I would like to assure you that the conference is greared for the generating concrete recommendations for the transforming the system and not supportive of a printed money as such. I think it would be better if you advice on the people whom u think should be invited for the conference. Kindly also suggest on those who should not be invited for the conference advised for the conference whom you think are supportive of the printed money.I strongly agree with your position. However , you may appreciate that this position will have to be argued among those who have not yet thought about this angle. I think discussions in New Delhi has not yet picked up and there are some who are so ignorant that they link interest-free loans as part of the Islamic agenda. I think your participation in the conference would be critical in the generating the discourse here in India for reforming the finance sector with the provision for 'Interest-free *loans* for the development and spreading of productive (and associated consuming) capacity to everybody in the society....that includes interest-free loans for public capital, environmental capital, micro-credit etc ).' A date for the conference is now proposed in June and Insha-Allah this would be finalised day after tomorrow in consultation with M J Khan of Center for Agriculture and Rural Development and Editors of Agrculture Today and Krishi Today (Hindi) www.card.org.in With warmest regards Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam On 30 January 2010 06:06, Rodney Shakespeare < rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com> wrote: > Dear Mukhtar, > > Thanks for the information. > > I am sorry to be blunt but Islam overall has a clear view on certain > matters. Thus it is rightly opposed to *riba*,. for example, (and you > splendidly uphold that opposition) but such opposition does *not*logically lead on to support for 'printed' money which is antipathetic to > Islam. . Only interest-free *loans* are acceptable in Islam. > > You may not be aware but, in the UK, I do not attend, let alone speak > at, any form of Islamic conferences in which there is an obvious element of > the promotion of 'printed' money'. > > Interest-free *loans* for the development and spreading of productive (and > associated consuming) capacity to everybody in the society is what is > acceptable to Islam (and that includes interest-free loans for public > capital, environmental capital, micro-credit etc ). > > Rodney Shakespeare. > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > *From:* Centre For Ecological Audit,Social Inclusion & Governance > *To:* Discussion Forum for Global Justice; Norman > G. Kurland ; David Pidcock ; > abdassamad at muslimsofnorwich.org.uk ; AMI ; Dr.BD Sharma; Masud > Choudhury ; S Purkayastha > *Cc:* M J Khan > *Sent:* Tuesday, January 26, 2010 10:41 AM > *Subject:* [GJM] Concept note for an international conference on > Alternativesto Usurious and Ecologically Hostile Finance System > > Dear Rodney and all distinguished members of Global Justice Movement, > > I am pleased to share that an international conference for disuccing the > alternative to the dominant atheistic and ecologically hostile economic > paradigm is being organised in New Delhi with the key facilitation by Centre > for Agriculture and Rural Development on 21 and 22 April, 2010. I have > included names of potential speakers. The list could have more .Please > advice.I would like to share the concept note for the conference for your > comments. Your support and advice would enable us to realise the > objectives. > > Yours sincerely > > Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam > > > > > On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Rodney Shakespeare < > rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com> wrote: > >> Mukhtar, >> Exactly >> Rodney S. >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> *From:* Centre For Ecological Audit,Social Inclusion & Governance >> *To:* Discussion Forum for Global Justice >> *Sent:* Friday, January 22, 2010 3:14 PM >> *Subject:* Re: [GJM] Total Lack of Imagination,and Creativity!! The LSE >> Encounter. >> >> Dear Rodney, >> >> You are right, do these economist taught on the theory of interest would >> ever delearn the lesson. In the post usury economy, I think we will have to >> ensure that the new paradigm is made a mandatory part of curriculum before >> this is instituted across the world. >> >> Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam >> >> On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Rodney Shakespeare < >> rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com> wrote: >> >>> Robert, >>> Good try >>> >>> These conventional academic economists are hopeless. At a time when >>> President Obama is supposedly launching an attack at least on parts of the >>> banking system for the disaster it has caused, these nerks having nothing >>> to say. >>> >>> Rodney Shakespear.e >>> >>> ----- Original Message ----- >>> *From:* robert searle >>> *To:* discussion at globaljusticemovement.net >>> *Sent:* Friday, January 22, 2010 10:37 AM >>> *Subject:* [GJM] Total Lack of Imagination, and Creativity!! The LSE >>> Encounter. >>> >>> >>> >>> I went on Wednesday to the LSE meeting in regards to the status quo of >>> economics. It had some distinguished guests including Professor Ormerod, and >>> Professor Hodgson. They gave some insignts into the parlous, and highly >>> questionable nature of mainstream economics. But inevitably they did not >>> offer anything new, or anything of real importance. >>> >>> After the presentations there was a session in which the mainly student >>> audience asked some questions. However, they had the tendency of rambling >>> on, and on...until my time came... >>> >>> I made the point in no uncertain terms that economics lack imagination, >>> and creativity! This caused a stir, and the audience laughed, or in part >>> "glared" at me. I went further by suggesting the need for a new global >>> paradigm, and referred to my developing project of TRANSFINANCIAL ECONOMICS >>> which I believe could be the system of the future. I also made the point >>> that money itself was created electronically by banks out of thin air by >>> means of credit creation. I got the distinct impression that in spite of >>> their education the audience did not really fully understand the full import >>> of what was said..though I may be wrong. >>> >>> Anyway, Professor Hodgson seemed to indicate that no paradigm could be >>> ruled out, and another academic hinted at the possibility of misuse of >>> anything new. This is just the gist of what they seemed to have said. >>> >>> >>> http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics >>> >>> >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hodgson >>> >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ormerod >>> >>> >>> >>> ------------------------------ >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Discussion mailing list >>> Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net >>> >>> http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Discussion mailing list >>> Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net >>> >>> http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net >>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> Endeavoring for ecological safety ,social inclusion and distributive >> justice for the renewable resource based livelihoods and habitats, Centre >> For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion and Governance (CEASIG) , an >> initiative of Labour League Foundation, Sewa and Sufi Trust , Delhi aims for >> socially inclusive and ecologically safe future for all through organizing >> and communicating carbon neutral neighborhood discussions/ consultations, >> building capacities in ecological audit, ecologically safe networking >> ,advocacy, interfaith dialogue & other related domains for multiplying >> personal, community , governmental and corporate actions for ecologically >> safe education, ecological audit ,and, ecologically safe and socially >> inclusive governance. >> Contact Details: 58-C,DDA Flats, Ashok Vihar-III, Delhi-110052 >> Phones: 0968345380 >> http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com >> http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com >> http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam >> >> ------------------------------ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discussion mailing list >> Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net >> >> http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Discussion mailing list >> Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net >> >> http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net >> >> > > > -- > Endeavoring for ecological safety ,social inclusion and distributive > justice for the renewable resource based livelihoods and habitats, Centre > For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion and Governance (CEASIG) , an > initiative of Labour League Foundation, Sewa and Sufi Trust , Delhi aims for > socially inclusive and ecologically safe future for all through organizing > and communicating carbon neutral neighborhood discussions/ consultations, > building capacities in ecological audit, ecologically safe networking > ,advocacy, interfaith dialogue & other related domains for multiplying > personal, community , governmental and corporate actions for ecologically > safe education, ecological audit ,and, ecologically safe and socially > inclusive governance. > Contact Details: 58-C,DDA Flats, Ashok Vihar-III, Delhi-110052 > Phones: 0968345380 > http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com > http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com > http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Discussion mailing list > Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net > > http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net > > > _______________________________________________ > Discussion mailing list > Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net > > http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net > > -- Endeavoring for ecological safety ,social inclusion and distributive justice for the renewable resource based livelihoods and habitats, Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion and Governance (CEASIG) , an initiative of Labour League Foundation, Sewa and Sufi Trust , Delhi aims for socially inclusive and ecologically safe future for all through organizing and communicating carbon neutral neighborhood discussions/ consultations, building capacities in ecological audit, ecologically safe networking ,advocacy, interfaith dialogue & other related domains for multiplying personal, community , governmental and corporate actions for ecologically safe education, ecological audit ,and, ecologically safe and socially inclusive governance. Contact Details: 58-C,DDA Flats, Ashok Vihar-III, Delhi-110052 Phones: 0968345380 http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: International_Conference.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 506008 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 14 10:25:55 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:25:55 -0800 Subject: [GJM] VERY IMPORTANT READ FW: Emergence of Sacred Feminine in Tibetan lineage Message-ID: <001d01caad9a$fe9cfaf0$fbd6f0d0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Deki, thank you for sending this. What we are seeing after many thousand years of masculine rule, mainly through male-dominate religious belief systems, the Sacred Feminine is emerging once again. However, If we go back historically into the Neolithic Age, we find reverence for the Great Mother and the Goddess as She was also called long before God came into view. In her search of approximately 30,000 archaeological sites in the Fertile Crescent Region of what is now known as Iraq, archaeologist Marija Gimbutas discovered only sacraments devoted to worship of the sacred feminine and nowhere were there any signs of weapons denoting that this peaceful matriarchal-based society indulged in armed conflict. In her book: ?The Chalice and the Blade,? Riane Eisler traces this peaceful society from its beginnings until the time of its invasion by Aryans and Hebrews and exposes the suppression of women by what I often refer to as ?the Kurgan Cattle Culture Consciousness? that rode to world dominance on the back of ?the world steer.? While the Kurgan?s role in the suppression of women has been documented in many books, one of the most revealing is Jeremy Rifkin?s ?Beyond Beef? in which he documents how the ancient Mythraic religion (which was based in the worship of the bull) morphed into Christianity with many of the Mythraic rites being adopted by Christianity under the rule of Pope Constantine. The Kurgans were the first to breed horses the size of which could support a man. This then allowed them to amass large herds of cattle bred from the giant Arochs of that time. The Arochs, which stood seven to eight feet tall, are the ancestors of the Texas Longhorn. And, it is possible for one to trace the evolution and migration of cattle down through the ages as the Kurgan Cattle Culture Consciousness spread throughout six continents ?on the back of the world steer.? Columbus was the first to bring cattle into the Americas where the desecration of the indigenous people of the Americas began. (More later on this.) Eisler?s book is said by Ashley Montagu to be ?The Most Important Book Since Darwin?s Origin of the Species? yet we find relatively few who have read this tale based by Eisler on the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. However, worldwide we are seeing, as Deki has brought us here, the emergence of the Sacred Feminine becoming an ever-stronger influence in our world society as the time comes for us to honor once and for all the rule of: ?Thou shall not kill? as we move into another level of consciousness and recognize all people as being equally worthy of the right to life. Books related to Eisler?s works are: ?When God Was A Woman? by Merlin Stone, and in some respects: ?Spontaneous Evolution? by Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman. Here is an overview of The Chalice and the Blade for your consideration. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cfford/342Chalice.htm Today Dr. Eisler works tirelessly for a return to the ?Partnership Society? as a way of life. http://www.partnershipway.org/about-cps/cps-team/founders; www.partnershipway.org From: DekiFox at aol.com [mailto:DekiFox at aol.com] Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 5:29 PM To: DekiFox at aol.com Subject: Emergence of Sacred Feminine in Tibetan lineage Hi ~ Because of your interest in various manifestations of the sacred feminine, I wanted to share news about the emergence of same in the Tibetan practice. It's not like the 'news' is new, just that I am blessed to have become aware of this, and I'm excited to share! Below are a few links where you can learn more about Tara Mandala in Colorado, and Lama Tsultrim Allione, the American-born woman through whom this emergence is taking place as I write. Tara Temple Progress http://www.taramandala.org/ TaraMandala Symbolically, the Mandala of Tara, the female Buddha of compassion, is a kind of template of the awakened mind. To experience the phenomenal world as an integrated mandala of compassion is ?Tara Mandala.? Tsultrim Allione http://www.kapalatraining.com/tsultrim.htm Lama Tsultrim Allione Lama Tsultrim was one of the first American women to be ordained as a Tibetan nun in 1970 by the 16th Karmapa. At the age of 26, after four years as a nun, she returned her monastic vows, married, and raised a family of three. Tsultrim's main inspiration in her life of service to the Dharma is with the sacred feminine. When she was a nun in Asia she became aware of the gender discrimination in the traditional Tibetan culture. In the Buddhist religious texts, there are many references to the sacred feminine, in the form of female teachers, deities, and symbolism, but the real-life of female practitioners was far from ideal. Nuns were not able to receive as many teachings as monks. Later, in the early 1980's after becoming a mother and watching how that affected her practice, she yearned to find the stories of other women practitioners, culminating in the classic book Women of Wisdom which captures the biographies of different Tibetan Buddhist practitioners. These practitioners faced many of the same issues that women face today - having children, and the pressure of family life; discrimination because of gender - and provide contemporary practitioners with role models to base their practice on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmXuufmzDI Lama Tsultrim Allione Part 7: The Temple at Tara Mandala Deki Fox Lake Geneva, Wisconsin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 14 19:07:52 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:07:52 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] "The U.S. is a corporatocracy": Interview with Carolyn Baker Message-ID: <006e01caade3$e6b9acf0$b42d06d0$@net> -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 8:24 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] "The U.S. is a corporatocracy": Interview with Carolyn Baker Feb 03, 2010 "The U.S. is a corporatocracy": Interview with Carolyn Baker by Von Lars Schall (from MM News (Germany): Feb. 2, 2010) http://transition-times.com/2010/02/03/the-u-s-is-a-corporatocracy-interview -with-carolyn-baker/ US-historian and author Carolyn Baker is a critical commentator of social justice and environmental events. In an exclusive interview for MMNews she discusses the connection between 9-11 and Peak Oil, the coming food crisis, Permaculture and the Sustainability Movement in the U.S. Carolyn Baker holds a PhD in Counseling, has published four books, was Managing Editor for "From the Wilderness" (www.fromthewilderness.com) and for 11 years an adjunct professor of history and psychology. Furthermore, she manages Speaking Truth to Power at www.carolynbaker.net, a website offering breaking alternative news and options for navigating unprecedented transitions. She published in February of last year her latest book "Sacred Demise. Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse", which is available at her website and at Amazon. She lives in Colorado, U.S.A. Ms. Baker, is it fine with you to kick off this interview with a little historical talk? Certainly. Okay, then seen from a historical point of view: are there similarities that you observe between the era of the Great Depression and the financial / economic crisis of our time? Not only are there similarities, but in my opinion, we are in the beginning stages of the Second Great Depression. Anyone who reads the work of Ellen Brown, Chris Martenson, Kevin Phillips, Catherine Austin Fitts, Bob Chapman, John Williams, or Michael Hudson, knows that it is only a matter of time until the gargantuan debt bubble created in the past two decades will explode in the coming years or months, resulting in global economic cataclysm. In tandem with this collapse will be massive food shortages and an unprecedented crisis in food production worldwide. One part of the problem is what Ellen Brown would call "the Web of Debt". A massive chunk of the federal debt that the U.S. is accumulating is spend at the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), especially under the Administration of George W. Bush. May you tell us a bit about the genealogy of the MIC as part of American history in the 20th Century? How did it become so important for the U.S. economy and why did war profiteering became the career of choice in the Beltway? Doesn't it mean that Anton Chekhov's classic observation will fulfil itself: "If there's a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off"? We have primarily World War II to thank for the burgeoning of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). That war was fought in part to pull America out of the Great Depression and to establish the United States as the world's number one super-power. Although Dwight Eisenhower, a five-star general in World War II, warned us in the last hours of his presidency in 1960 to "beware the military industrial complex," it had already become a fait accompli for the weapons industry and those who were shaping American foreign policy. The creation of the CIA in 1947 was ideal for fomenting conflicts around the world, overthrowing governments, and not only establishing the supremacy of the U.S. around the globe, but assuring massive profits for the weapon's industry. After all, in this way we "kill two birds with one stone", so to speak, as we extend our nationalist imperialist agenda and at the same time, help the weapon's industry flourish. Along this line, everyone should read, unpleasant as it may be, Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. This brilliant tome provides superbly documented research on U.S. foreign and economic policy during the past 60 years that connects the dots and reveals how the "web of debt" and the MIC make perfect sense to the ruling elite. Ms. Baker, I know that you pay close attention to the phenomenon of Peak Oil. Now there are different approaches one could deal with Peak Oil. The problem itself is not new to federal agencies in the U.S. like for example the CIA. In an article entitled "Smoking Gun", Richard Heinberg documented that the CIA had an interest in Peak Oil since the 1970's onward. 1 Nevertheless, it seems as if the US-Government in the new century wants to solve this long anticipated problem through warfare. Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied by American troops, Saudi Arabia's neighbour Yemen seems to be next on the target list. Would it be still absurd to say that the primary goal of these wars exists in the plan to secure the crude oil supply for the U.S.A. in years to come? Yes, I think that is entirely accurate. Michael Klare's book Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict documents that essentially, almost all global conflicts will from hereon be driven by the quest for energy and resources. While to some extent this has always been the case, the reality of Peak Oil and the thirst for hydrocarbon energy as a means of maintaining civilization's lifestyle, now guarantees increasing and widening conflicts worldwide. The justification for going to war against Afghanistan and Iraq originated from the terror attacks that took place in New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11th, 2001. As an historian do you see evidence that those terror attacks on American soil and the phenomenon Peak Oil are directly connected to each other? Indeed I do see them as inextricably connected, and no one has researched this more thoroughly than Mike Ruppert in Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of The American Empire at The End of The Age of Oil. In Rubicon, the author in some 700 pages with over 1000 footnotes, documents that the attacks were orchestrated by entities within the United States government which were intimately connected with the petroleum industry. What we have seen in Iraq and what we are now seeing in Afghanistan confirms Ruppert's hypothesis. We know for example, that former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, stated in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, that the United States must direct its foreign policy and military muscle toward reinforcing that policy in Eurasia-the precise area in which Afghanistan is located and surrounded by a number of other oil-rich nations. Like Shock Doctrine, Crossing The Rubicon is an absolutely must-read for anyone endeavouring to grasp U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century. The official narration of 9-11 was never put in doubt by the mainstream media in the U.S. Furthermore, the mainstream press does not discuss Peak Oil to the extent it should. May this have something to do with the inter-action between monopoly capital and monopoly culture as an entire social order? The media and publishing houses in the U.S. "are not", as author Michael Parenti points out, "merely influenced by business ideology but are themselves profit-making corporate conglomerates".2 That given, isn't the truth always in danger if it doesn't chime with the economic interests of the Big Money Boys?7 Well, let's start with Peak Oil. In the 1950s, M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist, introduced the concept to the America and the world and was taken seriously by no one. He had predicted that oil production in the U.S. would peak in 1970, and as a matter of fact, it did. The U.S. government has known about Peak Oil for at least 60 years and has done nothing about it because the United States is a corporatocracy in which it is virtually impossible to distinguish where the power of corporations ends and the power of the federal government begins. No politician who intends to get elected or re-elected is going to talk about Peak Oil. It's not good for business, and politicians don't like to bring bad news to their constituents. So until the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the energy issue was swept under the rug. Mike Ruppert points this out in his book (not the movie but the book) Collapse. In the 1970s, Carter went on TV and told Americans that there was a deep energy crisis, that they must lower their energy consumption, drive 55 mph, and turn down their thermostats. He too was scorned, and was not re-elected to a second term. Many factors played a role in his defeat, but his insistence on energy conservation and a focus on developing renewables, was a part of his demise. I completely agree with Michael Parenti's analysis above. It is one reason why in 2006 I began publishing the Speaking Truth to Power website at www.carolynbaker.net, a site that operates on a subscription model and provides its subscribers 7 days a week with not only alternative news regarding the unprecedented transitions we are facing, but also options for navigating them. In the year 2006 you went so far to call the government of the U.S. a "Godfather Government".3 Can you tell us please why you came up with this conclusion? And do see a significant change since Barack Obama is President? Yes, I was one of few in 2006 who was naming the United States government what it is-a criminal enterprise. Again, Shock Doctrine and Crossing The Rubicon document the levels of corruption in government and the symbiosis between government and corporate capitalism as I also do in my book U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Doesn't Tell You. Here in the U.S. we have just lost one of the most remarkable historians in the modern world, Howard Zinn. Zinn's historical analysis greatly inspired me to write U.S. History Uncensored, and that analysis greatly informed my book. One reader went so far as to call my book "Howard Zinn on steroids." Yes, there has been a significant change since Obama was elected, and that change is that the corruption has deepened and expanded exponentially! Goldman Sachs now virtually runs the U.S. Treasury. One need only Google the name Matt Taibbi and read his research regarding Goldman Sachs' role in the financial collapse of 2008, and as you read it, remember that that corporation contributed more money to Obama's campaign than any other. A friend recently sent me a cartoon in which a young man approaches his father and says, "Dad, I'm thinking about a career in organized crime." The father replies, "In government or in the private sector?" Another thing that you pay close attention to is food production. In order to get to my next question, I would like to quote Marshall Auerback from an interview I had with him. Mr Auerback stated that: "Oil is undoubtedly a very important component of the global economy and energy (along with food) is a key non-discretionary essential without which we couldn't sustain our current standard of living."4 Ms. Baker, can you connect the dots between both "key non-discretionary essentials", please, by telling how hydrocarbon-intensive food production is in modern times? Well, the best way to see this all in one fell swoop is to watch The End of Suburbia which superbly documents how hydrocarbon-intensive food production is.5 Another way is to read Dale Allen Pfeiffer's groundbreaking article which was originally published as a From The Wilderness exclusive entitled "Eating Fossil Fuels."6 All food products grown in the ground by way of factory farming, which has nearly a monopoly on commercial agriculture, use petroleum-based pesticides and natural gas-based fertilizers. Agricultural products are harvested with fossil fuel-intense machinery then shipped by truck to grocery stores. Both the transportation and refrigeration are totally dependent on petroleum. This system is extremely fragile, and it takes very little dysfunction in it to prevent food from reaching the shelves of your local market. When that happens, and it will happen within the next five years, we will see food shortages and skyrocketing prices. Recently, Jim Rogers told CNBC basically the same when he said that a major food crisis is coming: "Sometimes in the next few years we're going to have very serious shortages of food everywhere in the world and prices are going to go through the roof."7 First of all, is this crisis not already taking place in 2010? Secondly, what are the main causes for this dilemma? Will American pundit Paul Roberts be right with his book "The End of Food", in which he wrote in 2008 that the death knell for "the world's food system could come from any number of sources: avian flu, 'a sharp spike in the price of oil, a series of extreme weather conditions, an outbreak of some new plant disease'"?8 Moreover, could this food crisis trigger, as Eric de Carbonnel argues in his superb analysis "2010 Food Crisis for Dummies", the crisis par excellence?9 I absolutely agree with de Carbonnel and Paul Roberts. The food crisis isn't just about Peak Oil. It is about converging crises that make so many of the gargantuan transitions in our current world unprecedented. Food production is inextricably connected with climate change and with Peak Water. Moreover, it is about the control of commercial agriculture by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and others which are producing genetically modified crops that not only lack nutritional substance but have been associated with many diseases and ubiquitous food contamination. These corporations are also affiliated with milk and meat production-both of which in the factory farming process are saturated with antibiotics which are producing disastrous consequences in the human body in terms of resistance to infection and carcinogen intake. As stated above, I believe that within the next five years we are going to see dramatic food shortages and the prices of food skyrocketing. The sanest response to this, in my opinion, is the relocalization of food production and the growing of local, organic food, including organic dairy and meat products. Here in Boulder, Colorado USA, we are working to achieve the goal of growing at 10% of the food we consume locally, and we are providing significant discounts to merchants and customers who buy locally. Many communities across America and in the UK are making significant progress in this direction. But much more needs to be done much faster to make our communities self-sufficient in terms of food production and energy. Obviously, we have to think in a different way about food. Therefore, Permaculture comes slowly to the fore.10 What is Permaculture? Permaculture is a design system which can be applied to almost any aspect of life-to growing food, designing buildings or other projects. The word is a blend of "permanent" and "culture" and is all about designing in cooperation with rather than against nature and natural systems. A brief, succinct definition can be found at: http://wilderdom.com/permaculture/permaculture.html. Permaculture has its roots in the concept of Biodynamic Farming taught by Rudolph Steiner. In Biodynamic Farming, the farm is perceived as an organism with its own individuality, and crops are raised organically with all that entails in terms of seeds, planting, cultivating, and harvesting. Applying permaculture to any design system guarantees that it will operate sustainably and will be safe and supremely energy-efficient. To oversimplify, we might say that it is a means of producing much more by using much less. Is the Sustainabilty Movement in the U.S. inter-connected to Permaculture? And can you tell us about this movement, that you are a part of in Colorado? Is this a positive alternative to the status quo of living that can serve as a good role model to others? Some aspects of the sustainability movement in the U.S. are connected with Permaculture, and others are not. There is much that mimics sustainability but is really another form of what we call "greenwash" or "green consumerism." Permaculture is a specific perspective that is about living simply and consuming less rather than making oneself feel good by consuming a lot of "green" products. The best place to begin living with authentic sustainability is to study the practices of indigenous people who never needed to buy "green" products but knew how to live in harmony with nature in a manner that not From mukhtaralam2000 at yahoo.com Sun Feb 14 10:40:44 2010 From: mukhtaralam2000 at yahoo.com (Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam) Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:10:44 +0530 (IST) Subject: [GJM] Fw: [HasanShabbir:9090] World's Most Beautiful Border and Ugliest Divide Message-ID: <499113.35340.qm@web94912.mail.in2.yahoo.com> ?Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam 58-C, Top Floor,DDA Janta Flats, Ashok Vihar-III,Delhi-110052,India Tel:+9968345380 http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://muhammad_mukhtar_alam.tigblog.org ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Hasan To: Hasan Shabbir Sent: Sun, 14 February, 2010 9:00:47 PM Subject: [HasanShabbir:9090] World's Most Beautiful Border and Ugliest Divide World's Most Beautiful Border and Ugliest Divide The divide and rule code of imperials has divided many beautiful pieces of world. this is just an example ! Loading images, Please wait... In Love with Nature? Join our Group Funzug! ~~~~~~ **~*~*~*~*~*~**~**~*~*~*~*~*~** -- |-| /\ $ /\ ?|\| IT Professional, Human Scientist +92 - 321 5393145 http://www.pakistananalysis.com http://www.facebook.com/hasanshabbir.pk -- _-_-_- ? Disclaimer: __ ? Any ideas contained in this email remain the intellectual property of ? http://www.HasanShabbir.com - 2008 ? To post to this 23,000+ members' group, send email ? To: hasanshabbir at googlegroups.com Cc: hasanshabbir1 at gmail.com ? if you have received this email by error or you are not the intended recipient then please inform us and we will ensure the problem is rectified. ? You are free to join and leave this group any time. If you are not intended recipient and you want to unsubscribe from this group, just send email To: hasanshabbir+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com ? And you will not be getting any messages from the group. ? For more options, visit the group at [http://groups.google.com/group/hasanshabbir] and [http://www.hasanshabbir.com] : ? Waiting for your kind replies, ideas and comments: [HasanShabbir1 at Gmail.com] [Call: +92 321 5393145] [If someone else want to join, just drop me a single email] God Bless You. Keep Smiling:-) ? . The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 71406 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 71524 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 44399 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 80003 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 115907 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 89413 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 42513 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 46347 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 14 12:11:02 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:11:02 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: MUST READ: Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century - Dave Ewoldt comments Message-ID: <003a01caada9$ae087ab0$0a197010$@net> Thanks Dave for taking the time to post your observations. With love and in gratitude. Your comment about wars being about lifestyles reveals what George W. Bush meant when he said "The American lifestyle is non-negotiable." No matter that we are stealing the future from our children and grandchildren as long as we have "this moment of grandiosity" -- this ego trip based on tyranny and greed. Yet, how sad and sickenly, grotesque is the number of people who have bought into the concept that our corporatized government and monetized political system can do no wrong. -----Original Message----- From: Dave Ewoldt [mailto:dave at reststop.net] Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 10:13 AM To: mary rose Cc: pimagreens_discuss at yahoogroups.com; IntentionalBellingham at reststop.net; NaturallyCreativeEarthPolitics at reststop.net; PNCPoliticalActivists at yahoogroups.com; TucsonConversationsOnSustainability at yahoogroups.com; bhamprogressives at lists.riseup.net Subject: Re: Another Absolutely MUST READ: Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century On 12 Feb 2010 at 18:35, mary rose wrote: > Climate Catastrophe: Surviving the 21st Century by Ronnie Cummins and Will > Allen > http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20200.cfm [snip] > We all know in general that cars, trucks, coal and power plants, household > heating and cooling, and manufacturing industries spew a majority of the > greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and the oceans. But did you know that U.S. > household use of fossil fuels (housing, transportation, and food) accounts for > 67% of total energy consumption and 67% of GHG's emitted? 1 Excellent article overall. One figure I've seen different results for is the calculation on fossil fuel use in the US, and I can't remember where I saw this first reported (but I could dig it out of my research notes if anyone really wants it and can't find it themselves with a google search). Anyway, it reflects on the larger picture of our lifestyles and what we expect to be done in our name so we don't have to worry our silly little heads about it. This concerns the amount of liquid fossil fuels consumed in the US, and the figure is 50% is used by the US military and defense industry. Not only are wars of imperialism expensive (which is why the money is borrowed from banks, as the people can't be taxed at a high enough level without sowing outright revolution), but they are extremely energy intensive as well. At a fundamental level, wars are about protecting lifestyles. Not only must we go steal the resources necessary to maintain our lifestyles, but just about the only industry left in American that's growing (other than the prison industry) is building the machinery of war, which we sell to the highest bidder anywhere on the globe regardless of which side they're on--enemies and allies alike. It's one of the few areas where we're actually equal opportunity. Wars for oil provide the jobs and the energy needed to go fight more wars for more oil, which are increasingly necessary since we're past the global peak of extraction. And we can't address the overpopulation issue, as we need a steady stream of cannon fodder--which we tend to think of as our sons and daughters. How very narrow-minded and unpatriotic of us. The other problem I have with articles of this sort is the framing on "costs." Mitigating GHG emissions is always reported as entailing a massive cost. Usually the terms suffering and sacrifice are thrown into the mix as well. But this is only true as long as we continue to buy (quite literally) the myth that GNP is the only meaningful measure of our overall well-being as a society. As Bill McKibben pointed out in "Deep Economy," under a GNP perspective, the most economically productive citizen today is the cancer patient who totals his car on the way to see his divorce attorney. What is always ignored are the actual costs of the Industrial Growth Paradigm. Decreasing lifespan, increasing body burden, new industrial diseases which negatively impact quality of life appearing almost daily, and loss of the life nurturing services of the natural world which provide the very foundation for our economy, let alone our own well-being and any hope for realizing our potential. Relocalization does point to an alternative path, and becoming involved in Transition Initiatives provides the best framework for this that I'm currently aware of. It provides an answer to the "what can we do?" question as people consent to take the red pill. For the Earth... _dave_(this entire message is composed of recycled electrons) Natural Systems Solutions http://www.attractionretreat.org http://naturalsystems.blogspot.com Sustainable lifestyles, organizations, and communities From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 14 19:14:51 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:14:51 -0800 Subject: [GJM] VERY IMPORTANT FW: Emergence of Sacred Feminine in Tibetan lineage - Trading Post Paul Message-ID: <006f01caade4$e3d31250$ab7936f0$@net> MR comments below -----Original Message----- From: TradingPostPaul [mailto:tradingpost at riseup.net] Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 10:07 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Re: VERY IMPORTANT READ FW: Emergence of Sacred Feminine in Tibetan lineage Which leads me to wonder if there's a connection between a cattle diet and patriarchy. I read recently that red meat raises testerone. The rise of the ancient states paralleled the rise of organized agriculture and rise of patriarchy and monotheism. Is it coincidence that the most militaristic nation on earth now consumes the most beef? Is it more literally true than we think, that we are what we eat? Paul Paul, you make an important point here. "Real men" don't eat quiche you know. *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 2/14/2010 at 9:25 AM mary rose wrote: >Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS > > > >Deki, thank you for sending this. What we are seeing after many thousand >years of masculine rule, mainly through male-dominate religious belief >systems, the Sacred Feminine is emerging once again. However, If we go >back historically into the Neolithic Age, we find reverence for the Great >Mother and the Goddess as She was also called long before God came into >view. In her search of approximately 30,000 archaeological sites in the >Fertile Crescent Region of what is now known as Iraq, archaeologist Marija >Gimbutas discovered only sacraments devoted to worship of the sacred >feminine and nowhere were there any signs of weapons denoting that this >peaceful matriarchal-based society indulged in armed conflict. In her >book: b From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Mon Feb 15 17:55:56 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:55:56 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Concept note for an international conference onAlternativesto Usurious and Ecologically Hostile Finance System References: <31f677a31001260241g54438b90y8e4ec038bc595285@mail.gmail.com><007001caa144$54e0b0e0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> <31f677a31002140809r433f225oa70fa9e9e63727ca@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <010201caaea2$cef79ef0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Dear Mukhtar, If small Indian farmers are asked what they want my guess is that (apart from a good harvest, health etc) no interest on loans would be high on the list (although, as CARD knows well, there are many other things). Interest is a huge burden on Indian farmers and many are the suicides, sale of body organs (e.g. a kidney) and other disastrous consequences. We all also know that "Islamic Banking" in practice does have interest but disguises the interest under different legal constructs. The effect, however, is that the lenders are battening onto the poor as they have done since time immemorial. Thus "Islamic Banking" in practice changes nothing for poor farmers. But where can interest-free loans come from? Only from the national bank (with administration by either commercial banks or institutions like the Grameen Bank -- which is not a true bank -- or the Institute for Integrated Rural Development (IIRD) in Bangladesh. I was once privileged to be up country in Bangladesh where I met and addressed about twenty five officers of IIRD. It was a fascinating day because the IIRD figures are almost exactly the same as Grameen -- 98% repayment; 96% of loans are to women. Moreover, both institutions use the same careful methods e.g. individuals are' spotted' or recommended by others; they are trained; and put into supportive groups (which also have joint and several responsibility for repayment and which responsibility, in addition to the character of the women and the moral culture of Bangladash, in practice constitutes the collateral). I was very careful to discuss and ask exactly what it was that the IIRD officers wanted to improve and extend their work. They were unanimous -- interest-free loans by which they could halve the repayment cost to roughly 17% (for repayment of administration and training costs) rather than 34%. So there you have a simple, easily understandable policy for the small and medium farmers of India -- interest-free loans coming from the national bank (but necessarily bearing an administration cost). I do not claim that getting such a stream of loans from a national bank is easy because the grip of Usurious Riba dominates everything in this world and the Bangladesh National Bank has been in its grip even though both Grameen and IIRD have had interest-free loans of one sort or another from various institutions and countries. But with 98% repayment (plus the promotion of a thriving agriculture) the case for such loans is huge -- and Grameen and IIRD are wonderfully successful institutions. What is more, the idea is easily understood by ordinary farmers. You may like to go to www.cesj.org and use the search box to look at the signatories to the Statement of Shared Vision which, last time I looked at it, must have had five thousand or more signatures coming from poor Bangladesh people who want binary economics (which has interest-free loans for small farmers etc). NB The five thousand or more come from only one area -- Chandpur which gives you some idea of what is possible. So there's the answer -- India could be the ideal country to start off a global campaign to get interest-free loans for small farmers. This is a simple, clear and practical policy and could rapidly get support. I have just had the cancellation of a June conference in another country so I can come in June. As regards other speakers I have been to many conferences and know that it is essential to have a clear theme. In this case, let the financial theme of the conference be Genuinely Interest-free Loans for India's Small Farmers (although CARD, of course, may have several other non-financial themes). NB Rich people could also be a source for such loans, as also could zakah. Then, with a clear financial theme, let speakers put themselves forward or let others put them forward -- I can think of some names -- and the requirement should be only that all financial speakers support a policy of interest-free loans for Indian farmers. They can support other things but the main conference theme should be clear, not antipathetic to Islam and, in particular, must have a tight defence against suggestion that it is proposing Gideon Gonoism. Looking forward to further information. Rodney Shakespeare. PS As regards names it is probably best to be positive i.e. to invite those who support the key theme and who do not open it to dangerous attack. However, people can wake up to realities (e.g., Islamic and other attitudes) and modify, even change, their present posiitons so, rather than say who should not attend, I would prefer to say who should. I wlll be able to suggest to you and CARD some good names when you are able to give more detail about the conference. On this please communicate with me via rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com ----- Original Message ----- . From: Centre For Ecological Audit,Social Inclusion & Governance To: Discussion Forum for Global Justice Cc: M J Khan Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 4:09 PM Subject: Re: [GJM] Concept note for an international conference onAlternativesto Usurious and Ecologically Hostile Finance System Dear Rodney, I would like to thank you for your response with a statement on your position about printed money . I would like to assure you that the conference is greared for the generating concrete recommendations for the transforming the system and not supportive of a printed money as such. I think it would be better if you advice on the people whom u think should be invited for the conference. Kindly also suggest on those who should not be invited for the conference advised for the conference whom you think are supportive of the printed money.I strongly agree with your position. However , you may appreciate that this position will have to be argued among those who have not yet thought about this angle. I think discussions in New Delhi has not yet picked up and there are some who are so ignorant that they link interest-free loans as part of the Islamic agenda. I think your participation in the conference would be critical in the generating the discourse here in India for reforming the finance sector with the provision for 'Interest-free loans for the development and spreading of productive (and associated consuming) capacity to everybody in the society....that includes interest-free loans for public capital, environmental capital, micro-credit etc ).' A date for the conference is now proposed in June and Insha-Allah this would be finalised day after tomorrow in consultation with M J Khan of Center for Agriculture and Rural Development and Editors of Agrculture Today and Krishi Today (Hindi) www.card.org.in With warmest regards Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam On 30 January 2010 06:06, Rodney Shakespeare wrote: Dear Mukhtar, Thanks for the information. I am sorry to be blunt but Islam overall has a clear view on certain matters. Thus it is rightly opposed to riba,. for example, (and you splendidly uphold that opposition) but such opposition does not logically lead on to support for 'printed' money which is antipathetic to Islam. . Only interest-free loans are acceptable in Islam. You may not be aware but, in the UK, I do not attend, let alone speak at, any form of Islamic conferences in which there is an obvious element of the promotion of 'printed' money'. Interest-free loans for the development and spreading of productive (and associated consuming) capacity to everybody in the society is what is acceptable to Islam (and that includes interest-free loans for public capital, environmental capital, micro-credit etc ). Rodney Shakespeare. ----- Original Message ----- From: Centre For Ecological Audit,Social Inclusion & Governance To: Discussion Forum for Global Justice ; Norman G. Kurland ; David Pidcock ; abdassamad at muslimsofnorwich.org.uk ; AMI ; Dr.BD Sharma ; Masud Choudhury ; S Purkayastha Cc: M J Khan Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 10:41 AM Subject: [GJM] Concept note for an international conference on Alternativesto Usurious and Ecologically Hostile Finance System Dear Rodney and all distinguished members of Global Justice Movement, I am pleased to share that an international conference for disuccing the alternative to the dominant atheistic and ecologically hostile economic paradigm is being organised in New Delhi with the key facilitation by Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development on 21 and 22 April, 2010. I have included names of potential speakers. The list could have more .Please advice.I would like to share the concept note for the conference for your comments. Your support and advice would enable us to realise the objectives. Yours sincerely Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Rodney Shakespeare wrote: Mukhtar, Exactly Rodney S. ----- Original Message ----- From: Centre For Ecological Audit,Social Inclusion & Governance To: Discussion Forum for Global Justice Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 3:14 PM Subject: Re: [GJM] Total Lack of Imagination,and Creativity!! The LSE Encounter. Dear Rodney, You are right, do these economist taught on the theory of interest would ever delearn the lesson. In the post usury economy, I think we will have to ensure that the new paradigm is made a mandatory part of curriculum before this is instituted across the world. Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 7:34 PM, Rodney Shakespeare wrote: Robert, Good try These conventional academic economists are hopeless. At a time when President Obama is supposedly launching an attack at least on parts of the banking system for the disaster it has caused, these nerks having nothing to say. Rodney Shakespear.e ----- Original Message ----- From: robert searle To: discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 10:37 AM Subject: [GJM] Total Lack of Imagination, and Creativity!! The LSE Encounter. I went on Wednesday to the LSE meeting in regards to the status quo of economics. It had some distinguished guests including Professor Ormerod, and Professor Hodgson. They gave some insignts into the parlous, and highly questionable nature of mainstream economics. But inevitably they did not offer anything new, or anything of real importance. After the presentations there was a session in which the mainly student audience asked some questions. However, they had the tendency of rambling on, and on...until my time came... I made the point in no uncertain terms that economics lack imagination, and creativity! This caused a stir, and the audience laughed, or in part "glared" at me. I went further by suggesting the need for a new global paradigm, and referred to my developing project of TRANSFINANCIAL ECONOMICS which I believe could be the system of the future. I also made the point that money itself was created electronically by banks out of thin air by means of credit creation. I got the distinct impression that in spite of their education the audience did not really fully understand the full import of what was said..though I may be wrong. Anyway, Professor Hodgson seemed to indicate that no paradigm could be ruled out, and another academic hinted at the possibility of misuse of anything new. This is just the gist of what they seemed to have said. http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hodgson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ormerod ------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -- Endeavoring for ecological safety ,social inclusion and distributive justice for the renewable resource based livelihoods and habitats, Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion and Governance (CEASIG) , an initiative of Labour League Foundation, Sewa and Sufi Trust , Delhi aims for socially inclusive and ecologically safe future for all through organizing and communicating carbon neutral neighborhood discussions/ consultations, building capacities in ecological audit, ecologically safe networking ,advocacy, interfaith dialogue & other related domains for multiplying personal, community , governmental and corporate actions for ecologically safe education, ecological audit ,and, ecologically safe and socially inclusive governance. Contact Details: 58-C,DDA Flats, Ashok Vihar-III, Delhi-110052 Phones: 0968345380 http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -- Endeavoring for ecological safety ,social inclusion and distributive justice for the renewable resource based livelihoods and habitats, Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion and Governance (CEASIG) , an initiative of Labour League Foundation, Sewa and Sufi Trust , Delhi aims for socially inclusive and ecologically safe future for all through organizing and communicating carbon neutral neighborhood discussions/ consultations, building capacities in ecological audit, ecologically safe networking ,advocacy, interfaith dialogue & other related domains for multiplying personal, community , governmental and corporate actions for ecologically safe education, ecological audit ,and, ecologically safe and socially inclusive governance. Contact Details: 58-C,DDA Flats, Ashok Vihar-III, Delhi-110052 Phones: 0968345380 http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam -------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -- Endeavoring for ecological safety ,social inclusion and distributive justice for the renewable resource based livelihoods and habitats, Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion and Governance (CEASIG) , an initiative of Labour League Foundation, Sewa and Sufi Trust , Delhi aims for socially inclusive and ecologically safe future for all through organizing and communicating carbon neutral neighborhood discussions/ consultations, building capacities in ecological audit, ecologically safe networking ,advocacy, interfaith dialogue & other related domains for multiplying personal, community , governmental and corporate actions for ecologically safe education, ecological audit ,and, ecologically safe and socially inclusive governance. Contact Details: 58-C,DDA Flats, Ashok Vihar-III, Delhi-110052 Phones: 0968345380 http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 16 03:39:06 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:39:06 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Making a Mockery of "Hard" Earned Money? Message-ID: <574740.23570.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? ?????????? As I understand it when all the?"HARD" EARNED money from someone who has paid up his, or her mortgage it is actually destroyed by the bank!! If so...does this not make a "mockery" of hard earned money paying for something which was unearned in the first place by the bank? Comprenda...? ? And I am not clear as to whether the earned money during the pay back process is kept, and used by the bank for some profitable investments until the mortgage is fully paid up with interest? Presumably not, or am I mistaken? ? And also? the term fractional reserve banking...I assume it is just another term for credit creation which? ofcourse is often used? by economic textbooks, and papers? I have not checked out this matter on the internet, or elsewhere..Maybe Chris Cook might be able to clarify?? ? ? Robert S. ????????? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mukhtaralam2000 at yahoo.com Tue Feb 16 19:05:04 2010 From: mukhtaralam2000 at yahoo.com (Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam) Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:35:04 +0530 (IST) Subject: [GJM] Fw: Obama Plot To Throw Millions Of Americans From Homes Uncovered Message-ID: <81914.94903.qm@web94910.mail.in2.yahoo.com> Banking?is an important?area to work upon for?change. ?Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam 58-C, Top Floor,DDA Janta Flats, Ashok Vihar-III,Delhi-110052,India Tel:+9968345380 http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://muhammad_mukhtar_alam.tigblog.org ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: Sorcha Faal To: sorchafaal at fastmail.fm Sent: Tue, 16 February, 2010 9:53:57 PM Subject: Obama Plot To Throw Millions Of Americans From Homes Uncovered [Ed. Note: This report should be read from its website location at http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1338.htm as this email copy does not contain the links embedded in the original report.] February 16, 2010 Obama Plot To Throw Millions Of Americans From Homes Uncovered By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers New reports coming from the United States today are revealing one of the most insidious plots to have ever been perpetrated against the American people and will leave an estimated 30 million of them homeless as their wealth is transferred to the elite bankers currently ruling over them and led by President Obama. To fully understand this plot to destroy the entire middle class of the United States one must know about the banking giant behind it named Goldman Sachs, who put Obama into the American presidency for the express purpose of committing the largest robbery in the entire history of the World, and who in the riveting article about this banking giant by the Rolling Stone Magazine titled ?Inside The Great American Bubble Machine? they are blamed for ?engineering every major market manipulation since the Great Depression?, and which, in part, states: ?The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain ? an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s ? and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.? Presiding over the Goldman Sachs ?empire? (valued in the trillions of dollars), and Obama?s defacto boss, is their Chairman and? CEO, known as the ?Sun God?,? Lloyd Blankfein, and who in a London Times interview this past November (2009) says that even though he proudly pays himself more in a year than most of us could ever dream of ? $68 million in 2007 alone, a record for any Wall Street CEO, to add to the more than $500 million of Goldman stock he owns ? he insists he?s still ?a blue-collar guy?. Even more astounding than his proclaiming himself to be a ?blue-collar guy? was Blankfein telling the London Times in this interview that he was doing ?Gods Work? in his looting of nearly the entire wealth of the United States, and as we can read: ?Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn?t look like a place to stop and stare, and that?s just the way the people who work there like it. The men and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private. They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past, well, nothing, really. There?s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn?t saying who works there. There?s a good reason for the secrecy. Number 85 Broad Street, New York, NY 10004, is where the money is. All of it. It?s the site of the best cash-making machine that global capitalism has ever produced, and, some say, a political force more powerful than governments. The people who work behind the brass-trim glass doors make more money than some countries do. They are the rainmakers? rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle. Their assets total $1 trillion, their annual revenues run into the tens of billions, and their profits are in the billions, which they distribute liberally among themselves. Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting ?filthy rich by 40?, as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don?t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they ?rule the world?. To how much of the World Goldman Sachs owns it must first be understood who their main enemy is, the equally powerful (and just as evil) European banking monolith controlled by the Rothschild?s, both of whom stand as puppet masters pulling the strings as to who, and won?t, be elected to any office of power in the United States, and as we can read in an insightful report titled ?Obama vs McCain or Goldman Sachs vs The Rothschilds? published prior to Obama?s election victory: ?Did it ever occur to you that perhaps your vote really doesn't matter because whatever happens in America is being orchestrated by more powerful sources? Few people understand the power and financial influence of two of the most powerful international financial houses in world history and it may very well be they are heavily involved in cutthroat competition for control of our next president. Yet the media has not even begun to question the relationship between these international bankers and our candidates for president. Well they should before it is too late. Some would argue it may already be too late as the Congress, the White House, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and the two candidates have already joined forces to adopt the most comprehensive bail out of Wall Street and the banking community every seen in American history and followed it with similar action in every major nation throughout the world. How in the world did the Democrats and Republicans, the liberals and conservatives and the media of this nation all agree to such a massive commitment to save the very institutions that cheated, committed fraud, bent regulations and out-smarted the best minds in government and finance? How did people with opposing philosophies who were bitter political rivals bury the hatchet in the midst of one of the most contentious presidential campaigns in history, just a few weeks before the dramatic climax? Well perhaps the quiet involvement of Goldman Sachs and the Rothschilds may explain as these global powerhouses have been getting their way with governments since long before most modern governments even existed. In 1750, 26 years before the American Declaration of Independence the Rothschild family began their journey to become the most powerful financial family in world history and though to this day the vast majority of their holdings are privately held, estimates of their family holdings are as much as $167 trillion dollars. Strategic actions over the 258 year continuous evolvement of the Rothschilds has led to control of much of the world supply of gold, oil, diamonds and many other assets. As for Goldman Sachs, they were founded in 1869, shortly after the end of the US Civil War and at the dawning of the industrial revolution in America joining yet another family firm still around today, J.P. Morgan whose work to save the Union during the Civil War earned it many privileges during the explosion of growth in America including the opportunity to finance the Rockefeller Standard Oil empire with Rothschild money. In time the three factions would appear to undertake the most intense competition between them for control of the global financial system ever seen but in the end, though all three groups remain the sole survivors today in terms of American influence, it became known that Morgan was serving as a front for the Rothschilds in order for the Rothschilds to maintain a low profile in America. But low profile or not they dominated what happened and how it happened. As for the involvement in this election cycle, Goldman Sachs and the Rothschilds have again taken on each other with the Rothschilds jumping onto the McCain bandwagon late in the campaign while Goldman Sachs has been imbedded in the Obama campaign since the beginning. While the Rothschilds have seemingly played a much smaller role in McCain's efforts much remains to be disclosed of the Goldman role with Obama. This much can be reported. Back when Obama was a freshman candidate for Senator he was selected to be keynote speaker for the Democratic national convention in 2004. A nobody from Chicago was plucked from midair and cast into the most important slot in the convention. How he would up there remains to be revealed. Just a little over one year after being elected as a junior senator, in 2006 Obama was the featured guest before a private gathering of the Goldman Sachs executives in Chicago, an honor unheard of for someone that politically insignificant, speaking before the most powerful financial firm on Wall Street and one of the most powerful in the world. This was quietly reported in Bloomberg News. It was the launch of his presidential campaign and Goldman executives soon gave over $800,000 to jump start the Obama presidential bid along with collecting millions of dollars from their fellow Wall Street firms and clients. Oh yes, Robert Rubin became the Obama economic expert, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Billionaire Warren Buffet became his most trusted economic advisor, a man who was to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs in the height of the economic meltdown. Yet Buffet was also a personal guest of Lord Rothschild at a private conference at his English estate. The story only gets better. On May 3, 2007, Barack Obama attended an event at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan that was not on his public schedule and is only now surfacing. The exclusive private dinner was for Goldman Sachs traders and featured a discussion on issues by Obama moderated for the Wall Street firm by NBC's Tom Brokaw. Once again the circumstances are strange as a year later Brokaw would be moderating the second presidential debate between Obama and McCain and the economy and Wall Street were the main points of discussion. Of course the debate commission and McCain were unaware that Obama and Brokaw had already held a practice session the year earlier. Then comes the financial meltdown...? When this ?financial meltdown? engineered by Goldman Sachs began during the 2008 election season for President of the United States it propelled Obama into office, where shortly after gaining power he announced a rescue plan for American homeowners called the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), but which to date has hardly helped anybody, and as we can read as reported in by the Washington Times News Service in their article titled Obama foreclosure plan falters, and which says: ?So far, Mr. Obama's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has helped just 66,000 homeowners permanently modify their mortgages, while millions more remain on the brink of foreclosure.? Not being told the American people though about this ?rescue plan? is that it was NEVER designed to help them, but to enrich the most powerful of Obama?s ?friends?, and as we can read as reported by the Family Security Matters organization:? ?It all started with a phone call I received in early May/2009. The caller sounded troubled, as so many are these days. He told me he had spent several days researching his options. He owed $478,000 on his first mortgage with OneWest Bank, and $30,000 on his second mortgage with Bank of America. He and his wife were separating, and headed for divorce. He had not been able to find employment for over a year, and he had depleted all of his savings and retirement funds in order to continue making the mortgage payment over the past year. His soon-to-be ex-wife had recently had her hours cut by 50 percent, and they were having a hard time putting food on the table, much less making a $2,600 per month mortgage payment. For all intents and purposes, he was at the end of his rope. He stumbled across our website where we specialize in distressed properties ? www.foreclosureuturn.com ? learned what his options were and decided to proceed with a short sale. The reasons for his decision were twofold. He wanted to salvage his credit as best he could, and he didn?t just want to ?walk away? from his mortgage without at least trying to sell his home for market value. He, like so many other Americans, wanted to do ?the right thing.? Fast forward two months. We received an all-cash, no contingencies offer that would net thefirst mortgagor (OneWest Bank) $241,000. OneWest conducted a Broker?s Price Opinion (similar to an appraisal), and it came back at $275,000 (same as the price on the contract). Life was good, we thought. Then the fun began. OneWest sent us a letter, approving the short sale, but under one condition: The Seller had to commit to a $75,000 promissory note, or they would proceed to foreclosure. For the life of me, I couldn?t figure out why they were doing this. Arizona has an anti-deficiency statute in place, which protected my client from ever having a judgment filed against him for the loss OneWest would incur. They had my client?s last two years? tax returns, his last two months? bank statements, etc. At the time, he had less than $2,000 to his name. Why are they doing this? I was so infuriated by their response that I decided to send the story to all of the news outlets in the Phoenix market. The next day, the local NBC affiliate interviewed us on the case. During a break between interviews, the reporter told me, ?Bob, there is more to this story. There must be a reason they are doing this.? Boy was he right! I spent the next two to three days poring over articles and blogs on the Internet regarding OneWest Bank. Finally, I stumbled across a Wall Street Journal article that described a new program that the FDIC had put in place in order to ?sweeten the pot? for the investors that were purchasing the banks they had shuttered. This new phenomenon, called a ?shared-loss agreement,? literally made my jaw drop. You see, Indymac Bank was taken over by the FDIC and sold to OneWest Bank in March/2009. OneWest was funded by none other than George Soros (billionaire), Michael Dell (billionaire), Steve Mnuchin (former Goldman Sachs Executive), and John Paulson (hedge-fund billionaire). Now, listen to the deal they won from the FDIC: Basically, they purchased all current residential mortgages at 70 percent of par value (70 percent of the outstanding loan amounts). They purchased all Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOC?s) at 58 percent of par value! Next, in order to ?sweeten the pot,? the FDIC stepped in and guaranteed the following: For any residential mortgages where OneWest experiences a loss, the FDIC will step in and cover anywhere from 80-95 percent of the loss. The loss is calculated using the ORIGINAL LOAN BALANCE, not the amount that OneWest paid for the loan. Let?s use my client?s actual situation as an example: Loan amount is $478,000, plus 5 months of missed payments, for a grand total of $485,200. OneWest paid $334,600 for the loan when they purchased IndyMac from the FDIC. We have an all-cash, no contingencies offer to OneWest, with a Net of $241,000 (after closing costs, commissions, etc.) So, let?s do the math, shall we? The net loss, according to the FDIC formula is the ORIGINAL LOAN AMOUNT minus the amount of the offer. In this case, $485,200-$241,000, or $244,200. Next, the FDIC, according to their shared-loss agreement, writes a check to OneWest for 80 percent of the so-called ?net loss.? So, in this case, OneWest gets a check from the FDIC for $195,360 (.80 x $244,200). Add the $195,360 (via the FDIC) to the net sales price of $241,000, and you get a grand total of $436,360. Remember, OneWest paid $334,600 for the loan. So, OneWest puts $101,760 in their pocket, thanks to the FDIC. Folks, that is over $100,000 of our hard-earned tax dollars for only one transaction! Now, the FDIC will tell you that they are not funded by taxpayer dollars but by charging premiums to the lenders. My response to their argument is this: When the banks pay higher premiums to the FDIC to cover these ?sweetheart deals,? they simply increase the fees that we all pay everyday to the banks. Also, as most of you know, the FDIC has been considering tapping into their $500 billion ?credit card? that they have in place with the U.S. Treasury. Folks, the taxpayers ARE paying for these deals, just like we have all paid for the bailouts. So, you ask, ?How does this program hurt loan modifications and short sales?? Because, our brilliant government offers this SAME PROGRAM FOR FORECLOSURES! The only difference is that the FDIC picks up 80 percent of the tab on all of the extra costs associated with a foreclosure (BPOs, upkeep, utilities/maintenance, legal fees, etc.) So, if I?m OneWest, why would I want to waste my time negotiating through a Short Sale, when I can make the same amount of money (if not more) by just letting it go to foreclosure? And we wonder why nobody can get a Loan Modification? Why would OneWest approve a loan modification for this guy, when they can foreclose and make over $100k? And, to add insult to injury, they have held this loan for six months! Not a bad ROI (return on investment), huh? What infuriates me the most is that in my particular case mentioned above, they have the guts to hold my client hostage for a $75,000 promissory note, after they are already making more than $100,000 for the sale! Can you say ?GREED?? Now upon the discovery of this plot to throw millions of Americans from their homes, while at the same time funneling billions of US taxpayer money into the giant hedge funds controlled by these banksters, Obama ordered his government to quickly respond so as to keep the majority of these people from learning the truth of what was being done to them, but which was met with quick ridicule, and as we can read: ?Sorry FDIC, but not only did your press release not refute the video's claims in the least, but you just dug yourself an even deeper grave as every aspiring blogger and investigative reporter will now do everything in their power to find comparable examples of blatant "slap in the face" fraud expecting you to retort to any and all allegations, ensuring 15 minutes of fame for all implicated.?? To the American people being able to fight back against the elite banker class headed by Obama who are destroying them there appears to be no chance as he has stacked the US government with so many Wall Street bankers and former Goldman Sachs officials as to leave one questioning who really leads that country anyway. And from other reports it appears that these Americans are now just giving up, and as we can read as reported by Britain?s Guardian News Service in their article titled ?Americans stock up to be ready for end of the world?, and which says: ?Tess Pennington, 33, is a mother of three children, and lives in the sprawling outskirts of Houston, Texas. But she is not taking the happy safety of her suburban existence lightly. Like a growing army of fellow Americans, Pennington is learning how to grow her own food, has stored emergency rations in her home and is taking courses on treating sickness with medicinal herbs. "I feel safe and more secure. I have taken personal responsibility for the safety of myself and of my family," Pennington said. "We have decided to be prepared. There all kinds of disasters that can happen, natural and man-made." Pennington is a "prepper", a growing social movement that has been dubbed Survivalism Lite. Preppers believe that it is better to be safe than sorry and that preparing for disaster ? be it a hurricane or the end of civilisation ? makes sense. Unlike the 1990s survivalists, preppers come from all backgrounds and live all over America. They are just as likely to be found in a suburb or downtown loft as a remote ranch in the mountains. Prepping networks, which have sprung up all over the country in the past few years, provide advice on how to prepare food reserves, how to grow crops in your garden, how to hunt and how to defend yourself. There are prepping books, online shops, radio shows, countless blogs, prepping courses and prepping conferences.? One can only hope that other Americans will follow and begin preparing for the worst as history has always shown that when tyrants fall they take everything, and everybody else with them. ? February 16, 2010 EU and US all rights reserved http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1338.htm -- ? Sorcha Faal ? sorchafaal at fastmail.fm The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Tue Feb 16 05:02:50 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:02:50 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Food Dictatorship, Coutesy of Codex, Harkin and McCain... Message-ID: <005201caaf00$2ad2f690$8078e3b0$@net> Thank you - with love and in gratitude for all that you do Dr. Rima and Gen. Burt. Keep up the good work. Food sovereignty is the cornerstone of freedom, let's keep it that way. Please everyone also join the TransitionUS movement. www.transitionUS.ning.com and present a united front in all areas. From: Natural Solutions Foundation [mailto:dr.laibow at gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 9:23 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Food Dictatorship, Coutesy of Codex, Harkin and McCain... What Do You Call 1.1 Million Emails To Protect Our Supplements and Clean, Unadulterated Food? A Good START! QUICK! CLICK HERE NOW: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26 714 ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE GROWING ROAR OF FOOD FREEDOM! Natural Solutions Foundation Emergency Health Freedom Action eAlert The Voice of Global Health FreedomT www.HealthFreedomUSA.org www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org Permalink: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4683 Tom Harkin's fake "Food Safety" bill, S 510 and John McCain's fake "Supplement Safety" bill S 3002 are dangerous to your heath and deadly to your freedom! How to stop them? Generate Huge Opposition and GROW it by dissemination! We are pleased to say that about 16 health freedom and consumer groups have followed our lead and taken up this battle. That is wonderful. Our momentum and leadership are what you, and the other groups, rely on. Our numbers are what the decision-makers respond to. Take Action Now for Each Member of Your Family and Pass It On to Everyone You Know http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26 714 This Valentine's Day, You'll be Saying "I Love You, Codex" 1,000 times Over If You Choose To Do Nothing Join NSF's NO GMO Forum, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-genetically-modified-foods/join This is in response to an email bemoaning (quite correctly, as it happens) what is happening to the US and its food supply. But rather than just bemoan it, I have a different take on the situation. First, a true story: Years ago, just after General Bert and I founded the Natural Solutions Foundation, I contacted the founder and president of the major glyconutrient MLM and told him that he would be put out of business if Codex was permitted to ratify the 2005 Vitamin and Mineral Guideline. I knew that without support from the wellness industry as well as consumers, it would be ratified on July 4, 2005 at the Codex Alimentarius Commission, as, indeed, it was. He told me, through his special assistant, that he was not worried because he had been promised that if he helped to bring in Codex into the US and Canada, his "reward" would be that his would be the only line of nutrients available in the EU. I asked him what about the people who depended upon his products here, and firmly believed that they were the reason that cancer, autism, ADD and a host of other serious diseases and disorders were either gone or under control. The answer? "Business is Business!" This man was also deeply involved with the MLM industry organization. End of true story. The writer of the post on the GMO forum said that she had been fighting this battle for a long time. I have been fighting this war for a long time, too. It is clearly up to us, each one of us. So here is my question to you all, each and every one of you: What are YOU doing to organize your community, to take the call for a total ban on GMOs and the fight against the McCain/Harkin bills, S 3002 and S 510, to your communities of interest? Have you been out to your local farmers' market, your health food stores armed with flyers and Action Item information and directions? Have you sent emails with the action items out to every single person on your lists with a short note saying this is important to you and you believe it is important to them, too? Have you written or called the supplement companies you are buying products from, asked if their materials are free of GMO sources, how do they know and, if not, what they are doing about replacing them so that they are free of them? Have you asked your tea and coffee, snack and other food companies if their products are free of GMOs and, as above, how do they know and what are they doing to change that? Have you stopped, absolutely stopped, buying prepared and prepackaged foods, totally, unless they say "Organic" (even then, there is a serious problem, but it is considerably better than other foods)? Have you stopped buying anything but organic foods in all forms an, if there is an economic problem, made other compensatory changes (fewer chips, sodas, bottled water - fill a glass bottle with your own and take it with you)? If not, inaction will cost us the battle. Either each and every one of us is either a warrior or we are not. Are you? I know you are busy. That is exactly what the other side is counting on. I know you feel powerless. That, too, is exactly what they are counting on. I know you feel over whelmed. Guess what? They are counting on that, too. We have the numbers IF we use them. They have the dollars and they are absolutely using them. So here is the battle plan: Go here : http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4608 and read this then take action here: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26 714 to stop the McCain and Harkin bills (S. 3002 and S. 501) that WILL repeal DSHEA and thus destroy our right to access supplements to bring us into HARMonization with Europe, where this has already happened and WILL totally industrialize the entire US food supply. We've already generated 1.099,240 emails already but that's just the beginning. Let's make it 10 times that many. Remember to ask everyone to take the action once for each member of their household. Next, go here , http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=204 9 , to ban ALL GMOs. We have only generated 39,883 emails on this Action Item. That means that the people on this list and their friends may care, but not enough to act strongly. This is actually quite surprising, since polls repeatedly show that well over 80% of Americans do not want GMO foods in their cupboards, their foods or their bodies. So it would seem reasonable that this list would be very close to 100% in its opposition to this type of adulterant in its food since freedom alone, and health aside, I cannot imagine anyone one who is a Natural Solutions Foundation supporter agreeing that secret, untested, dangerous and biosphere contaminating food should be forced upon to make us sick without our having any say in the matter. We agree. Act now. Take these Actions and then disseminate these items asking everyone you know to take action and then disseminate it the same way. If we are a nation of sheep and we do not know it, we are, I suppose, not to blame. If we know what is happening and we act like sheep, then we are to blame. Let's take our collective awareness and spearhead the drive to own our own bodies and reclaim our freedom! Yours in health and freedom, Dr. Rima Rima E. Laibow, MD Medical Director Natural Solutions Foundation Idiocy of the Decade: CDC announces '57 Million People Have Swine Flu!' http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-sci-swine-flu13-2010feb13,0, 5302753.story This is the most astonishing, and laughable incidence of propaganda puffery gone wild that I can remember in ages. I sent this to a friend and here is what he wrote back to me. Be sure to read the quote at the end of his letter to understand his intent: << Rima, GET REAL! 1.67 Swine Flu cases per person in the US is very logical. You need to stop trying to think things through and do what you are told! Who do you think you are trying to second guess The Los Angeles Times? Why they are one of the most credible sources and you know it. << By questioning my known, reliable sources, you are taking away my comfort zone and I don't appreciate it. Please stop it and start conforming, go with the flow and start doing what you are told for once, will you? Please! << It is people like you that will make it necessary to censor the web so we can go back to only having credible TV and newspaper media sources again. << Please stop it before I report you !!!!!!! Your friend, [Name withheld by request] ~ "It really almost makes you ask the question would it have been better if we had never invented the internet..." ~ Jay Rockefeller 2009 >> [With the likes of Rockefeller and Gore claiming to have 'invented' the Internet, I guess we now know where those geek engineers got the idea... NOT!- REL] Obviously, my friend wrote a tongue in cheek missive to point out what the MMD, Media of Mass Deception, is trying to impose on us. But ask yourself for a moment, in the face of the lies and deceit you are being fed daily, what time, effort and other resources have you commtted TODAY to changing this dangerous march to suppression and oppression. If the answer is, "None", you need to reassess your priorities. If the answer is, "Some, but not enough", you are on the way to making a better decision. If the answer is, "Here I am, ready to do more - I have already taken all the Action Steps for each member of my family and have sent out the Health Freedom Action eAlert to everyone I can reach, what can I do next?", you are a Health Freedom Hero. Thank you for your activism. This is everyone's fight and that means that everyone needs to put their shoulder to the wheel. Of course, part of that shoulder-to-the-wheel-ism is helping make financial resources possible. Managing Resources is a Serious Matter For Any Army Have you set up your recurring tax exempt donation yet? If so, thanks! You are one of about 4% of our supporters who make donations. Of course, that is hardly fair. We are fighting this battle for everyone, not just the 4% of our supporters who donate. If everyone made large or small donations on a regular basis, we would have the resources we need and would not have to ask you for money again! http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189 Why do we need resources? Well, there is the vitally important Stop the Shot litigation through which we intend to STOP all influenza AND H1N1 vaccine use since they are deeply illegal under the existing laws and regulations of the Untied States. If your donation end in the number "6", the funds will be earmarked for our legal activities. http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189 Then there is Codex, the New Food Order, the destroyer of clean food, nutrition and nutrients. On may 3-7, 2010, Codex will hold its annual Codex Committee on Food Labeling, a vitally important meeting, in Canada. If you want us there, now is the time to start making donations, because that is the ONLY way we are going to get there. You know that there are at least 3 Codex meetings this year that you want us to attend for you. Instead of a last minute emergency, let's start accumulating the money to go to them - that way, we can plan on attending them, spend the necessary time doing the preparatory research, buy our tickets early to get better prices, make arrangements to meet national delegates for meetings, etc. If you want daily video reports on what Codex is up to like this one, http://www.youtube.com/naturalsolutions#p/u/4/Hyo_VjJSVFo then it's up to our dedicated Health Freedom Mouse Warriors to make sure that we have the money to get there. The Natural Solutions Foundation is working for your health and your health freedom in the most creative, diverse and effective ways, which is why it is the largest health freedom organization in the world. But, not surprisingly, it needs resources to run: human resources, energetic resources and financial resources. We are the Health Freedom team, you and the Natural Solutions Foundation. And we ARE playing a good game of defense. The more resources we have, the better our game of offense gets! Aspartame: How Sweet It Isn't! By the way, did you know that Ajinimoto, a major manufacturer of aspartame (owned by Monsanto, of course) has changed its name to "AminoSweet". Isn't that comforting, comfortable and contemptible? And did you also know that since fully 75% of all complaints filed with the FDA's Adverse Reaction Monitoring System in 1995 were aspartame related, the FDA ceased accepting aspartame related complaints in response? http://www.foodbev.com/news/ajinomoto-brands-aspartame-aminosweet More Ways To Serve You: Natural Solutions Foundation Launches New Website Did you know that the Natural Solutions Foundation has a new website? Take a look at www.DrRima.net where you will find all of my latest recommendations.You already know that every time you purchase something from www.ValleryoftheMoonCoffee.org www.ewater.com/nsf www.nsfcoffeedeal.com www.Nutronix.com/naturalsolutions www.organics4U.org www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org or any of our MLM sites you are supporting the vigor of the Natural Solutions Foundation AND getting outstanding products for yourself. "Dr. Rima Recommends" has become such a popular part of our Health Freedom Action eAlert that we decided to give you more of my recommendations and more in-depth information. The site is already up, and it will be growing rapidly to make more of my recommendations, based on 40 years of medical and psychiatric practice without drugs. You know, from a wellness industry point of view, we live in a fascinating time: the illness care industry wants to kill our wellness care products, which includes healthy food, of course, because they are so effective. Being effective, they are the logical and most significant economic competitors to drugs, vaccines and other substances of ineffective, but highly profitable permanent marketing strategies. Why do I say that drugs/vaccines nothing more than permanent marketing strategies? Simple: they weaken your immune system, do organ damage and make you sick so you have to take more meds and more vaccines and more and more and more. From my perspective as a drug free physician and psychiatrist, I can see absolutely no place, whatsoever, none!, for drugs in any part of medicine but emergency rooms and operation rooms. But think of the reaction of Big Pharma to that reality. Codex is part of it, the lap-dog, stunningly corrupt FDA and all the Direct to Consumer advertising they permit is part of it, the vicious attacks on good health care practitioners who do not use drugs are part of it. The Mc Cain and Harkin bills are part of it. GMO "food" is, too. That IS all part of the marketing model. And, remember, that the agricultural chemicals and GMOs that make you sick are made by drug companies. This is no accident. So our strategy is really, really simple: 1. Get the truth out on the internet that Sen. Jay Rockefeller regrets our ever having gotten hold of and on radio and by every other means of which we can think 2. Formulate effective strategies and them implement them through effective tactics (that is where you come in!) 3. Garner the assets, including activists, domestic and international friends to what we are doing, finances and keep doing it better and better and better. 4. Repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 over and over and over. We need and appreciate your activism! Email me at drlaibow at gmail.com with ORGANIZER'S HANDBOOK in the subject line and we'll send you our organizing ebook, so you can "think globally and act locally..." Spread these Health Freedom Action eAlerts and help make the message "go viral!" And Here are Important Dr Rima Recommends Messages We've started to develop a new network, just to bring you the best of Dr Rima Recommends, www.DrRima.net - we'll feature various outstanding items from our www.Organics4U.org and www.NaturalSolutionsMarketplace.org pages, too. Remember, the EPA and FDA are, in a separate action, trying to take nano and colloidal silver off the market, just as the European Food Supplements Directive has succeeded in doing there as of January 1, 2010. Silver is an illegal substance in Europe. Why? Because silver is the universal antibiotic and would destroy a vast pharmaceutical market if enough people knew about it. After investigation, I personally recommend the nano silver available at www.Nutronix.com/naturalsolutions, Silver Biotics. I would start laying in a supply now. Although the product carries an "expiration date", there is no evidence of which I am aware to suggest that Silver Biotics has a significantly limited shelf life. Cognitive Enhancement? It's Mind Control, Alright, You Controlling Your Own Mind! General Bert and I continue experiencing extraordinary results with our Cognitive Enhancement Pack (me) and Senior Cognitive Enhancement Pack (Gen. Bert) which are literally astonishing. http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4558 or www.DrRi I know supplementation and neurological enhancement very, very well. I have never seen (or experienced) anything like this. You know how busy we are; how much we rely on our ability to multitask and react quickly to challenges... The name says it all: COGNITIVE. ENHANCEMENT. That's the story, in two words. Here are the other two words to the story: Try Them! Dr. Rima's Cognitive Enhancement Packs: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4558 Or visit our new Dr Rima Recommends Network link, www.DrRima.net Support your health and your health freedom with Valley of the Moon Coffee, http://nsfcoffeedeal.com or http://www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org The Dr. Rima Reports: Your Health, Your Way March 17, 2010 FDA rampage against natural health care continues. Join us for a frank 2 hour discussion with Jim Fulsom, who has been temporarily released from a Federal Prison. As a Rife researcher and writer, his pending surrender in April for a 4 year sentence for selling Rife devices to people who wanted to buy them, Jim will discuss Rife technology, Federal trials and the appeal he is pursuing to show that Rife technology is grandfathered and not subject to FDA restrictions. TUNE IN Every Week! Wednesday 8-10 PM Eastern at www.TheFreedomLink.org Check out our Dr. Rima Reports Archives, http://www.thefreedomlink.org/Dr_Rima_Reports.php, Paul G. King, PhD: Think vaccine schedules are just for children? Think again! http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4626763 Sarah Schons, MD: European Health Fascism Heading to the US http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4197979 Justin Plumlee: Health Freedom - Does It Include Medical Marijuana? http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4116404 Fred van Liew: Health Freedom and Health Freedom Foes http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3793748 www.TheFreedomLink.org Archives: Click on "The Dr. Rima Reports" The Dr. Rima Reports brings you information on the issues we must respond to, battles we must win, victories we must achieve. Yours in health and freedom, Dr. Rima Rima E. Laibow MD Natural Solutions Foundation www.HealthFreedomUSA.org www.GlobalHealthFreedomUSA.org Food Freedom eJournal www.FoodFreedomeJournal.org International Decade of Nutrition www.InternationalDecadeofNutrition.org Valley of the Moon Eco Demonstration Project www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org Valley of the Moon Coffee www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org Virtual Malls Supporting Health Freedom www.DrRima.net www.Organics4U.org www.NaturalSolutionsMarketplace.org PS - If you haven't received them, here are the permalinks to some of the last couple eBlasts. We always archive our Action eAlerts on the Health Freedom Blog at www.HealthFreedomUSA.org eBlasts Being Blocked; McCain Bill Attacks DSHEA! http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4615 Can't Lose for Winning if we PUSH BACK! http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4595 War Council: from Push Back to Take Down http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4548 Unsubscribe: www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/healthfreedomusa/unsubscribe.jsp Manage: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/profile/login.jsp?redirect=%2Fo%2F5 68%2Fprofile%2Findex.jsp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Tue Feb 16 06:31:04 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:31:04 -0800 Subject: [GJM] "MUSIC from the HEART OF LOVE" Message-ID: <006101caaf0c$7eb59c20$7c20d460$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS If you can make this event, I urge you to attend - we have discussed here on this list the power of healing music and now you have the opportunity to experience this for yourself from one of the greatest musicians of our time. "MUSIC from the HEART OF LOVE" A SPECIAL HEALING CONCERT presented in the home recording studio of Internationally acclaimed, Grammy-nominated, award winning performing and recording artist C O N S T A N C E D E M B Y "The Electronica High Priestess of Priestesses" This is an opportunity to be in the presence of rarefied music which generates profound sonic vistas, performed in the intimate setting of Constance's home recording studio. In a career spanning three decades, the healing power of this music has inspired thousands of testimonials from those who have been transformed by the tones and frequencies transmitted through Constance from the Sound Current. "A realm of consciousness that words can only attempt to describe." - Deepak Chopra She will perform on the ancient Santur / Hammer Dulcimer, the Cosmic Electronic Symphonic Orchestra, and the Sonic Steel Space Bass, an originally designed, massive instrument that transmits powerful subsonic frequencies, invariably putting audiences into deep altered states. The Space Bass has been described as "a transdimensional communication device, a gateway to other dimensions, a chakra tuner-upper, an atom rearranger, whales in space" and many other poetic analogies. "One of the world's greatest living musicians, Constance Demby may well be the most important woman composer of classical and innovative music of our time." - Jean Houston, Phd INFORMATION-RESERVATIONS http://www.constancedemby.com/event.html EMAIL: soundcurrents.events at gmail.com PHONE: 707-480-6106 LOCATION: Malibu, 10 min from Santa Monica TICKETS: $35- Prepaid reservations thru Paypal TIME: SAT, Feb 20 - 8:30 pm / SUN, Feb 21 - 7:30 pm "Demby isn't just a musician , she is something altogether different: a portal, a walking catalyst, an event."- Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Tue Feb 16 06:49:48 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:49:48 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Something to Crow About Message-ID: <006701caaf0f$1acca570$5065f050$@net> Something to Crow About?: Jim Bell and Common Sense Renewable Energy Posted by: "Helene Idels" hdthoreau62 at hotmail.com h_idels Sun Feb 14, 2010 1:17 pm (PST) Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS This article was taken from the San Diego Grapevine hosted by Helene Idels. Thanks to Jim Bell - with much love and gratitude to both Jim and Helene. Jim is a member of the Co-learner's list. Something to Crow About? Jim Bell and Common Sense 619-758-9020, www.jimbell.com Recently the City of San Diego announced its number one ranking for large California cities in solar power installations. According the study, "California's Solar Cities," sponsored by Environment California, there are just under 20 MW of installed solar (PV) capacity inside the city's boundaries. Being number one in California for PV installations is something to be proud of, but what does that mean towards making San Diego renewable electricity supply and price secure? And, how long will it take for San Diego to become renewable electricity supply and price secure at an installation rate of 5 MW of installed PV capacity per year. Five MW of renewable energy capacity per year is the amount the city pledged to install per year, 6 years ago. The answer is 600 years, or 30 times slower than we need to install PV to become renewable electricity self-sufficient in 20 years. To become renewable electricity self-sufficient in 20 years, San Diego would have to install an average of 150 MW of PV capacity per year. To be completely renewable energy self-sufficient in 30 years (electricity, gaseous and liquid fuels), San Diego will have to up its installation rate to 250 MW per year. Additionally, these installation rates assume that San Diego will also become 40% more electricity, natural gas and liquid fuel use efficient. With a 40% increase in energy use efficiency, San Diego can become renewable electricity self-sufficient by installing 15% efficient PV panels over 17% of its roofs and parking lots. Becoming completely renewable energy self-sufficient would require installing 15% efficient PV panels over 43% of the City's roofs and parking lots, assuming 1,000 sq. ft. of roof and parking lot per capita. Our dependence on imported energy has already given us rising prices and our share of rapidly rising cost-of-energy shocks. Becoming renewable energy self-sufficient is our best chance to avoid them in the future. Given the amount of PV and efficiency improvements we should be installing compared with what we now install, perhaps pats on the back are premature. If San Diego was leading other California cities in becoming renewable electricity self-sufficient in 20 years and renewable energy self-sufficient in 30 years, that would be something to crow about. Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Tue Feb 16 11:25:26 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:25:26 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup Message-ID: <001a01caaf35$a14806a0$e3d813e0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS The only solution I see to this problem is "back to the earth" and creating food sovereignty. As I have written time and again the world is no longer dependent upon human labor and can manage very well with less than 30% of the presently available human labor force. This leaves 70% or more of the presently available labor force without jobs. The solution to this is to create sustainable living communities with food sovereignty being the cornerstone along with locally created currency systems. Now I know this is not "normal" today and we must train people how to do this -- we must make the great transition from reliance on "jobs" to being self-sufficient as we once were in the agricultural age. However, in this new age, we will be able to take advantage of "appropriate technology" so that growing our own food and building our own shelters is not the hard heavy work that it once was. So, this is why I want you to join the Transition movement and get connected up with Future Dawning and involved creating Community Learning and Information Centers that are focused on creating "hands-on-experiential" learning. Each of our community's needs to become our classroom as we learn from it what it is we need to do to make the community one of TOTAL WELLNESS -- one that will support us with its "natural environment". If you are involved with another organization, don't worry about it -- getting involved with TransitionUS will only enhance your experience -- it is designed to bring both individuals and organizations together as is Future Dawning. I am reading that both the Republicans and the Democrats are now out after Social Security and wanting to take this from us; however, I want to tell you that when one is living a sustainable lifestyle, one does not need Social Security nor does one need Health Care Insurance because one is practicing "prevention." And since one's needs are taken care of in a sustainable living community, then one does not need to worry about Social Security. It is only in the over-technologized world -- the world of artificial systems that we have created today and with which we have become "dissociated" from our natural system, the earth, that we need these kinds of props to keep us going. So, let's do what is best for us and let go of the sickness and corruption that we have become as a system and move into TOTAL WELLNESS. Now I know this is scary as hell for you to let go of what we have been programmed to believe is the "Great American Dream," but this false dream as all of us are beginning to realize is actually a nightmare and it is time to let it go. And as we are letting go to begin realizing a vision of beauty and magnificence, of love and compassion for others, of TOTAL WELLNESS -- basking in the white light of our spirituality, as we ascend to another level of consciousness which will not allow us to make the mistakes we have been making. So, let's everybody get linked up with TransitionUS and then I am going to begin inviting the most creative people I can find to get on board with Future Dawning so that we've created a virtual learning center and think tank to aid us in reprogramming our collective sub-conscious mind so that it is acting in our behalf and creating "life-enhancing" systems instead of the "death-defining" paths we are now on. Have a couple more logistical things to be done on Future Dawning, but will begin sending out invitations sometime next week. And once I get some of the people I have identified on board, they can then begin to invite others. All aboard everyone -- let's do this in an organized and peaceful, loving, and caring manner. Let's do it today. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Monday, February 15, 2010 6:42 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup (To change your settings or unsubscribe please go to http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/globalnetnews-summary) The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class The economic elite have robbed us all. The amount of suffering in the United States of America is literally a crime against humanity. February 15, 2010 | http://www.alternet.org/economy/145667/the_economic_elite_have_engineered_an _extraordinary_coup%2C_threatening_the_very_existence_of_the_middle_class "The American oligarchy spares no pains in promoting the belief that it does not exist, but the success of its disappearing act depends on equally strenuous efforts on the part of an American public anxious to believe in egalitarian fictions and unwilling to see what is hidden in plain sight." -- Michael Lind, To Have and to Have Not We all have very strong differences of opinion on many issues. However, like our founding fathers before us, we must put aside our differences and unite to fight a common enemy. It has now become evident to a critical mass that the Republican and Democratic parties, along with all three branches of our government, have been bought off by a well-organized Economic Elite who are tactically destroying our way of life. The harsh truth is that 99 percent of the U.S. population no longer has political representation. The U.S. economy, government and tax system is now blatantly rigged against us. Current statistical societal indicators clearly demonstrate that a strategic attack has been launched and an analysis of current governmental policies prove that conditions for 99 percent of Americans will continue to deteriorate. The Economic Elite have engineered a financial coup and have brought war to our doorstep...and make no mistake, they have launched a war to eliminate the U.S. middle class. To those who feel I am using extreme rhetoric, I ask you to please take a few minutes of your time to hear me out and research the evidence put forth. The facts are there for the unprejudiced, rational and reasoned mind to absorb. It is the unfortunate reality of our current crisis. Unless we all unite and organize on common ground, our very way of life and the ideals that our country was founded upon will continue to unravel. Before exposing exactly who the Economic Elite are, and discussing common sense ways in which we can defeat them, let's take a look at how much damage they have already caused. Buy the Book: The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America Casualties of Economic Terrorism, Surveying the Damage The devastating numbers across-the-board on the economic front are staggering. I'll go through some of them here, many we have already become all too familiar with. We hear some of these numbers all the time, so much so that it appears as if we have already begun "to normalize the unthinkable." You may be sick of hearing them, but behind each number is an enormous amount of individual suffering, American lives and families who are struggling worse than they ever have. America is the richest nation in history, yet we now have the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world with an unprecedented amount of Americans living in dire straights and over 50 million citizens already living in poverty. The government has come up with clever ways to downplay all of these numbers, but we have over 50 million people who need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50 percent of U.S. children will use food stamps to eat at some point in their childhoods. Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every day. In 2009, one out of five U.S. households didn't have enough money to buy food. In households with children, this number rose to 24 percent, as the hunger rate among U.S. citizens has now reached an all-time high. We also currently have over 50 million U.S. citizens without health care. 1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2008. As bankruptcies continue to skyrocket, medical bankruptcies are responsible for over 60 percent of them, and over 75 percent of the medical bankruptcies filed are from people who have health care insurance. We have the most expensive health care system in the world, we are forced to pay twice as much as other countries and the overall care we get in return ranks 37th in the world. In total, Americans have lost $5 trillion from their pensions and savings since the economic crisis began and $13 trillion in the value of their homes. During the first full year of the crisis, workers between the age of 55 - 60, who have worked for 20 - 29 years, have lost an average of 25 percent off their 401k. "Personal debt has risen from 65 percent of income in 1980 to 125 percent today." Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S. families are expected to lose their home by 2014, with 25 percent of current mortgages underwater. Deutsche Bank has an even grimmer prediction: "The percentage of 'underwater' loans may rise to 48 percent, or 25 million homes." Every day 10,000 U.S. homes enter foreclosure. Statistics show that an increasing number of these people are not finding shelter elsewhere, there are now over 3 million homeless Americans, the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population is single parents with children. One place more and more Americans are finding a home is in prison. With a prison population of 2.3 million people, we now have more people incarcerated than any other nation in the world -- the per capita statistics are 700 per 100,000 citizens. In comparison, China has 110 per 100,000, France has 80 per 100,000, Saudi Arabia has 45 per 100,000. The prison industry is thriving and expecting major growth over the next few years. A recent report from the Hartford Advocate titled "Incarceration Nation" revealed that "a new prison opens every week somewhere in America." Mass Unemployment The government unemployment rate is deceptive on several levels. It doesn't count people who are "involuntary part-time workers," meaning workers who are working part-time but want to find full-time work. It also doesn't count "discouraged workers," meaning long-term unemployed people who have lost hope and don't consistently look for work. As time goes by, more and more people stop consistently looking for work and are discounted from the unemployment figure. For instance, in January, 1.1 million workers were eliminated from the unemployment total because they were "officially" labeled discouraged workers. So instead of the number rising, we will hear deceptive reports about unemployment leveling off. On top of this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently discovered that 824,000 job losses were never accounted for due to a "modeling error" in their data. Even in their initial January data there appears to be a huge understating, with the newest report saying the economy lost 20,000 jobs. TrimTabs employment analysis, which has consistently provided more accurate data, "estimated that the U.S. economy shed 104,000 jobs in January." When you factor in all these uncounted workers -- "involuntary part-time" and "discouraged workers" -- the unemployment rate rises from 9.7 percent to over 20 percent. In total, we now have over 30 million U.S. citizens who are unemployed or underemployed. The rarely cited "employment-participation" rate, which reveals the percentage of the population that is currently in the workforce, has now fallen to 64 percent. Even based on the "official" unemployment rate, just to get back to the unemployment level of 4.6 percent that we had in 2007, we need to create over 10 million new jobs, and most every serious economist will tell you that these jobs are not coming back. In fact, we are still consistently shedding jobs, on just one day, January 27, several companies announced new cuts of more than 60,000 jobs. Due to the length of this crisis already, millions of Americans are reaching a point where the unemployment benefits they have been living on are coming to an end. More workers have already been out of work longer than at any point since statistics have been recorded, with over six million now unemployed for over six months. A record 20 million Americans qualified for unemployment insurance benefits last year, causing 27 states to run out of funds, with seven more also expected to go into the red within the next few months. In total, 40 state programs are expected to go broke. Most economists believe the unemployment rate will remain high for the foreseeable future. What will happen when we have millions of laid-off workers without any unemployment benefits to save them? Working More for Less The millions struggling to find work are just part of the story. Due to the fact that we now have a record high six people for every one job opening, companies have been able to further increase the workload on their remaining employees. They have been able to increase the amount of hours Americans are working, reduce wages and drastically cut back on benefits. Even though Americans were already the most productive workers in the world before the economic crisis, in the third quarter of 2009, average worker productivity increased by an annualized rate of 9.5 percent, at the same time unit labor cost decreased by 5.2 percent. This has led to record profits for many companies. Of the 220 companies in the S&P 500 who have reported fourth-quarter results thus far, 78 percent of them had "better-than-expected profits" with earnings 17 percent above expectations, "the highest for any quarter since Thomson Reuters began tracking data." According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national median wage was only $32,390 per year in 2008, and median household income fell by 3.6 percent while the unemployment rate was 5.8 percent. With the unemployment rate now at 10 percent, median income has been falling at a 5 percent rate and is expected to continue its decline. Not surprisingly, Americans' job satisfaction level is now at an all-time low. There are also a growing number of employed people who, despite having a job, are still living in poverty. There are at least 15 million workers who now fall into this rapidly growing category. $32,390 a year is not going to get you far in today's economy, and half of the country is making less than that. This is why many Americans are now forced to work two jobs to provide for their family to hopefully make ends meet. A Crime Against Humanity The mainstream news media will numb us to this horrifying reality by endlessly talking about the latest numbers, but they never piece them together to show you the whole devastating picture, and they rarely show you all the immense individual suffering behind them. This is how they "normalize the unthinkable" and make us become passive in the face of such a high causality count. Behind each of these numbers, is a tremendous amount of misery; the physical toll is only outdone by the severe psychological toll. Anyone who has had to put off medical care, or who couldn't get medical care for one of their family members due to financial circumstances, can tell you about the psychological toll that is on top of the physical suffering. Anyone who has felt the stress of wondering how they were going to get their child's next meal or their own, or the stress of not knowing how they are going to pay the mortgage, rent, electricity or heat bill, let alone the car payment, gas, phone, cable or Internet bill. There are now well over 150 million Americans who feel stress over these things on a consistent basis. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. These are all basic things every person should be able to easily afford in a technologically advanced society such as ours. The reason we struggle with these things is because the Economic Elite have robbed us all. This amount of suffering in the United States of America is literally a crime against humanity. From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 17 16:34:58 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:34:58 -0800 Subject: [GJM] An Absolutely Must Read! FW: The Transition Towns Movement Message-ID: <002101cab02a$0cd32680$26797380$@net> Thanks to Trading Post Paul for getting this message to us. I have long been familiar with Ted Trainer's work and feel his voice is an authentic one. As I have mentioned before, the motto for Future Dawning is "Living simply so that others may simply live." The transformation/transition we must make cannot be about maintaining the status quo and that is what i so frequently see when I am reading what it is we must do. I would very much like to read a comment on this from Thomas Greco. However, what I do feel is that the Transition Movement is very necessary as a way to get us organized. Let's not pay too much attention to what the manual says -- in hands-on learning experiences, one makes adjustments as one begins to get a feel for "what works" and "what doesn't" as the pieces come together. Again, the video "The Power of Community" sets a good model for us as the people of Cuba have already "been there done that". Do a search for it as there are several websites featuring it - select the best one for you. The full video is about 45 minutes in length. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 1:37 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] The Transition Towns Movement (too idealistic? or the only hope for survival?) "Governments, economists, educational institutions, the media and public will not even think about any challenge to wealth, property or getting as rich as possible. This issue does not appear to be on the TransitionTowns agenda. The goal seems to be to make the town safe from the coming storm but to go on living in it in typical rich world affluent ways, when those ways can?t continue without an unsustainable and unjust global economy." The Transition Towns Movement: Its Huge Significance and a Friendly Criticism by Ted Trainer 16 February 2010 http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id =605&Itemid=1 Editor's note: "Transition Towns" is one of the best ideas in decades, and is being put into practice widely. Author Ted Trainer has a respected track record among energy realists and devotees of sustainability. He wishes to help along a good movement. Culture Change also attempts to support the cause, mainly via activism that has articulated a similar vision vis-?-vis Transition Towns since the early 1990s. If there is a difference in culture change as we see it, compared to the Transition Towns message, it is probably in our petroleum-industry-analysis-based discussions of collapse and overpopulation. Transition Towns dispenses with that negative or scary focus, reflecting a difference in philosophy and tactics regarding what the public can stand to hear and be attracted to. It could be that "transformation" is a more accurate word for an historic, wrenching process than "transition," although we all look forward to positive changes that have been incubating since the back-to-the-land and environmental movement took off 40 years ago. Both Rob Hopkins, originator of Transition Towns, and I foresee with hope the return of sail power for trade and transportation. Perhaps he would agree that re-forming tribes can aid in strengthening community. The world is immensely complicated, and the forces of sweeping change may overall boost transition towns for their positive contribution. Or as Ted Trainer lays out below, a course correction is needed now. His basic message of urgency is this: It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn?t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. You will only escape that fate if you build a radically new economy in your region, and run it to provide for the people who live there. However, an oil crisis can happen overnight and become the most devastating event in history, although it ushers in a new and total cultural transformation. - Jan Lundberg The only way the global sustainability and justice predicament can be solved is via something like the inspiring Transition Towns movement. However unless the movement radically alters its vision and goals I do not think it will make a significant contribution to solving our problems. The Transition Towns movement began only about 2006 and is growing rapidly. It emerged in the UK mainly in response to the realisation that the coming of ?peak oil? is likely to leave towns in a desperate situation, and therefore that it is very important that they strive to develop local economic self-sufficiency. What many within the movement probably don?t know is that for decades some of us in the ?deep green? camp have been arguing that the key element in a sustainable and just world has to be small, highly self sufficient, localised economies under local cooperative control. (See my Abandon Affluence, published in 1985, and The Conserver Society, 1995.) It is therefore immensely encouraging to find that this kind of initiative is not only underway but booming. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that if this planet makes it through the next 50 years to sustainable and just ways it will be via some kind of Transition Towns process. However I also want to argue that if the movement is to have this outcome there are some very important issues it must think carefully about or it could actually come to little or nothing of any social significance. Indeed in my view if it remains on its present path it will not make a significant contribution to the achievement of a sustainable and just world. This will probably strike transitioners as a surprising and offensive comment, but please consider the following case. Everything depends on how one sees the state of the planet, and the solution. In my view most people do not understand the nature and magnitude of the situation, including most green people. Consequently they are working for goals which cannot solve the problems. It is of the utmost importance that good green people and transitioners think carefully about the perspective summarised below. Where we are, and the way out For decades some of us have been arguing that the many alarming global problems now crowding in and threatening to destroy us are so big and serious that they cannot be solved within or by consumer-capitalist society. The way of life we have in rich countries is grossly unsustainable and unjust. There is no possibility of all people on earth ever rising to rich world per capita levels of consumption of energy, minerals, timber, water, food, phosphorous etc. These rates of consumption are generating the numerous alarming global problems now threatening our survival. They are already 5-10 times the rates which would be necessary to provide present rich-world living standards to the 9 billion people expected by 2050. Most people have no idea of the magnitude of the overshoot, of how far we are beyond sustainable levels of resource use and environmental impact. Although present rich world rates of resource use are grossly unsustainable, the supreme goal in consumer-capitalist society is to raise them as fast as possible and without limit. If all expected 9 billion rose to the ?living standards? we in Australia would have by 2080 at present growth rates, then total world economic output would be 60 times as great as it is now! These sorts of multiples totally rule out any hope that technical advance could sustain growth and affluence society. ln addition there is the huge problem of global economic injustice. Our way of life would not be possible if rich countries were not taking far more than their fair share of world resources, via an extremely unjust global economy, and thereby condemning most of the world?s people to deprivation. Given this analysis of our situation it is not possible to solve the problems without transition to a very different kind of society, one not based on globalisation, market forces, the profit motive, centralisation, representative democracy, or competitive, individualistic acquisitiveness. Above all it must be a zero-growth economy, with a far lower GDP than at present, and most difficult of all, it cannot be an affluent society. I refer to this alternative as The Simpler Way. Its core principles must be ? Far simpler material living standards. ? High levels of self-sufficiency within households, national and especially neighbourhoods and towns, with relatively little travel, transport or trade. There must be mostly small, local economies in which most of the things we need are produced by local labour from local resources. ? Basically cooperative and participatory local systems. ? A quite different economic system, one not driven by market forces and profit, and in which there is far less work, production and consumption than at present, and a large cashless sector, including many free goods from local commons. There must be no economic growth at all. There must be mostly small local economies, under our control via participatory systems, and run to meet needs ? not to make profits (although I think we could have markets and many private firms). ? Most problematic, a radically different culture, in which competitive and acquisitive individualism is replaced by frugal, self-sufficient collectivism. Some of the elements within The Simpler Way are:? participatory democracy via town assemblies ? neighbourhood workshops ? many suburban roads dug up and planted with ?edible landscapes? providing free fruit, nuts etc ? being able to get to decentralised workplaces by bicycle or on foot -- voluntary community working bees ? committees - many productive commons in the town (fruit, timber, bamboo, herbs ) ? having to work for money only one or two days a week ? no unemployment ? living among many artists and crafts people ? strong community ? citizen assemblies making many of the important development and administration decisions ? much production via hobbies and crafts, small farms and family enterprises. Modern/high technologies and mass production can be used extensively where appropriate, including IT. The Simpler Way will free many more resources for purposes such as medical research than are devoted to these at present, because most of the present vast quantity of unnecessary production will be phased out. Because we will be highly dependent on our local ecosystems and on our social cohesion, e.g., for most water and food, and for effective committees and working bees (volunteer or entrepreneurial community work), all will have a strong incentive to focus on what is best for the town, rather than on what is best for themselves as competing individuals. Cooperation and conscientiousness will therefore tend to be automatically rewarded, whereas in consumer society competitive individualism is required and rewarded. What we will have done is build a new economy, Economy B, under the old one. Economy B will give us the power to produce the basic goods and services we need not just to survive as the old economy increasingly fails to provide, but to give all a high quality of life. The old economy could collapse and we would still be able to provide for ourselves. Advocates of the Simpler Way believe that its many benefits and sources of satisfaction would provide a much higher quality of life than most people experience in consumer society. It must be emphasised that The Simpler Way is not optional. If our global situation is as outlined above then a sustainable and just society in the coming era of scarcity has to be some kind of Simpler Way. Reform vs radical system replacement. In my view few green people or transitioners recognise the huge distinction here between trying to reform consumer-capitalist society and trying to replace its major structures and systems. The Simpler Way contradicts the core systems of the present society and cannot be built unless we replace them. Consumer-capitalist society cannot be fixed; it cannot be reformed to not create the alarming global problems we face while still being about the pursuit of affluence and growth etc. Consider, ? Therefore a good society cannot be an affluent society, and this contradicts a consumer society. ? An economy that focuses on need, rights, justice, especially with respect to the Third World, and ecological sustainability cannot possibly be driven by market forces. Market forces totally ignore needs, rights, justice etc., because they only allocate scarce things to those who can pay most for them. ? The conditions of severe scarcity we are entering leave no choice but to shift to mostly small, highly self-sufficient local economies run by participatory procedures, which contradicts present centralised and globalised political and economic paradigms. ? The more the market is allowed to determine what happens the more that social cohesion, community, collectivism and solidarity will be driven out. ? The basic values driving a good society cannot be individualistic, competitive acquisitiveness. What do we have to do in order to eventually achieve such huge and radical changes? The answer goes far beyond the things that green/transition people are doing now, such as setting up community gardens, food co-ops, recycling centres, Permaculture groups, skill banks, home-craft courses, commons, volunteering, downshifting, etc. Yes all these are the kinds of institutions and practices we will have in the new sustainable and just world so it is understandable that many people within the Eco-village, Transition Towns and green movements assume that if we just work at establishing more and more of these things then in time this will have created the new society. I think this is a serious mistake. Firstly these things are easily accommodated within consumer-capitalist society without threatening it, as the lifestyle choices and hobby interests of a relatively few people. They will appeal to only that minority potentially interested in composting or organic food or Permaculture etc. Larger numbers will not come to them unless they understand why they should, that is unless they accept the world view summarised above, and therefore see that it is necessary to do these things if we are to save the planet. Just establishing more community gardens and recycling centres does little or nothing to increase that understanding. Secondly, the most crucial institutions for transition are not in the list above, are not being set up, and will not be set up by the thinking motivating the many good green people now establishing the gardens and recycling centres. If the global vision sketched above is valid then we ordinary people in our towns and suburbs eventually have to establish our own local Economy B, take control of it and relegate the market to a very minor role, identify local needs and work out how to meet them, get rid of unemployment, work out how to cut town imports, etc. and grope towards the practices which enable us to collectively self-govern the town. In other words we have to deliberately come together to replace core consumer-capitalist ways in our town. This requires thinking about goals that are at an utterly different level to just initiating some good green practices within present society. It requires coming together to organise collective economic systems and political action. The town must ask itself what are we going to get together to do to solve our problems; what arrangements and institutions do we need to set up to make sure everyone around here is provided for? Such big picture thinking is rarely encountered in current green or transition movements. Hence, ?Just do something ? anything.? Not surprisingly, at present the Transition Towns movement is reformist. It is not in general motivated by the clear and explicit goal of replacing the core institutions of consumer-capitalist society. Its implicit rationale is that it is sufficient to create more community gardens, recycling centres, skill banks, cycle paths, seed sharing, poultry coops, etc. It is not in general motivated by the clear and explicit goal of replacing the core institutions of consumer-capitalist society. (Some people within the movement say or think they are working for change from consumer-capitalist society but my point is that in fact the things they are doing will not have that effect, and will only bring about changes within it.) Thus this rationale assumes that it is in order to do anything green. Just go ahead and set up a community garden here, a nut tree plantation there, and in time it will all add towards the eventual achievement of a satisfactory society. As Alex Steffen has said " just go ahead and do something, anything... All over the world, groups of people with graduate degrees, affluence, decades of work experience, varieties of advanced training and technological capacities beyond the imagining of our great-grandparents are coming together, looking into the face of apocalypse... and deciding to start a seed exchange or a kids clothing swap." (worldchanging.com) However if your goal was to build the kind of society that I?ve argued we must have if we are to solve global problems of sustainability and justice you would very definitely not think it was sufficient or appropriate just to encourage a thousand flowers to bloom. You would think very carefully about what projects were most important to achieve that goal, you would realise that this must involve taking collective control over the local economy, and you would recognise that developing this vision among people in the region is the supremely important task to work on. Thus the insufficiency of resilience. >From the perspective I?ve outlined, making your town more resilient is far from a sufficient goal. That could be little more than building a haven of safety in a world of oil scarcity a haven within a wider society that remains obsessed with growth, markets, exploiting the Third World, and using mobile phones made with Tantalum from the Congo. If you want to protest that you are not just building a haven, that you see yourself as working for the kind of society that would defuse world problems, then again my point is that you won?t achieve that unless your vision and goals shift to way beyond building compost heaps and recycling groups. The lack of guidance A major deficiency in the current Transition Towns movement literature is the lack of information on what to do. The website, the Handbook and especially the 12 Steps document are valuable, but they are predominantly about the procedure for organising the movement and it is remarkably difficult to find clear guidance as to what the sub-goals of the movement are, the actual structures and systems and projects that we should be trying to undertake if our town is to achieve transition or resilience. What we desperately need to know is what things should we start trying to set up, what should we avoid, what should come first. Especially important is that we need to be able to see the causal links, to understand why setting up this venture will have the effect of creating greater town resilience. But unfortunately people coming to the movement eager to get started will find almost no guidance in the current literature as to what to actually try to do, let alone anything like a suggested plan of action with steps and do?s and don?ts and clear explanation of why specific projects will have desirable effects. The advice and suggestions you do find in the literature are almost entirely about how to establish the movement (e.g., ?Awareness raising?, ?Form subgroups?, ?Build a bridge to local government?), as distinct from how to establish things that will actually, obviously make the town more resilient. There is some reference to possibilities, such as set up community supported agriculture schemes, but we are told little more than that we should establish committees to look into what might be done in areas such as energy, food, education and health. The lack is most evident in The Kinsale Energy Descent Plan, which does little more than repeat the process ideas in the 12 steps documents and contains virtually no information or projects to do with energy technology or strategies. It lists some possibilities, such as exploring insulation and the possibility of local energy generation, and reducing the need for transport, but again there is no advice as to what precisely can or might be set up. We need more than this; we need to know how and why a particular project will make the town more resilient, and we need to know what projects we should start with, what the difficulties and costs might be, etc. Just being told ?Create an energy descent plan? (Step 12) doesn?t help much when what we need is to know how we might do that. The authors of these documents seem to be anxious to avoid prescription and dogma, and it is likely that no one can give confident guidance at this early stage, but that does not mean that ideas regarding probably valuable projects should not be offered. Some groups have accumulated experience that now surely indicates more effective directions to take. I worry that the many now rushing into Transition Towns initiatives all around the world will do all sorts of good things, which will not turn out to have made much difference to the crucial issues. At least one group has folded apparently because of confusion over what to do. If people become disenchanted the movement could fizzle and be set back seriously. As I see our situation this movement is our only hope so it is extremely important that it is not allowed to falter. This lack of guidance reflects the reformist nature of the movement, the (implicit) acceptance of the assumption that just adding this and that better practice to this society will eventually fix it sufficiently. The problem of affluence If there is one thing that is responsible for the potentially fatal state of the planet it is the taken for granted, never-thought-about obsession with affluent living standards. Rich world per capita rates of production and consumption are probably ten times higher than the resources of the planet could provide for all. The first principle of a sustainable and just society must be the willingness to live very simply in terms of resource use. This does not imply hardship or deprivation; it is about being content with what is sufficient for a good quality of life. The biggest problem blocking the achievement of a sustainable society is the fact that just about everyone is fiercely determined to have the highest ?living standards? possible and to increase them all the time, without limit. Until this worldview is reversed we cannot possibly begin to make any progress on the global problems it directly causes. The task is astronomically difficult, probably impossible. Governments, economists, educational institutions the media and publics will not even think about any challenge to wealth, property or getting as rich as possible. This issue does not appear to be on the TransitionTowns agenda. The goal seems to be to make the town safe from the coming storm but to go on living in it in typical rich world affluent ways, when those ways can?t continue without an unsustainable and unjust global economy. Again, resilience is not enough. What then should the goals be? My hope of course is to persuade transitioners to adopt a radical global vision which sees the attempt to reform of consumer-capitalist society as a fundamental mistake, and sees the Transition Towns movement as the way to build the kinds of societies that would eliminate the main global problems. Following are the implications I want to suggest for sub-goals. The supreme goal should be building a new local economy, and running it. I don?t think the focal concern of the movement should be energy and its coming scarcity. Yes all that sets the scene and the imperative, but the solution is not primarily to do with energy. It is to do with developing town economic self-sufficiency. The supreme need is for us to build a radically new economy within our town, and then for us to run it to meet our needs. It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn?t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. You will only escape that fate if you build a radically new economy in your region, and run it to provide for the people who live there. All this flatly contradicts the conventional economy. We have to build a local economy, not a national or globalised economy, an economy designed to meet needs, not to maximise profits, an economy under participatory social control and not driven by corporate profit, and one guided by rational planning as distinct from leaving everything to the market. This is the antithesis of capitalism, markets, profit motivation and corporate control. Nothing could be more revolutionary. If we don?t plunge into building such an economy we will probably not survive in the coming age of scarcity. The Transition Towns movement will come to nothing of great significance if it does not set itself to build such economies. Either your town will get control of its own affairs and organise local productive capacity to provide for you, or it will remain within and dependent on the mainstream economy. In other words, the goal here is to build that Economy B, a new local economy enabling the people who live in the town to guarantee the provision of basic necessities by applying their labour, land and skills to local resources all under our control. The old Economy A can then drop dead and we will still be able to provide for ourselves. This kind of vision and goal is not evident in the TT literature and reports I have read. There is no concept of setting out to eventually run the town economy for the benefit of the people via participatory means. The need for coordination, priorities and planning ? by a Community Development Co-op We must somehow set up mechanisms which enable us to work out and operate an overall/integrated plan. It will not be ideal if we proclaim the importance of town self-sufficiency and then all run off as individuals to set up a bakery here and a garden there. It is important that there should be continual discussion about what the town needs to set up to achieve its goals, what should be done first, what is feasible, how we might proceed to get the main things done first, and what are the most important ventures to set up. How should our scarce resources best be deployed (e.g., what are the top priorities for the working bees to do, for our banks to fund )? Of course individual initiatives are to be encouraged but much more important are likely to be bigger projects requiring whole-town effort. This does not imply a vast and detailed plan, nor indeed a confident one, but it is a plea for an attempt to think out goals, priorities and integration. This means that from the early stages we should set up some kind of Community Development Cooperative, a process whereby we can come together often to discuss and think about the town plan and our progress, towards having a coordinated and unified approach that will then help us decide on sub-goals and priorities, and especially on the purposes to which the early working bees will be put. Obviously this would not need to be elaborate or prescriptive and would not mean people would be discouraged from pursuing ventures other than those endorsed by the CDC. Following is an indication of the kind of projects that I think a CDC would try to take up (although not all at a once.) ? Identify the unmet needs of the town, and the unused productive capacities of the town, and bring them together. Set up the many simple cooperatives enabling all the unemployed, homeless, bored, retired, people to get into the community gardens etc. that would enable them to start producing many of the basic things they need. Can we set up co-ops to run a bakery, bike repair shop, home help service, insulating operation, clothes making and repairing operation.... Especially important are the cooperatives to organise leisure resources, the concerts, picnics, dances, festivals? Can we organise a market day? One of the worst contradictions in the present economy is that it dumps many people into unemployment, boredom, homelessness, "retirement," mental illness and depression ? and in the US, watching 4+ hours of TV every day. These are huge productive capacities left idle and wasted. The CDC can pounce on these resources and harness them and enable dumped people to start producing to meet some of their own needs. To do this is to have begun to set up Economy B. We simply record contributions and these entitle people to proportionate shares of the output. (This is to have initiated our own new currency; see below.) This mechanism puts us in a position to eventually get rid of unemployment ? to make sure all who want work, "incomes" and livelihoods can have them (not necessarily in normal, waged jobs). It is absurd and annoying that governments (and the people in your neighbourhood) tolerate people suffering depression and boredom when we could so easily set up the cooperatives that would enable them to produce things they need and enjoy with purpose and solidarity. ? Help existing small firms to move to activities the town needs, setting up little firms and farms and markets. Establish a town bank to finance these ventures, making sure no one goes bankrupt and no one is left without a livelihood. ? Organise Business Incubators. Voluntary panels of experts and advisers on gardening, small business, arts etc., assure we can get new ventures up and running well. ? Organise the working bees to plant and maintain the community orchards and other commons, build the premises for the bee keeper...and organise the committees to run the concerts and look after old people... ? Research what the town is importing as well as the scope for local firms or new co-ops to start substituting local products. ? Decide what things will emphatically not be left for market forces to determine ? such as unemployment, what firms we will have, whether fast-food outlets will be patronised if they set up. We will not let market forces deprive anyone of a livelihood; if we have too many bakeries we will work out how to redirect one of them. The town gets together to decide what it needs, and to establish these things regardless of what market forces and the profit motive would have done. ? Stress the importance of reducing consumption, living more simply, making, growing, repairing old things The less we consume in the town the less we must produce or import. Remember, the world can't consume at anything like the rate rich countries average. As well as explaining the importance of reducing consumption the CDC must stress alternative satisfactions and develop these (e.g., the concerts, festivals, crafts). It can also develop recipes for cheap but nutritious meals, teaching craft and gardening skills, preserving etc. The household economy should be upheld as the centre of our lives and the main source of life?s satisfaction, more important than career. ? Work towards the procedures for making good town decisions about these developments, the referenda, consensus processes, and town meetings. ? Throughout all these activities recognise that our primary concern is to raise consciousness regarding the nature, functioning and unacceptability of consumer-capitalist society and the existence of better ways. Conclusion The Transition Towns movement is characterised by a remarkable level of enthusiasm and energy. This seems to reflect a long pent up disenchantment with consumer-capitalist society and a desire for something better. There is a powerful case that the only way out of the alarming global predicament we are in has to be via a Transition Towns movement of some kind. To our great good fortune one has burst on the scene. But I worry that it could very easily fail to make a significant difference. My argument has been that it will fail if it turns out to have been merely a reformist project, because reforms can?t solve the problems. It is very important that people working for the movement should think carefully about what the global situation is and how it can be solved. I have sketched a perspective on these questions which indicates that the movement is not going to make a significant contribution to the transition to a sustainable and just world unless the underlying vision and goals alter significantly. -------------------------- Appendix: The introduction of local currencies Although the introduction of our own local currency is very important, there is much confusion about local currencies. Often the proposed schemes would not have desirable effects. There is a tendency to proceed as if just creating a local currency would do wonders, without any thinking through of how it is supposed to work. lt will not have desirable effects unless it is carefully designed to do so. I have serious concerns about the currency schemes being adopted by the Transition Towns movement and I do not think the initiatives I am aware of are going to make significant contributions to the achievement of town resilience. It is not evident that they are based on a rationale that makes sense nor enable one to see why they will have desirable effects. It is most important that we are able to see precisely what general effect the form of currency we have opted for is going to have; we must be able to explain why we are implementing it in view of the beneficial effects it designed to have. As I see it, the main purpose in introducing a currency is to contribute to getting the unused productive capacity of the town into action, i.e., stimulating/enabling increase in output to meet needs. (Another purpose is to avoid the interest charges when normal money is borrowed, but this can?t be done unless the new money is to be used to pay for inputs available in the town; it can?t pay for imported cement for instance.) Following is the strategy that I think is most valuable. Consider again what happens in the above scenario, when our CDC sets up a community garden and invites people to come and work in it. When time contributions are recorded with the intention of sharing produce later in proportion to contributions, these slips of paper function like an IOU or ?promissory note? (although that?s not what they are). They can be used to ?buy? garden produce when it becomes available. They are a form of money which enables everyone to keep track of how much work, producing and providing they have done and how great a claim they have on what?s been produced. The extremely important point about the design and use of this currency is that it helps in getting those idle people into producing to meet some of their own needs. Obviously the introduction of the currency was not the most important element in the process; organising the ?firm? was the key factor. It may be obvious the way the currency works, and you can see what its desirable effects are to be. But just introducing a currency of some kind does not necessarily have any desirable effect, and it is crucial to do it in a way that you know will have definite and valuable effects. At a later stage we can use our currency to start trading with firms in the old economy. We can find restaurants for instance willing to sell us meals which we can pay for with our money. They will accept payment in our money if they can then spend that money buying vegetables and labour from us in Economy B. But note that the normal shops in the town cannot accept our money and we in Economy B cannot buy from them, unless there is something we can sell to them. They can?t sell things to us, accepting our money, unless they can use that money. Nothing significant can be achieved unless people acquire the capacity to produce and sell things that others want. So the crucial task here for the Community Development co-op is to look for things we in Economy B might sell to the normal firms in the town. Councils can facilitate this process, for example by accepting our new money in part payment of their rates ? but again only if there is something they can spend the money on, that is, goods and services they need that we in Economy B can provide. Therefore the CDC must look for these possibilities. Sometimes it makes sense for a council to issue a currency to enable use of local resources, especially labour, to build an infrastructure without having to borrow and pay interest to external banks. This can only be done for those inputs that are available locally. If for instance the cement for the swimming pool has to be imported then it will have to be paid for in national currency, but it would be a mistake to borrow normal money to pay the workers if they are available in the town. They can be paid in specially printed new money with which they are able to pay (part of) their rates. Note, however, that the council then has the problem of what to do with these payments. If it doesn't use them the council has actually paid for the pool via reduced normal money rate income, and will have to reduce services to the town accordingly. Better to keep the money perpetually in use within a new Economy B, so those workers and the council can go on providing things to each other. Now consider some ways of introducing a new currency that will not have desirable effects. What would happen if the council or a charity just gave a lot of new money to poor people, and got some shops to agree to accept it as payment for goods they sell? The recipients would soon spend it and be without jobs and poor again. The shops would hold lots of new money but not be able to spend it buying anything they need. (They could use it to buy from each other, but would have no need to do this, because they were already able to buy the few things they needed from each other using normal money.) Again if things are not to gum up, it must be possible for the shopkeepers in the old economy to use their new money purchasing something from those poor people, and that?s not possible unless they can produce things within a new Economy B. Sometimes the arrangement is for people to buy new notes using normal money. This is just substituting, and achieves nothing for the town economy. What?s the point of people who would have used dollars now buying using ?eco?s? they have bought? Again there is no effect of bringing unused productive capacity into action. What about the argument that local currencies encourage local purchasing because they can?t be spent outside the town? This reveals confusion. Anyone who understands the importance of buying local will do so as much as they can, regardless of what currency they have. Anyone who doesn?t will buy what?s cheapest, which is typically an imported item. Obviously what matters here is getting people to understand why it?s important to buy local; just issuing a local currency will make no significant difference. Similarly, currencies which depreciate with time miss the point and are unnecessary. Anyone who understands the situation does not need to be penalised for holding new money and not spending it. In any case it?s wrong-headed to set out to encourage spending; people should buy as little as they can, and any economy in which you feel an obligation to spend to make work for someone else is not an acceptable economy. In a sensible economy there is only enough work, producing and spending and use of money as is necessary to ensure all have sufficiency for a good quality of life. * * * * * Ted Trainer wrote the above article on Dec. 3, 2009, and recently asked Culture Change to post it. He is a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Social Work, University of New South Wales. His main interests have been global problems, sustainability issues, radical critiques of the economy, alternative social forms and the transition to them. He has written numerous books and articles on these topics, including The Conserver Society: Alternatives for Sustainability, London, Zed, 1995; Saving the Environment: What It Will Take, Sydney, University of N.S.W Press, 1998, and Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain A Consumer Society, Springer, 2007. He is also developing Pigface Point, an alternative lifestyle educational site near Sydney, and a website for use by critical global educators, ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/. It contains the website where his material is available for use. He can be contacted via email at F.Trainer at unsw.edu.auThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or via standard mail at Social Work, University of NSW, Kensington 2052, Australia. From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 17 22:16:19 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:16:19 -0800 Subject: [GJM] =?utf-8?q?FW=3A_Free_Webinar_-_Interactions_Between_the_Ear?= =?utf-8?q?th=E2=80=99s_Energetic_Systems_and_Human_Consciousness_w?= =?utf-8?q?ith_Rollin_McCraty=2C_Ph=2ED=2E?= Message-ID: <002701cab059$c0b00720$42101560$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Hi Everyone, this is important as we learn about our ability to use the subtle energy of our body/mind field to bring coherence to both people and places. For new members some background information on the subtle energies of the human body may be found in ?Infinite Mind ? Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness? by Valerie V. Hunt, Ph.D, Ph.D. Another good source of information on this is provided by Lynne McTaggart in her book: ?The Field.? Dr. Wayne Dyer writes about this book: ?McTaggart presents the hard evidence for what spiritual masters have been telling us for centuries.? Both books are available through Amazon.com and other sources. Remember that everything I the Universe is made from energy fields (information in motion). And each energy field is coded with regard to its mission in life and vibrates at a certain frequency. Since we have been posting a lot of information on Constance Demby and her ?healing music? let?s also recall that music has certain vibration tones associated with it. And when these tones are played they affect the subtle energy vibrations of the human body/mind field too. If the music being played is of a high coherence pattern then this energy effects the vibration pattern in the human body/mind field and brings it into a coherence pattern as well. The same happens when two violins are in a room together and the ?C? chord on one is plucked which results in the ?C? chord on the other violin resonating in harmony with the first violin. For more on healing music, may I suggest: ?Walk On Water? by Leonard Horowitz. From: Global Coherence Initiative [mailto:info at glcoherence.org] Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 4:21 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Free Webinar - Interactions Between the Earth?s Energetic Systems and Human Consciousness with Rollin McCraty, Ph.D. Having trouble viewing our HTML e-mail? View it here. Free Member Webinar Global Coherence Initiative Interactions Between the Earth's Energetic Systems and Human Consciousness Sign up Today for the Webinar: Interactions Between the Earth?s Energetic Systems and Human Consciousness with Rollin McCraty, Ph.D. Join the Global Coherence Monitoring System Development Team Coordinator, Rollin McCraty, Ph.D. for this compelling Webinar: Interactions Between the Earth?s Energetic Systems and Human Consciousness set for 11 a.m. ? 12 noon and 6 p.m. ? 7 p.m. PDT Thursday, March 18. In this Webinar Dr. McCraty will review data showing how solar cycles correlate with "human excitability" with a focus on how they also affect periods of human flourishing; he will examine the random number generator network data showing changes from both positive and negative events and how love and compassion have the strongest effects. In layman terms, Rollin will talk about the Earth?s magnetic fields and how their frequencies overlap with both heart and brain rhythms and about the new magnetic sensors we are using. Dr. McCraty will discuss the Global Coherence Initiative?s three major hypotheses that synthesize the relationship between human beings and the solar and earth?s energetic fields: * Hypothesis No. 1: All living things are interconnected and we communicate with each other via biological, and electromagnetic fields. * Hypothesis No. 2: Not only are humans affected by planetary energetic fields, but conversely the earth?s energetic systems are also influenced by collective human emotions and consciousness. Much of the planetary field environment is made up of the collective consciousness of the inhabitants. * Hypothesis No. 3: Large numbers of people intentionally creating heart-coherent states of care, love, compassion and appreciation can generate a coherent standing wave that will help offset the current planetary wave of stress, discord and incoherence. Learn more about how important it is that people take responsibility for their own energy and elect to use this creative energy influx to create deeper connections and more caring interactions with each other and Mother Earth. In day to day life the key is individual coherence ? understand more about why what each person does, counts. Rollin McCraty McCraty is the project coordinator for the Global Coherence Monitoring System and IHM?s executive vice president and director of research. He is a psychophysiologist whose research background and interest includes the physiology of emotions and the mechanisms by which emotions influence cognitive processes, behavior and health. He is a respected international authority on the intelligence of the heart. Join us for this meaningful Global Coherence Initiative Webinar. With care, Rollin McCraty Ph.D. and GCI Steering Committee Global Coherence Initiative Interactions Between the Earth?s Energetic Systems and Human Consciousness Webinar Join us for a Webinar on Thursday, March 18, 2010. Two times for GCI Webinars: The following Web site is a time conversion site for determining the number of hours? difference between your local time and PDT ? Pacific Daylight Time ? which is observed, for example, in San Francisco and the rest of California in the U.S.A.: www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc. Register for a session now by clicking a date below: Presented by: Rollin McCraty, Ph.D. Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010 Time: 11 a.m. ? 12 noon PDT Thursday, March 18, 2010 Time: 11 a.m. ? 12 noon (PDT) Presented by: Rollin McCraty, Ph.D. Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010 Time: 6 p.m. ? 7 p.m. PDT Thursday, March 18, 2010 Time: 6 p.m. ? 7 p.m. (PDT) Don?t miss this special event. This Webinar is free for members and can be attended by phone, computer and phone or listen via your computer speakers. Space is limited, so reserve your Webinar seat now. System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows? 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista Macintosh?-based attendees Required: Mac OS? X 10.3.9 (Tiger?) or newer Look for reminder e-mails. Global Coherence Initiative 14700 West Park Ave., Boulder Creek, CA 95006 | tel (831) 706-2981 | fax (831) 338-8504 | info at glcoherence.org ? 2010 Global Coherence Initiative. All rights reserved. www.glcoherence.org To unsubscribe, reply to this e-mail with "unsubscribe" in the subject line. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ceasig at gmail.com Wed Feb 17 23:51:23 2010 From: ceasig at gmail.com (Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion & Governance) Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:51:23 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Fwd: westernism part 2 In-Reply-To: <682227.93315.qm@web51002.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <682227.93315.qm@web51002.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <31f677a31002172251p65c9e03bt8488ed080cf5f35@mail.gmail.com> sharing for needful comments and critique . ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: javed jamil Date: 14 Feb 2010 17:08 Subject: westernism part 2 To: cgs at unishivaji.ac.in, centreforpeace at rediffmail.com, csic at bham.ac.uk, csss2work at gmail.com, lib_css at sifi.com, secysd at sancharnet.in, sarvodayaindia at yahoo.co.in, cpa at sri.lanka.net, welcome at sltnet.lk, mushaf at isam.org.tr, ceasig at gmail.com, ccs at ccsindia.org, subs at cna-india.com *Westernism: the Ideology of Hegemony* *By Dr Javed Jamil* *Part 2* * * *History of Market Economics taking unbridled control* Economics has been defined by the great Victorian economist Alfred Marshall as ?the study of mankind in everyday business of life?. What follows from the long discussions in the proceeding pages is that the chequered career of economic fundamentalism has now reached a sort of stability. *The recent history of ?economic growth? can as well be described as the history of exploitation of mankind, which has now reached its zenith.* Before the begin?ning of the eighteenth century, the world was ruled by religion and law. The scientific and industrial revolutions that followed paced their courses simultaneously. By the end of the nineteenth century, science had become a virtual ruler. But Economics did not lag far behind. Since the middle of the twentieth cen?tury, Economics has taken a clear lead; and now, science, is lagging way behind. It is not that the economists of past have not pointed out the exploitative tendencies of the commercial giants. The earlier economists had distinct moral proclivities Adam Smith had argued that ?economic successes beyond the level necessary for the satisfaction of one?s physical wants does not add to a man?s real happiness, and it is only vanity, the desire to be looked upon by one?s fellowmen with admiration and envy that motivates the incessant accumulation of personal wealth?. He strongly contra?dicted the theory of Bernard de Mandevelle that private vice was a public virtue. According to Smith, ?the desire for admiration and envy is an inferior virtue derived from the great virtue of sympathy of sharing the feelings of others?. He attempted to unveil the selfish face of the businessmen by stating that *?it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer, and baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard for their own interests*?. Despite Smith being an advocate of capitalism, he was quick in denouncing the self-interests of the merchants and manu?facturers. He stressed that ?*profit hunger conflicts with public interest?.* He went as for as defining the monopoly as ?infamous covetousness.....which does not shrink from terrorization and crime?. He remarked that *?people of the same trade seldom convene without their entertainment ending in a conspiracy against the public or a scheme for an increase of prices?.* He vehemently pleaded for the reconciliation of private and public interests. He judged that there were two price theories, and out of the two *only the one for competition was a part of the system, and the one for monopoly was only a foreign body*. He lambasted the desire of man to ?reap where they had not sown?. He had rightly described the joint stock companies as doing business on other people?s money. But Smith?s concern for the people was unfor?tunately not shared by the later economists. *Malthus reinterpreted nature and reason, and was cruel enough to draw the conclusion that ?poor are themselves the cause of their own poverty?. *Thus he exonerated the capitalists of the charge that they were re?sponsible for the plight of the poor. Several writers have argued that Malthus? comments were aimed at appealing to the poor to improve their conditions by their own efforts. They forget that in the world of exploitation there have to be the exploiters and the exploited, and without exploiting others one can hardly improve one?s condition; and if it is so, it is impossible for all the people to become rich. What is however possible is the transfer of poverty from some individuals to others. It was also Malthus who was responsible for the development of the idea of* **excessive population growth, which has lately become the greatest tool in the hands of the economic fundamentalists to absolve them?selves of all the responsibility to improve the conditions of the poor, *and also to divert the flow of money from the agricultural producers to the industrialists. Malthus had also emphasised the necessity of a social class of people who were in the habit of spend?ing their money. The first indication of the desire of the manufacturers and traders to globalise economic can be noticed in the *Manchester Doctrine* which achieved fame in 1846 when Corn Laws were dissolved in the UK. The proponents of this doctrine, also known as the *Vulgarized Theory,*expected that the spread of free trade would lead to ?diminution of the importance of political borderlines, integration of the several national economics into one worldwide economic system the constituent parts of which would be not the national economies but the private business enterprises partici?pating in production and trade, and world peace resulting from international intercourse and from the impossibility of waging war in conditions of over-increasing mutual dependence." Bastial introduced the concept of service to the consumer as the explana?tion of any kind of income and thus gave a new voice to exploitative practices under the name of* laissez faire**.* Fredrich Last, on the other hand, was sharply critical of free trade. He gives an argument that speaks volumes of his understanding of the exploitative tendencies of the merchants. *He lambasted f**ree trade as a conspiracy by the special interests posing as the general interests*. He also emphasized that industry was not a natural growth and it was the creation of luring men who change in his?tory. From among the early socialists, Rodberus drew a historical conclusion which he gave as economic explanation of imperialism saying that imperialism was nothing but the use of military power of the national state to subjugate pre-industrial countries and capture their markets. Marx, the most known socialist of the history, built up his revolutionary economic theory against capitalism. He concluded that ?accumulation of wealth at one pole.... (meant)...at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toll, slavery..... at the opposite side.? The members of Historical School, too, opposed the policy of *laissez faire, * and insisted upon the need for governmental intervention. They reckoned that state alone was competent enough to secure for the people a justice which is impossible to achieve by pursuing the policy of *laissez faire*. They however had no inkling of the fact that the economic fundamentalists had developed plans even to manoeuvre the governments; even if the right of state to intervene remained, at least, in principle, it would intervene only in a negative way because the politicians would not ignore the interests of their masters in the industry. Marx had accepted labour alone as the genuine income, and disclaimed profit or capital alto?gether. The neoclassical economists rediscovered the classical principle that capital was ?*previously done labour? and explained that capital was land and labour employed for deferred ends.* The earlier neoclassicists stressed the need of equilibrium in economics which denoted the coin?cidence of the maximum satisfaction of the individual with that of society. But later the equilibrium was reduced to the satisfaction of the individual. The German economist, Heirich Von Stackelberg proved that, due to imperfect competition, ?if the economic world disintegrates into a wasteful struggle of monopolies without a spontaneously integrating force, then the force of state must be called upon.? He regarded this to be a *Fascist form of economics* and suggested that *?order through liberty? would have to be replaced by ?order through force?.* The time had arrived, he emphasised, when it must be recognized that the concept of a *system of monopoly was the very negation of everything economics stood for*. The economic theorists who explained the interests of the busi?ness class in a better way continued to be glorified. Wisksell was the first after 150 years to establish a correlation between the theory of interest and that of money, and defended the tendency of businessmen to demand easy money. He argued that the ?natural rate of interests? was that at which the available supply of capital was easily absorbed by those seeking funds for invest?ment. Keynes, one of the most acclaimed modern economists, pointed out that saving was dangerous for economy; for instead of au?tomatically increasing investment, it was in itself a reduction of effective demand. The present economic system has travelled a long way to establish a hold of the *market fundamentalists* in the world. It can be summed up that this system is *mainly based on the creation of demands through whatever means possible - disinformation, high-pitched advertising of the positive aspects of the products, reconditioning of tastes and utilisation of human weaknesses*. Terms like "consumerism" and "capitalism", too, are in fact deliberate creations of the economic fundamentalists. *By blaming consumerism, they want to shift the blame for the current socioeconomic problems of the world on the common people*. They seem to suggest that, if they are selling consumer items, and are earning high profits out of it, it is simply because the people are becoming increasingly inclined to use these items. Had there been no demand, they argue, how they could market them. *They ignore the fact that the demands, as mentioned above, are not always natural; more often, they are artificially created**.*It must also be clear that the demands are not always genuine; many of them are based on covetousness, and are in total disregard of their impact on the surroundings. *All demands therefore need not be met with*. For example, if there is demand for destructive weapons, would they be made available in the open market; if there is a demand for poison for the sake of killing others, would it be made available to whoever seeks it? For most of the supplies made by the market forces, no demand was in fact made by the people. *The truth is that the majority of people do not even have any prior knowledge of what would be supplied to them in the coming future*. *The economic fundamentalists study the weaknesses of human beings, and then exploit them in creating demands. And after the creation of demands for a certain item, they attempt to monopolise its market by popularising a specific brand.*** Similarly, ?capitalism? also provides the economic fundamentalists with a tool which they use with tremendous effect. They can say that they are earning prof?its, even if somewhat on the higher side than is expected from them, because they invest the capital. Without capital, they assert, production is not possible and therefore they deserve profit for that. It is now the right time to tell them that if capital is important for production labour is no less essential, *Furthermore, if capital is a ?previously done labour? and is therefore, entitled for profit, why is the 'current labour' enti?tled only for wages and not for profit*. Still more important is the fact that even the capital they boast of, is only partially theirs; a large portion of it also comes from the people, either through banks or stock exchanges. They may, of course, be entitled to some additional gains for their entrepreneurship, but *the importance of professionals, the skilled and unskilled labourers, and the money of the people cannot be denied; for, without them, entrepreneurship would not have any value. Justice therefore demands equitable distribution of profits among all those who contribute* in production. *The development of modern economic theory has not been without resistance from certain quarters. But what is unfortunate is that even the economists who be?lieved in maintaining equilibrium between individual and society, could not see that economics was only a part of the whole social system. They showed concern hither and thither for the health, family system (in fact, many believed in the disintegration of the family system) and social order, but they could not streamline their views into a well-knit, elaborate system of peaceful existence of all human beings.* * * * * To sum up, the economic fundamentalists have grown in power by following well-defined objectives which may be enumerated as follows: *1. To increase demands of goods in the market by:* *(a) Changing perceptions of the people* *(b) Creating false standards of life* *(c) Fanning human desires* *(d) disinformation* *(without, of course, caring for their adverse impact on the individual, family or society).* *2. To monopolise supplies through extensive advertising and through friendly governmental policies as they give them the right to use specific brand names* *3. To monopolise assets and money by* *(a) saving their own money and converting it into long-lasting assets (that would continue to increase in value); and* *(b) using public money for their own business.* *3. To attract public money by encouraging them to:* *(a) squander whatever they earn;* *(b) to invest whatever they save, in banks or stock market * *5. To recover whatever they have to part with either as taxes or interests to the financial agencies by regularly increasing the prices* *6. To pay to their employees much less than what they deserve* *7. To throttle all those sectors (agricultural and small scale industry) that are doing business without the involvement of the big industrialists* *8. To mastermind welfare programmes that do not adversely affect their interests and/or help their cause--directly or indirectly* *9. To commercialise every strength, weakness and need of human beings without caring for their effect on health, family or society.* Next: *Marginalisation of Religion* -- Endeavoring for ecological safety ,social inclusion and distributive justice for the renewable resource based livelihoods and habitats, Centre For Ecological Audit, Social Inclusion and Governance (CEASIG) , an initiative of Labour League Foundation, Sewa and Sufi Trust , Delhi aims for socially inclusive and ecologically safe future for all through organizing and communicating carbon neutral neighborhood discussions/ consultations, building capacities in ecological audit, ecologically safe networking ,advocacy, interfaith dialogue & other related domains for multiplying personal, community , governmental and corporate actions for ecologically safe education, ecological audit ,and, ecologically safe and socially inclusive governance. Contact Details: 58-C,DDA Flats, Ashok Vihar-III, Delhi-110052 Phones: 0968345380 http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 18 07:40:29 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:40:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Confusion.... Message-ID: <180438.11338.qm@web27405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? ????????? This may be of interest. It seems that this monetary reformer appears "confused" on certain points about credit creation. This is noted by the Prince of the Paupers in the comments below the youtube presentation... ? ? ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlyIbLNcF2E&feature=PlayList&p=C07FCAF22D392AB0&index=2 ? ? R.Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 19 03:27:49 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:27:49 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Fw: Who's afraid of Robin Hood? Message-ID: <116137.76828.qm@web27406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- On Fri, 19/2/10, Paul Hilder - Avaaz.org wrote: From: Paul Hilder - Avaaz.org Subject: Who's afraid of Robin Hood? To: "dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk" Date: Friday, 19 February, 2010, 4:27 Make sure Avaaz alerts reach your inbox: click "Add to Contacts" to add avaaz at avaaz.org to your address book, and click the "Not Spam" button if you found this email in your spam folder. If you prefer to leave the Avaaz list, just click here to unsubscribe. Dear friends, It?s time for global bankers to pay something back: a tiny Robin Hood tax on speculation could raise billions for the public good. But the City lobby is determined to stop Robin Hood -- let's ride to the rescue! Hundreds of billions of our money went on bail-outs -- but the banks are still unreformed, raking in billions in profit and bonuses while the public finances are gutted. A new proposal -- a tiny ?Robin Hood tax? on international bank speculation -- is gathering support across the spectrum, from economists to celebs. It could raise hundreds of billions in return for the NHS and schools, as well as helping to tackle poverty and protect the global environment. But it?ll take a massive expression of public feeling to overcome bank opposition. And when an online vote was launched for us to have our say -- outrageously, a Goldman Sachs bank server was used to send in thousands of rigged votes within minutes! Let?s show the banks we won?t stand for any more cheating -- click below to sign the Robin Hood petition, then forward this message to everyone to join the merry band: http://www.avaaz.org/en/robin_hood/?vl We?ll start by delivering our campaign to the heads of all the political parties in the UK after it reaches 100,000 supporters -- then we?ll take it to the international stage. Public service cuts and a rise in VAT or other consumer taxes are all being considered to balance the budget. But these alternatives would make the British people pay the costs of the financial crisis and of bailing out the banks. By contrast, the tiny ?Robin Hood tax? targets international financiers and their most speculative activities -- socially useless according to UK Financial Services Authority head Adair Turner, who supports this initiative. It would be simple to implement, and having done so much damage, it's time for the financiers to pay their fair share of the bill for repairs. The campaign has already been covered in the media, with a new video made by Love, Actually director Richard Curtis starring Bill Nighy as a banker whose criticisms of the tax are hilariously demolished. Hundreds of economists have come out in favour so far, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz -- other supporters include world-leading investor Warren Buffett, and even the Daily Mail seems to be keen! The investment bank connected to the vote-rigging, Goldman Sachs is the cr?me de la cr?me of global finance. Tactics like these suggest that people there are seriously concerned about what the Robin Hood proposal could do to their record-breaking bonuses. Goldman Sachs are also famous for their undue political influence, exposed in recent articles by former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson. Only a massive public outcry can face down the bankers? lobby and get our leaders to back the Robin Hood tax -- let?s get to 100,000 signatures this week, sign now and spread the word to everyone: http://www.avaaz.org/en/robin_hood/?vl With hope and determination, Paul, Iain, Alice, Ricken and the whole Avaaz team Sources: ?Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs, clicking in the votes??, The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/11/goldman-sachs-tobin-tax Some more detail on the Robin Hood tax: http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/analysis/the-financial-transaction-tax-a-bit-more-detail/ Support for these ideas has come from former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/markets/article-23804049-joseph-stiglitz-robin-hood-who-wants-to-tax-the-rich-for-the-poor.do from FSA chief Adair Turner: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/08/how-to-tame-global-finance/ and in an open letter from 350 economists: http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/in-the-news/350-economists-call-for-a-financial-transaction-tax/ On the influence of Goldman Sachs and the financial sector, see: ?The Quiet Coup? by ex-IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, in The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice and Matt Taibbi?s article in Rolling Stone: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine------------------- Want to support Avaaz? We're entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated online team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way -- donate here. Avaaz.org is 3.8-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (The word "Avaaz" means "voice" or "song" in many languages.) The Avaaz team works from 10 countries on 3 continents, and Avaaz members live in every country in the world. You can learn about some of Avaaz's biggest campaigns here, or follow Avaaz on Facebook or Twitter. This message was sent to dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk. To change your email address, language, or other information, click here. Want to leave this list? Click here to unsubscribe. To contact Avaaz, please do not reply to this email. Instead, write to us at www.avaaz.org/en/contact or call us at +1-888-922-8229 (US) or +55 21 2509 0368 (Brazil). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 19 03:54:46 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:54:46 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] A Classic Quote..... Message-ID: <52005.37780.qm@web27405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? ? ?????????????????? The World is my Country, all Mankind are my Brethren, and to do Good is my Religion." --Thomas Paine ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 19 05:28:16 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:28:16 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Britain post first deficit for January since records began Message-ID: <541047.31434.qm@web27406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Britain posts first deficit for January since records began Britain reported its first budget deficit for January since records began as government spending rose and tax receipts fell sharply. ? Reuters Published: 10:40AM GMT 18 Feb 2010 THE TELEGRAPH Tax revenues fell sharply in January while spending grew because of measures such as the jobseeker's allowance. Photo: GETTY The Office for National Statistics said on Thursday that spending by the Government had exceeded its income by ?4.3bn. It is first time the Government has had to borrow in a January since records began in 1993. Economists had expected a surplus of around ?1bn. ? ? The figures reflected the impact of the economic downturn on the UK's finances as tax revenues slumped while spending grew because of measures such as the jobseeker's allowance. It will renew pressure on the Government to set out plans to ease the burden on public finances, with many predicting a future of tax rises and spending cuts. Andrew Goodwin, senior economic advisor to Ernst & Young Item Club, said: "These are pretty ghastly figures and come as somewhat of a surprise given the smaller overshoots of the past couple of months. "January usually yields a healthy surplus due to receipts from corporation tax and even in the current climate it is surprising to see the government rack up a deficit." The pound fell after the release. The ONS said spending was ?4.4bn higher than in January 2009, while receipts were down ?4.2bn. Government receipts stood at ?50.5bn as income tax fell 19pc to ?19.4bn compared with Janaury last year. VAT income grew 16pc year-on-year after the rate returned to 17.5pc at the end of the Government's temporary move to help the economy. Spending grew to ?49.5bn in the month, with layout on social benefits up 3pc at ?14bn in January. The UK's net debt hit ?848.5bn, which is equivalent to 59.9pc of the country's annual output - the highest proportion for a January since the 1974 financial year. David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, said the worse-than-expected January figures further emphasised the dangers facing Britain?s international credit rating. "The deficit this year reinforces the need for credible and specific deficit-cutting measures in next month?s Budget," he said. ?As well as explicitly spelling out its medium-term spending plans, it is now necessary for the Government to announce a freeze in the public sector wage bill, and an immediate review into the cost of public sector pensions. This would persuade the markets, and the rating agencies, that the Government is serious about cutting the unsustainable deficit, and enabling the private sector to drive Britain?s recovery.? Email Print .at15t_email {display:none !important;} ul li.email span.at300bs {display:none !important;} ? .at15t_email {display:none !important;} ul li.email span.at300bs {display:none !important;} Share | tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7262866/Britain-posts-first-deficit-for-January-since-records-began.html'; tweetmeme_style = 'compact'; tweetmeme_source = 'TelegraphNews'; Email | Print Text Size http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7262866/Britain-posts-first-deficit-for-January-since-records-began.html TelegraphNews ? Economics ?Get feed updates Financial Crisis ?Get feed updates Finance ?Get feed updates UK News ?Get feed updates Major News ?Get feed updates News ?Get feed updates RELATED PARTNERS Search the market for saving & ISA accounts Up to 4.40% AER fixed rate with HiSAVE. Find out more Trade UK equities with E*TRADE Get the best international transfer rates Advertisement -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Fri Feb 19 10:37:46 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:37:46 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Some information on Bangladesh References: <31f677a31001260241g54438b90y8e4ec038bc595285@mail.gmail.com><007001caa144$54e0b0e0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> <31f677a31002140809r433f225oa70fa9e9e63727ca@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <019f01cab18a$3fa96630$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Dear All, Here is a ltitle information on Bangladesh. The situation is similar in India, I believe. 'MFI' = micro-finance institution e.g. Grameen Bank. The MFIs have to borrow at interest and their interest charges to borrowers can include training and do include administration cost. BRAC is the Bangladesh Rural Action Centre (I think) a big MFI Now you know why Indian farmers commit suicide or sell a kidney...... Rodney Shakespeare. ------------------------------------------ I see from their website that BRAC's repayment rate is an amazing 99.31%. Also on the BRAC website is this:- "Their (Micro Finance Institutions) rates are also largely influenced by the rates MFIs themselves pay for borrowing the funds that they in turn lend to their clients. MFI interest rates can range from 18 to 60 percent, depending on the conditions in each MFI's service area. Without microfinance programs, the most common alternative for very poor people is the local "money lenders," who regularly charge between 120 and 300 percent." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Feb 20 03:39:53 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:39:53 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Gideon Genoism? Jezz! Message-ID: <470057.97791.qm@web27406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ????????????????????? A? RR, or Rodney Riddle? ? ? ?????????? I think it was from one of Rodneys post (in connection with MFI in Pakistan, and India)?in which the term Gideon Genoism appeared. I am not quite sure whether he just made it up but the internet does not reveal the two words together. Obviously, Gideon was a biblical figure. Genoism seems to suggest some form of unlikely divine, or human selection of a person (ie Gideon), or rather people to achieve much in the world as possibly indicated in the Wikipedia entry seen here just after the piece on Gideon..?? ? ? ? God loves to do the Gideon. Sounds like a dance I know but in actual fact, it?s not. It is something that He has done throughout human history and will continue to do until the very day that He returns to sort this whole mess out! ?The Gideon? is where God takes weak, humble, sometimes fearful people and uses them to do wonderful things. He loves doing it! And the story of Gideon has been repeated (in each persons own way) through the lives of millions throughout history. ? This study will be on Judges Chapter 6 where we are introduced to our hero Gideon, and learn a little about this man that God chose to deliver Israel. The second study will be on Chapter 7, the defeat of Midian, and its strikingly accurate portrayal of New Testament truth.? ? ? ? ?And the term Genoism... ? ? ? Genoism is a neologism coined by Andrew Niccol, director and writer of the 1997 film Gattaca, used to describe unethical and illegal genetic discrimination. Predictions of physical and mental performance are computed via genetics from DNA collected from hair, fingernails, skin flakes, spit swabs, eyelashes, etc. Upon birth, a number of genetically-induced characteristics are calculated: physical and intellectual capacity, life expectancy, probable successful diseases, and likely causes of death, all determined via blood samples and genetic testing. Job interviews, health insurance purchasing, and even potential dates can be sized up according to the perceived quality of the person's DNA due to advancements in genome sequencing. This put an ironic twist to Darwin's sexual selection for good genes. According to the movie, "We now have discrimination down to a science." My father was right. It didn't matter how much I lied on my resume. My real resume was in my cells. Why should anybody invest all that money to train me when there were a thousand other applicants with a far cleaner profile? Of course, it's illegal to discriminate, 'genoism' it's called. But no one takes the law seriously. If you refuse to disclose, they can always take a sample from a door handle or a handshake, even the saliva on your application form. If in doubt, a legal drug test can just as easily become an illegal peek at your future in the company. ?Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) ,?Gattaca, 1997 ? ? .....the best part of Gattaca was the music by Michael Nyman.....! ? R.Searle ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Sat Feb 20 04:53:39 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:53:39 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Gideon Genoism? Jezz! References: <470057.97791.qm@web27406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <004901cab223$58b6e0a0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Robert, I modestly claim to have devised the phrase "Gideon Gonoism". NB Gonoism Look up "Gideon Gono" in Google for an explanation. He is the Bank Governor in Zimbabwe. Rodney ----- Original Message ----- From: robert searle To: discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 10:39 AM Subject: [GJM] Gideon Genoism? Jezz! Dear All, A RR, or Rodney Riddle? I think it was from one of Rodneys post (in connection with MFI in Pakistan, and India) in which the term Gideon Genoism appeared. I am not quite sure whether he just made it up but the internet does not reveal the two words together. Obviously, Gideon was a biblical figure. Genoism seems to suggest some form of unlikely divine, or human selection of a person (ie Gideon), or rather people to achieve much in the world as possibly indicated in the Wikipedia entry seen here just after the piece on Gideon..?? God loves to do the Gideon. Sounds like a dance I know but in actual fact, it?s not. It is something that He has done throughout human history and will continue to do until the very day that He returns to sort this whole mess out! ?The Gideon? is where God takes weak, humble, sometimes fearful people and uses them to do wonderful things. He loves doing it! And the story of Gideon has been repeated (in each persons own way) through the lives of millions throughout history. This study will be on Judges Chapter 6 where we are introduced to our hero Gideon, and learn a little about this man that God chose to deliver Israel. The second study will be on Chapter 7, the defeat of Midian, and its strikingly accurate portrayal of New Testament truth. And the term Genoism... Genoism is a neologism coined by Andrew Niccol, director and writer of the 1997 film Gattaca, used to describe unethical and illegal genetic discrimination. Predictions of physical and mental performance are computed via genetics from DNA collected from hair, fingernails, skin flakes, spit swabs, eyelashes, etc. Upon birth, a number of genetically-induced characteristics are calculated: physical and intellectual capacity, life expectancy, probable successful diseases, and likely causes of death, all determined via blood samples and genetic testing. Job interviews, health insurance purchasing, and even potential dates can be sized up according to the perceived quality of the person's DNA due to advancements in genome sequencing. This put an ironic twist to Darwin's sexual selection for good genes. According to the movie, "We now have discrimination down to a science." My father was right. It didn't matter how much I lied on my resume. My real resume was in my cells. Why should anybody invest all that money to train me when there were a thousand other applicants with a far cleaner profile? Of course, it's illegal to discriminate, 'genoism' it's called. But no one takes the law seriously. If you refuse to disclose, they can always take a sample from a door handle or a handshake, even the saliva on your application form. If in doubt, a legal drug test can just as easily become an illegal peek at your future in the company. ?Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) , Gattaca, 1997 .....the best part of Gattaca was the music by Michael Nyman.....! R.Searle ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Feb 20 04:55:32 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:55:32 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Richard Werner...and QE.. Message-ID: <1325.5764.qm@web27403.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? ??????? On the Real Economics Review Blog I had a comment from Richard Werner who happens to be the originator of the term Quantitative Easing..The Wikipedia bio may be of interest, and the entry on QE itself again in Wikipedia is extremely interesting with some fascinating links! ? ? ? Richard A. Werner is a German economist who has studied at LSE, Oxford and Tokyo Universities. Currently teaching at the University of Southampton. Noted for developing a heterodox theory of money creation called the Credit Theory of Money said to be developed from Schumpeter's views. His book 'Princes of the Yen' was a number one general bestseller in Japan in 2001 and remains the seminal book on the Bank of Japan specifically and central bank informal guidance of bank credit in general. The book was illegally translated into English by the Bank of Japan upon request by Washington authorities. Its legitimate English version is available by M. E. Sharpe (2003). Richard Werner was chief economist of Jardine Fleming Securities (Asia) Ltd. and has published numerous articles on the Japanese credit cycle and monetary policy, many of which are in Japanese. His 1991 Oxford University Institute of Economics and Statistics Discussion Paper warned about the imminent collapse of the Japanese banking system and the threat of the greatest recession since the Great Depression. He is noted as central bank critic, monetary and development economist and the originator of the term quantitative easing. In 2003 he was selected as 'Global Leader for Tomorrow' by the World Economic Forum in Davos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Feb 20 05:05:22 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:05:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Gideon Gono....Zimbabwean Economics! Message-ID: <829494.33837.qm@web27406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? ?Thank you Rodney. I obviously got it wrong!? I think this Wikipedia link would prove of interest to people other than us! ? ?? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Gono ? R.Searle ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Sat Feb 20 05:47:35 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:47:35 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Public banks and interest-free loans References: <470057.97791.qm@web27406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> <004901cab223$58b6e0a0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Message-ID: <010f01cab22a$e1108fd0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Dear All, In the USA (and much credit to Ellen Brown , a member of the London Global Table) the idea of State (e.g. North Dakota) public banks is now making good progress and, yesterday, I sent the email below to Ellen and Peter Challen. Rodney Shakespeare. ----------- The Alex Jones show www.(infowars.com; www.prisonplanet.com) is by far the most fast-moving and informative radio show/website that I know of. Jones is heavily libertarian and into gold and guns etc. He has a colossal analysis of America's rapid move into fascism etc. BUT, analysis and critique, no matter how trenchant, are not enough and, today -- Hooray! -- he announced that "we are looking into interest-free loans and public banks." So, at long last, Jones (a most capable man who is not spiteful and understands poverty etc) is turning towards solution AND Jones/Debra Medina/ Ron Paul are the rising political stars in the USA. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Sat Feb 20 06:11:45 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:11:45 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Campaigning for State-owned Banks -- latest Ellen Brown article Message-ID: <015601cab22e$410fe180$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Dear All, Here is the latest Ellen Brown article. Rodney Shakespeare. "Campaigning for State-owned Banks" http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/campaign-for-state-owned-banks -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 18 11:09:21 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:09:21 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Introducing Dr. Elisabet Sathouris Message-ID: <001901cab0c5$b5f52bf0$21df83d0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I am really thrilled to announce that Dr. Elisabet Sathouris has joined the group I maintain on LinkedIn. And, I want to introduce her to those of you on the Co-learner's group not familiar with her work. Below is a link to her bio that will take you the rest of her website as well. Dr. Sahtouris is a well known biologist who is: internationally known as a dynamic speaker and media personality-- is an evolution biologist, futurist, author and consultant on Living Systems Design. Dr. Sahtouris shows the relevance of biological systems to organizational design in businesses, government and global trade. Her books include A Walk Through TIme: from Stardust to Us, Biology Revisioned, co-authored with Willis Harman, and EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution http://www.sahtouris.com/INFO/ While the future may seem a little shaky to some of us, what the work of Dr. Sathouris, and others like her reveal is that the future is predictable and we will be OK if we follow the patterns of evolution established back through history which got us from a state in which life was only a form of bacteria to the state in which we find ourselves as homo sapien sapien today. And, in which both evolution and creation have played a role. The genius of Dr. Sahtouris (and others) lies in the ability to look at and interpret these patterns of evolution and creation which have gone on for billions of years, and apply them to the modern systems of our present day. And to do so in ways that keep us on a life-enhancing track as we evolve and move forward into the future. So, I urge you to take this opportunity to examine Elisabet's website and see through her eyes how the universe is unfolding into another level of consciousness based in health and wellness. What we need to recognize is that change takes place on the edge of chaos and therefore, what we are witnessing at this time is just a natural state of progression which will take us into this higher level. What we must be willing to do is to have faith and accept the changes that this state is bringing about. We must let go of the past. >From her perspective, Dr. Sahtouris wrote me that it would take 4 years to reach 1 million (members) and then things would "go viral". http://www.sahtouris.com/INFO/ . Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 18 12:43:34 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:43:34 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: The Freedom of Enough Message-ID: <000d01cab0d2$def80f60$9ce82e20$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS So many in the motivational field today are saying "just give me an hour of your time and I will show you how to do it better." And, I have to ask: "Do what better?" IMHO what we need are events that provide us with the tools we need to move into the future - that help us to learn new ways of operating that take us out of the "consumer society" and into the simple, but rewarding lifestyles based in nature. Some refer to these as "organic" lifestyles." Anyway I like Vicki Robins approach to this and feel her philosophy compliments that of Thomas Greco. Duane Elgin's writing also fits into this niche. Duane, if I am not mistaken, was the founder of the Simple Living movement. Here is an overview of "voluntary simplicity" from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living And here is a link to Duane's website: http://www.awakeningearth.org/ where you can learn more about "voluntary simplicity" - there are a couple videos available for viewing. Kare Anderson also has an approach that seems pertinent here: She does a workshop entitled: "Moving from Me to We," which I feel is very applicable at this time since cooperation may be the key factor in our success in living sustainably at this time. www.movingfrommetowe.com/ a http://hubpages.com/hub/Kare-Anderson--Moving-from-Me-to-We-on-BlogTalk-Radi o And now to Vicki Robin's message which moved me to go deeper into the "simple living movement" and the people involved in it. I hope this is helpful to those searching for a way forward from here. Before I close this I also want to give credit to Roshanna Sidney Evans for her idea for a "Spirit Bank" which we explored a few days ago here on the list. These are the kinds of things IMHO, that would be most valuable to this type of bank. Roshanna, I hope also that you will respond to this and elaborate a little bit more on your concept to see if we are in alignment, or? I would like to put up a "Spirit Bank" Portal and Pathway on the Future Dawning Virtual Learning Center and Think Tank website. www.futuredawning.com BTW, the Future Dawning website "menu" which allows one to migrate from Portal to Portal is not working at this time as I have put up three new websites which have not as yet been linked in, and I have deleted others, but the menu should be in service in a few days. However, what I am thinking is that you, Roshanna, can put up the Spirit Bank Portal and Pathway on NING, link it to FD, and then invite appropriate people and organizations to join and set up their "group" on the site so that you have an accessible "Spirit Bank" to which people can make deposits in the form of ideas and conduct withdrawals in the form of applicable knowledge. You can also link back to Differencemakers where you originated the idea so that everyone is included and expand in order to obtain very broad coverage for the idea. Kare, Vicki, Tom Greco, Ian and others can then establish their presence on the site and create individual groups to which others may join. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Vicki Robin Date: Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 4:11 AM Subject: The Freedom of Enough To: dustysummerrose at gmail.com Greetings! Is the longing for balance everywhere - or do I just see it that way because I am enjoying teaching The Freedom of Enough teleclass so much? I have three offerings - 2 free - that can help you find enough in a "more-is-better" world (interested? Keep scrolling). A reflection on knowing how much is enough While the rest of the nation is blanketed in snow, here on Whidbey Island the daffodils and crocuses are up and proud and the irises are on their way. I've positioned my desk so I look out over the floating white sphynx of Mt Baker above Puget Sound. Today the sun surprised us by turning the water a rich blue and drenching all the colors. I just couldn't stay indoors so I invited a friend to join me for a walk in all this glory. Her business has tripled in a very short time and as we walked she realized with a start that she has everything she asked for not too long ago. That realization is part of knowing your "enough point" - becoming aware that your prayers have been asnwered and the only thing to do is say, "Thank you!" She went on to say that she has a delicious new problem. Having gone from not enough to almost too much, she has to watch her yes's and her no's. She has to discern. "What are your criteria," I asked, "for when to say yes and when to say no?" I'll share them because they come straight out of what we talk about in the class. They are: 1. Do I want to do it? Does it excite me? Attract me? 2. Will I maximize my income for time invested? (small jobs and free-for-friends jobs could fill all her hours) 3. Does it leave time for my soul? Please join me in an enough classes What are your criteria for yes's and no's? If you want tools to find out, please join me for a free class on Tuesday February 23, 5.15-6.15 PM PST . It will give you tools you can use now, and introduce you to my Freedom of Enough teleclass starting March 9. 2010 (more info below) Free Teleclass with author of The Simple Dollar Trent Hamm is simply once of the best frugality and simplicity writers online. He is the author of the blog The Simple Dollar. He writes with consistent quality about how to maximize your money and time. He helps you think through many questions on financial decisions from a values perspective. In a rare "appearance" Trent has agreed to join me in a free 1 1/2 hour class on March 3 from 5-6.30PM PST to give you some very cool tips (what's the difference between a cool tip and a hot one?) and answer as many of your questions as possible. Register for Trent Hamm's free teleclass March 3, 2010 from 5 - 6.30 PM PST Vicki RobinWhat do you give someone who * does too much * has too much * expects too much * rests too little? The Freedom of Enough,my flagship 5 one-hour teleclass for people who are over-doing, over-eating, over-spending, over-emailing or generally in over their heads. The next class begins March 9 at 5.15 PM PST. Sign up here. Learn tools to stop at "enough" and feel satisfied and free rather than longing for more. Learn perspectives that help you discern when you have "enough" so you can have more of the best things in life - love, family, learning, laughing, friends, relaxation and more. Learn when to say no and when to say yes - and do it without guilt. Learn why you get tangled in "too muchness" (it's really not your fault) and how to take back your life from distraction and consumer temptations (whether it's food, stuff, or surfing the web. Learn more and sign up here. Or Register for my free teleclass February 23, 2010 from 5.15-6.15 PM PST "See" you in a teleclass soon. Vicki Reminders: Sign up for Trent's free class here . Sign up for Vicki's free class here . Sign up for my 5-session Freedom of Enough class here . Contact Information email:vickirobin.1 at gmail.com Error! Filename not specified. Forward email Error! Filename not specified. This email was sent to dustysummerrose at gmail.com by vickirobin.1 at gmail.com. Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe T | Privacy Policy . Email Marketing by Error! Filename not specified. | PO Box 1501 | Langley | WA | 98260 Error! Filename not specified. -- >From the desk of mary rose dustysummerrose at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 18 15:35:26 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:35:26 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Absolutely MUST READ: FW: Jeremy Rifkin: The third industrial revolution Message-ID: <003701cab0ea$e2b94930$a82bdb90$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I am going to write comments on this article later as I have a lot to write. But, I feel it gets to where we need to be going. As I read this I see so many things that I felt, and continue to feel over the years I have considered this, which need to be accomplished. And, designed the Community Learning and Information Center to accomplish. However, let me insert here that Vern Woolf (www.holodynamics.com) has held the vision for what he calls "wellness centers" for many years -- and while the wellness center concept differs somewhat from the CLIC concept, the idea is basically the same: to create Total Wellness. So, I don't want to claim here that the CLICs concept is totally my idea; however, it did arise out of the Hands Across the Border: Operation Lifesave proposal that I wrote and was presented to the Mexican government and designed to reduce migration from south to north. And certainly empathy was the emotion that pushed me forward into writing this proposal -- I have an overwhelming need to "make things better for people" as I know does Vern. So, I want to ensure that credit goes to where credit is due. Yet, I do experience many others today who are not motivated by the need to make things better for others, but to make things better for themselves by making more money in order to buy more things that hopefully will give them greater power in the world. So, I see a definite need for us to move from "me to we" and to begin to think as an empathetic "collective consciousness." And, one of the things I see that keeps us from doing this is our organization into different states and nation-states -- putting up artificial boundaries that divide us rather than uniting us as would a configuration based on bi-regionalism. Bio-regionalism has "natural boundaries" where no real separation is noticed; however, the nation-state configuration is based on artificial boundaries where like "my God is better than your God," my state has to be better than your state. If we are to learn how to be empathetic, then we must first learn how to cooperate and get rid of the built in competition factor that defines the U.S. The CLICs concept was also based on an observation made by astronaut Sally Ride and recorded in Al Gore's book: "Earth in the Balance". Sally looked down at our small earth from outer space and saw a need to interconnect communities so that a larger overview of things like weather patterns, crop failures, population growth, etc., became interrelated and the information stored in electronic data banks so that the "state of the world itself" or any region anywhere could readily be assessed as to its viability at any given time. If for instance, one community was having difficulty with food needs, other nearby communities which had had an overproduction in that year could quickly get food to those in need. So, here we have the "empathetic" approach rather than food production following the almighty dollar. More on later. But again, I feel we are getting into Spirit Bank ideas and concepts which could be life-enhancing in many ways. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 11:35 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Jeremy Rifkin: The third industrial revolution Jeremy Rifkin: The third industrial revolution Amanda Gefter, Books & Arts editor February 17, 2010 6:00 PM http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/02/jeremy-rifkin-the-third -industrial-revolution.php In The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin argues that before we can save ourselves from climate change we have to break a vicious circle and embrace a new model of society based on scientists' new understanding of human nature. I asked him how we can do it. What is the premise of The Empathic Civilization? My sense is that we're nearing an endgame for the modern age. I think we had two singular events in the last 18 months that signal the end. First, in July 2008 the price of oil hit $147/barrel. Food riots broke out in 30 countries, the price of basic items shot up and purchasing power plummeted. That was the earthquake; the market crash 60 days later was the aftershock. It signaled the beginning of the endgame of a great industrial era based on fossil fuels. The second event, in December 2009, was the breakdown in Copenhagen, when world leaders tried to deal with our entropy problem and failed. That's the context of the book. Why couldn't our world leaders anticipate or respond to the global meltdown of the industrial revolution? And why can't they deal with climate change when scientists have been telling us that it may be the greatest threat our species has ever faced? What do you think the problem is? My sense is that the failure runs very deep. The problem is that those leaders are using 18th century Enlightenment ideas to address 20th century challenges. I advise a number of heads of state in Europe and over and over again I see how these old ideas about human nature and the meaning of life continue to cloak public policy. The Enlightenment view is that human beings are rational, detached agents that pursue our own self-interests and our nation states reflect that view. How are we going to address the needs of 7 billion people and heal the biosphere if we really are dispassionate, disinterested agents pursuing our own self-interest? A lot of interesting new discoveries in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, child development, anthropology and more suggest that human nature might not be what Enlightenment philosophers suggested. For instance, the discovery of mirror neurons suggests that we are not wired for autonomy or utility but for empathic distress; we are a social species. If we begin to change our ideas about human nature and, as you say in the book, view history through an empathic lens, what new things do we discover? We can see how consciousness, which is wired for empathy and social engagement, changes over history. Obviously consciousness has changed over history--a Paleolithic hunter is wired differently than a medieval serf or a modern human. My belief is that when energy and communications revolutions converge it creates new economic eras and changes consciousness dramatically by shifting our temporal and spatial boundaries, causing empathy to expand. For instance, wherever there were hydraulic agricultural societies based on large-scale irrigation systems, humans independently created writing. That's fascinating to me. Writing made it possible to manage a complex energy regime. It also changed consciousness--transforming the mythological consciousness of oral cultures into a theological one. In the process, empathy evolves. The range of oral communication is limited--you can't extend empathy beyond kin and blood ties. With script you could empathize further with associational ties, you broaden your frame of reference. In the 19th century the printing press communications revolution converged with new energies: coal and steam. This led to the introduction of public schools and mass literacy across Europe and America. Theological consciousness became ideological consciousness. The same shift occurred in the 20th century with the Second Industrial Revolution, the electronics revolution, which gave rise to psychological consciousness. Each convergence of energy and communications technology changed our consciousness, extended our social networks and in turn expanded our empathy. But all of that happens at the expense of the environment? It's the conundrum of history that these more complex civilizations that use greater energy flow-through allow us to bring more people together, but they create more entropy in the process. If we are going to ward off the extreme dangers posed by climate change we need to find a way to increase empathy while decreasing entropy. The question is, how do you do that? How do you break the paradox? empathic.jpg In the book you argue that we can break the paradox by shifting from geopolitical consciousness to biosphere consciousness. We need to implement reglobalization from the bottom-up in order to achieve a more sustainable global economy. Geopolitics is an extension of the Enlightenment view of human nature, the idea that we pursue our utilitarian pleasures and individual self-interests. In geopolitics, the nation-state becomes a macro view of that. Nations deal with nations by being rational, detached and calculating, pursuing self-interests, excercising power and acquiring more capital and wealth. That's why Copenhagen failed. The world leaders weren't thinking biosphere, they were thinking geopolitics. Everyone was looking out for their nation's self-interest. What we need to do is attempt biosphere politics. Governing units are going to change--I think there's going to be a shift toward continentalization. The EU is a first attempt at organizing a new frame of reference across continents, but it's a transitional governing form. The Asian Union, African Union and South American Union are in their early stages. Why "re-globalization"? The global economy didn't work in its first stage. And that's because the economics and the technology raced ahead of our changing consciousness. A global economy requires social trust; you need biosphere consciousness, not geopolitics. You're never going to get globalization until empathy extends to the whole species. As I said in the book, I think we need to rethink economic policies and make thermodynamics the basis of economic theory. The price of energy is embedded in every product we make. At the same time, the effects of climate change are already eroding economies in many parts of the world as extreme weather events destroy ecosystems and agricultural infrastructure. The Third Industrial Revolution will be driven in part by the need to mitigate the entropic impact of the first two industrial revolutions. A lot of business people would say that you can't be empathic in the market. But the market is a secondary institution--it's an extension of culture. The real invisible hand of the market is trust, which is the result of empathic engagement. The only way you can have a market is if you have a shared narrative. The market is not a utilitarian frame of reference, it only exists by the social trust that allows people to engage in anonymous settings and believe that their engagements will be honored. When that trust fails, markets collapse and that's what is happening now. What will the Third Industrial Revolution look like? When will it happen? I think we're on the verge. I had the privilege to help design the European Union's Third Industrial Revolution economic stability game plan, which was endorsed by the European Parliament in 2007. What we noticed is that in the last 10 or 15 years we've had a very powerful communication revolution with the internet, and the key word is that it's distributed. What's beginning to happen now is that the distributed ICT [information and communication technologies] revolution is beginning to converge with a new energy regime: distributed renewable energy. When they do converge, it's likely to change consciousness once again. Distributed ICT will organize distributed energies. Renewables like wind, solar, geothermal and biomass are found in some proportion everywhere, in people's backyards. As people begin to harvest these renewable energies they can share electricity peer-to-peer across an internet-like smart energy grid that extends across nations and even continents. We see buildings as the new power plants. Buildings are the number one source of C02 emmissions, but they might also be the solution if they can harness renewables to produce their own energy on site. People will also need new energy storage technologies like hydrogen. The EU has committed 8 billion Euros to hydrogen storage technologies. Those technologies will give us dependable distributed energy. I founded the Third Industrial Revolution Global CEO Business Roundtable, which is comprised of 100 leading companies from renewable energy to utilities to architectural firms. We're starting to lay out plans. How will the Third Industrial Revolution change our consciousness? It extends it in a distributed fashion, with everyone taking responsibility for their swath of the biosphere and then sharing their energy across continents. We have to take responsibility where we are but we have to share across the world for it to work. That would allow us to think biosphere politics not geopolitics and extend empathy in that regard. That gives us a possibility of breaking the empathy/entropy paradox. Will we actually do it? If I were a betting person...well, I wouldn't even want to make a bet. But it's our best shot. It's a tough challenge. What I'm saying is so difficult. But what encourages me is the empathy we are already seeing resulting from technology. After the Iranian elections a young college student was gunned down in the street by an Iranian militiaman for protesting, and someone took a cell phone video. The world instantly empathized. Then there was the earthquake in Haiti. There was an immediate response. That's new--we're thinking as a human race. We still have our xenophobia and our prejudices but I think we're catching a glimpse of something new, and we're going to have to if the possibility of our own extinction depends on it. I think the question hasn't been asked yet, what is the point of this exercise in connecting the human race in this way? Up to now, most people's reasons for supporting it is more information, quicker information, better entertainment, improved commerce and trade, etc. What I'm suggesting is that that is not enough. When Henry David Thoreau saw the telegraph, he said, "Well, now Maine can talk to Texas, but does Maine really have anything to say to Texas?" If we can't have a global discussion of the transcendent purpose of this connectivity, I don't think entertainment and information are going to be enough to justify the Third Industrial revolution. We have to think deeper, to think as a human family, to take responsibility for the biosphere and our fellow creatures. If human nature is Homo empathicus, as scientists are suggesting, if that's our true nature, then we can begin to create new institutions--parenting styles, education, business models--that reflect our core nature. Then I can see how this Third Industrial Revolution will happen. Perhaps we are too cynical for these ideas. Do some people see an empathic global society as an idealistic dream? If you know my past work you know I'm not utopian. But empathy isn't about utopia. It's about knowing how damn tough it is to be alive. We empathize with others because we smell the whiff of death in their vulnerabilities and so we celebrate their life. There's no such thing as empathy in heaven because there's no mortality, no suffering. Empathy is about encouraging another person's struggle to be. It's a tough feeling to have. In utopia there's no struggle, there's nothing to empathize with. Empathy is more than just, "I feel your pain". We root for each other's struggle to live out this mystery of life. I was struck by the vast number of fields you explore in your book. Do you think there's a need for more cross-disciplinary scholarship? Absolutely. Education is a total mess. Our educational model is based on Enlightenment ideas and progressive ideas of the 20th century--if human nature is autonomous, calculating and self-interested and if the market is the way we fulfill those interests, our education reflects that. We are taught that knowledge is a personal asset to achieve one's aims in the world--knowledge is power. If you share your knowledge, that's cheating. It limits us to a more vocational idea of what life is about. We all become little drones. And as we go through education it grows narrower and narrower. But what's happening with the internet is that young folks are growing up believing that information is something you share, not hoard. That thinking is a collaborative exercise, not an autonomous one, and that spaces ought to be commons. That's completely alien to the Enlightenment ideas I grew up on. I'm a big fan of interdisciplinary and collaborative teaching. If you're studying evolutionary biology, let a philosopher come in and talk about the way our concept of nature has changed over history. Allow young people to have so many frames of reference so they can be more open and more synthetic in their thinking. If we are a social animal and we live by our stories, then our stories are only made richer with more points of view. Sharing knowledge is considered cheating, yet collaboration has been shown to improve critical thinking if it's done in a disciplined way. There was a doctor at UCL medical college in the 1950s who realized that if he brought all of his interns to a patient's bedside at the same time, the collaborative response got to a diagnosis quicker than if only one intern was there. Education has to be completely reformed to reflect the new era of distributed knowledge. I'm currently in deep private discussions with some major educational associations in the US who want to put together a team of people to begin rethinking this. We still don't know how to grade people in a collaborative model. But if we're moving from Homo sapien to Homo empathicus, we have to rethink all of this. You've also said we need to rethink the scientific method. The scientific method reflects Enlightenment thinking. You have to be detached, rational and value-free; you can't be connected or use empathic imagination. But we're seeing that you need both. If the scientific method is the way kids learn, how do they grow up to form an empathic connection to the world? There are scientists who are practicing a different kind of science, a not-too-close, not-too-far empathic engagement. Jane Goodall is a great example. I told Jane, what you did was so amazing because it's a new approach to science, and she said she had never thought about it that way. She began to empathize with the chimpanzees she was studying, imagining their experience as if it were her own. What she learned about chimpanzee behaviour was massively more than what people had previously learned by studying them in a completely detached way. Goethe understood this a couple hundred years ago--he disagreed with Francis Bacon's approach. He argued that we understand nature by participating, not by standing back and observing with dispassionate neutrality. Especially in the ecological sciences and climate science, you need to be engaged, interactive and interdisciplinary, because you're dealing with systems thinking. Empathic science is a good balance between the traditional scientific method on the one hand and something that wouldn't be science at all on the other. Empathy requires that you not be too close or too far away. You have to be close enough to feel the experiences biologically as if they are your own but far enough to use your cognitive abilities to rationally respond. I hope scholars will take these ideas much further. I'm hoping a younger generation can do that. I found it interesting that you correlate the expansion of empathy throughout human history with a growing sense of self. I would naively think that they would have an inverse relationship. Empathy goes hand-in-hand with selfhood; if you know you're a self you can see yourself in relation to the other. People hear "empathy" and they think socialism or something--that's completely missing the point. Increasing individuation and selfhood is critical to increasing empathy. We are wired for empathic distress. If you put a bunch of babies in a nursery and one starts crying, the others start crying but they don't know why. Real empathy - empathic expression--doesn't occur until children develop a sense of self and recognize themselves as being separate from others; when they can recognize themselves in a mirror, for instance. When kids learn about birth and death they think, uh oh, now I know I have a history, I'm finite. Realizing their own vulnerability allows them to feel another's vulnerability. The more advanced your selfhood, the more you can feel another's fragility and empathize. Empathy is the invisible social glue that allows a complex individuated society to remain integrated. You said that people hear "empathy" and think "socialism". How does capitalism survive an empathic society? Market capitalism will be transformed into "distributed capitalism". Just as the internet led to the democratization of information, the Third Industrial Revolution will lead to the democratization of energy. The required changes to infrastructure are going to create massive amounts of jobs and a whole new economy. But when you have peer-to-peer sharing of energy across an intelligent grid system, you no longer have the top-down, centralized economic system. Distributed energy requires distributed capitalism, and that relies on the opposite view of human nature than that of market capitalism. But the politics isn't right or left--its centralized, top-down versus collaborative commons. You don't hear people say, I'm going onto a social networking space because I'm a socialist--it's just a different frame of reference. At over 600 pages, The Empathic Civilization is a long book! How long did it take you to write it? I didn't mean for it to be a long book, but my wife says the older I get, the longer my books get. It took over five years. I got so deep into the research; I read about 400 books and maybe 3,000 articles. The actual writing took about a year and a half. My wife has made me promise no more books! ~~~~~~~~~~~ Jeremy Rifkin is an advisor to the European Union and heads of state around the world. He is a senior lecturer at the Wharton School's Executive Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania where he instructs CEOs and corporate management on new trends in science, technology, the economy and society. He is the president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C. His book The Empathic Civilization was published by Penguin in December From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 18 20:31:28 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:31:28 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Introducing Dr. Elisabet Sathouris Message-ID: <005601cab114$41cc49d0$c564dd70$@net> From: Desmond Berghofer and Geraldine Schwartz [mailto:desgerri at direct.ca] Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 5:43 PM To: mary rose Subject: Re: Introducing Dr. Elisabet Sathouris Hi Mary Rose: Congratulations on getting Elisabet Sahtouris on your team. I have considered her for a long time as being one of the most important people writing and speaking about evoutionary biology. I think she has correctly identified the economy as the central force in industrial society that is holding us back from the evolutionary breakthrough we need to make. (snip) Best wishes for what you do. Desmond ----- Original Message ----- From: mary rose To: FixGov at yahoogroups. com ; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 10:09 AM Subject: Introducing Dr. Elisabet Sathouris Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS I am really thrilled to announce that Dr. Elisabet Sathouris has joined the group I maintain on LinkedIn. And, I want to introduce her to those of you on the Co-learner's group not familiar with her work. Below is a link to her bio that will take you the rest of her website as well. Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 18 21:05:57 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:05:57 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: UFOs and ETs on Planet Earth? Speculation Based on Reliable Information Gives Hope, Inspiration Message-ID: <006e01cab119$0f053a20$2d0fae60$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS For your information and consideration. We live in interesting times. If I had not read some of the books written by Zecharia Sitchin recording his translations of the Sumerian Tablets and also read the interweaving of Biblical text within the translations provided by Sitchen, I would be skeptical of what Fred writes here. But, now like Fred, I am convinced that when there is this much smoke on the horizon there has to be a fire somewhere. With much love and in gratitude to everyone for what it is we do together to make this world a better place. M R From: PEERS: WantToKnow.info Email List [mailto:emaillist at peerservice.org] Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 6:00 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: UFOs and ETs on Planet Earth? Speculation Based on Reliable Information Gives Hope, Inspiration To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this list (one email every few days) or to reply to this message, see end of email This message is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/meaningoflifebigpicture Bookmark and Share Introduction: What's Really Going on Here? As a former language interpreter for presidents and other top government officials, I was present at a number of secret meetings where the only people allowed were the top officials and their interpreters. For most of my 18 years working with the U.S. Department of State, I did not see or hear anything which would support the belief of some of my conspiracy friends that global politics is largely controlled by a small group of evil men behind the scenes who wield inordinate amounts of wealth and power. I laughed at the level of paranoia I perceived in these friends, as I had been in top secret meetings and never seen anything to support their fearful beliefs. Then in 2001, a wonderful friend sent me a life-changing video. The powerful, reliable information in this astonishing video shook me to the core, as it revealed a major cover-up of UFOs . Generals, astronauts, and other highly respected individuals sharing their personal experiences in this video could not all be lying. This caused me to have to completely reformulate my beliefs about how the world works. It started me on a quest to discover what was really going on behind the scenes. I dove into serious research and came up with an astounding amount of reliable, verifiable information on a number of major cover-ups which I previously would have dismissed as completely crazy. I then compiled the best of this information on the website WantToKnow.info . This website eventually became quite popular and put me in touch with a number of wonderful, brave researchers who shared reliable information they had gathered on various aspects of these cover-ups. WantToKnow.info is designed for those who are not already aware of the major cover-ups, so the information provided is limited to that which is highly reliable and generally easy to verify. Because of this, I did not post my own speculation on the website about what is really going on behind all of the cover-ups. Yet based on information I received independently from sources I personally trust, I developed my own theories about the big picture, which I provide here for you. The information given here is speculative in nature, yet I include many key links for verification. I fully acknowledge that major parts of what I've written could be mistaken. Yet I first came to these basic conclusions in 2002, and most new information I've received since has only strengthened my belief in all of this. Remember as you read that the mass media clearly plays a major role in fabricating the current consensus reality and keeping some of the biggest cover-ups out of the public eye. I present this material not to convince anyone of its truth. I offer it simply to present the conjectures of someone who has devoted many long hours to exploring these issues with a discerning eye, and with a faith that I am being led by forces greater than myself who are aligned with what's best for all of us. Some of this information is far outside of consensus reality, yet there is lots of reliable evidence to support what I've written. As you will read below, despite all of the major manipulations, I am incredibly optimistic about our future. Thanks for your interest and may you be guided to whatever is best for you and for all of us as you explore this intriguing material. _____ The Galactic Federation First, the television program Star Trek is much closer to the truth than anyone might imagine. I?m convinced that there is some form of galactic federation of advanced beings from various planets and star systems throughout the galaxy. The vast majority of these beings are far advanced from us both technologically and spiritually. A million years is a very short time in the evolution of a planet. Some of these extraterrestrial species are many millions of years more evolved than us. They generally travel between planets not by mechanical propulsion, but by shifting dimensions. The federation?s members all agree to a prime directive similar to that of Star Trek ? not to disturb the natural evolutionary process of less evolved planets unless help is specifically requested, or unless it is necessary to avoid major disaster. Developing planets are invited to join the galactic federation only after they have evolved to a place where they have expanded beyond the confines of their own world both technologically and spiritually ? meaning no more wars at the very least. Many researchers of these matters, including myself, are hopeful that humanity will soon move rapidly in that direction, so that Earth will eventually be considered for membership. A Brief Speculative History: The Evolution of Humanity Key researchers of UFO matters speculate that there are a few relatively young ET (extraterrestrial) species which have developed the technology of interstellar travel, yet spiritually are lagging. They are not part of the galactic federation, nor do they feel obligated to abide by its guidelines. Like the Klingons of Star Trek, these species at times ignore the prime directive and manipulate the natural evolution of developing planets for their own benefit. This may be what happened here on Earth. An abundance of revealing evidence suggests that ETs have been visiting Earth from long prior to the dawn of modern man. In fact, some researchers even suspect that one or more human-like, less spiritually evolved ET races may have been involved in the evolution of humans on this planet. These researchers speculate that at key points in ancient human history, members of these ET races chose select human women for procreation to inject more intelligent, capable genes into humankind, thus upgrading human capabilities. This may have been done for scientific purposes ? such as to upgrade the pool of genetic possibilities available to the ETs ? or to correct perceived deficiencies in their genetic code, or simply to forward evolutionary agendas. According to this theory, at certain times in ancient human history, these ?sons of gods? (in the eyes of early humans) came down to procreate with ?the daughters of men,? as is mentioned in Genesis 6 in the Bible and other ancient writings. Stories in the texts of various religions make a lot of sense if you consider that what was being described might have been some kind of extraterrestrial contact, for instance, Moses and the burning bush, Muhammad?s trip into the heavens described in the Koran, ?virgin? births, chariots of fire in the Bible and other ancient sources, and more. Nuclear Dangers Draw ET Interest As humanity progressed through the industrial revolution and then developed nuclear capabilities in WWII, many ET species began to pay more attention to developments in our world. This would account for the large increase in UFO sightings during and after WWII. A few more advanced species became concerned that we could seriously damage our planet. Many UFO sightings occur around facilities with nuclear and military capabilities. The famous 1947 Roswell incident, where two UFOs may have crashed and been recovered in the New Mexico desert, took place right near where the 509th bomb group was located ? the only nuclear-capable jet fleet in the world at that time! Some of the more advanced species may be sending clear warnings to those in power not to play with nuclear bombs. Three military witnesses in the landmark book Disclosure describe riveting personal experiences with UFOs where nuclear warheads were either disarmed or destroyed. In one case, at least 16 nuclear warheads were disarmed after UFOs were sighted over two U.S. military bases firing pencil-thin red beams into the warheads. One of the reasons I?m so optimistic about our future is that even though some of the less advanced ET species may be causing problems here, other species far advanced of them will not allow us or any other species to badly damage the planet or the human race. In accordance with the prime directive, they will implement the minimum intervention necessary to keep things in balance. The vast majority of people on the planet may not even know that there was intervention. A significant number of caring individuals, including myself, are already sending requests to the more advanced ETs not to allow things to get out of hand, and to help us in whatever way is best. The Control Group After the recovery of two downed UFOs at Roswell in 1947, it is speculated that Majestic 12 was formed. A secret task force comprised of top military and government officials, this group advised the president on the UFO situation and was charged with doing everything necessary to keep information on the subject top secret ? for reasons of ?national security.? Actions taken by this group may have led to secret contact with the ETs, and a meeting between Eisenhower and some ETs. At this meeting, agreements were made whereby one species of ETs was given permission to conduct genetic studies on the planet (cattle mutilations, abductions) in exchange for helping the U.S. to develop and advance its technology. This apparently was one of the lesser-evolved species. Lasers, the integrated circuit, and fiber optics were just a few of the technologies ?seeded? by these ETs secretly through military channels to select research groups in large corporations (see the book The Day After Roswell by Colonel Philip J. Corso, who was in charge of seeding this technology). During Eisenhower?s presidency, a major power struggle erupted over UFO technology. Eisenhower lost control of the subject, which is likely one reason why in his farewell speech on leaving the presidency, he gives the following stern warning, ?We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.? Through the ever-increasing secrecy around this issue, everything related to UFOs became hidden even to later presidents. A culture of intense secrecy was formed, whereby all involved in these unacknowledged or ?black projects? on UFOs and related material were strictly prohibited from discussing any information, except on a ?need to know ? basis. A Culture of Strict Control and Secrecy Something to remember in dealing with secrecy and major cover-ups is that governments are massive bureaucracies and thus very inefficient in general and incapable of carrying out detailed secret plans. However, the military and intelligence branches of government are rigid hierarchies in which everyone knows their position. Superiors who give commands are very rarely questioned. Just the words "Yes, sir" bring up images of a "good soldier" in the military. The massive Manhattan Project (development of the first atomic bomb) is one example of a huge military project that was successfully kept secret for years. The building of an entire city to support the project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee at the time was successfully kept secret even from the state's governor. It is only through the use of the highly organized military and intelligence services that the world's power elite, working together with key allies in government and the media, are able to carry out major cover-ups and secret operations like those involved with UFOs and ETs. A person must have special clearance to even get close to the group involved with UFOs and advanced technologies. Once a person reaches a certain level within this secret community and has been screened and cleared, if they agree to go deeper and thus be exposed to sensitive parts of the cover-up, they must agree to give up quite a bit of their freedom. Microchips are implanted in their bone to track their whereabouts. They are frequently monitored and strictly forbidden from sharing any secret information with anyone, under threat of severe penalties, including death if necessary. Everything that those with this special clearance publish or write ? even their emails ? is screened for content. They have become a part of what is almost like a secret brotherhood or secret society. And there is no turning back once you?re in. You do what you are told by your superiors ? no questions asked. Only a very few of these people have ever managed to escape and get information out. The large majority of them likely enjoy the power of their positions, and thus are willing to put up with the restrictions on their liberty in exchange for money, power, and knowledge. Even among this secret group, which likely involves many thousands of people, very few have any idea of the full scope and scale of all that is going on. Some don?t even know that their work is based in UFO technologies. Complex layers of secrecy (compartmentalization ) and the passing of sensitive information on a ?need to know ? basis ensure that only a few at the top of the command structure know the big picture. Highly sophisticated disinformation programs also lead even insiders into false beliefs about the cover-up. It is unlikely than any one person knows all of what is going on, as like in any large society, there is infighting for control and power all the way to the very top. Dr. Steven M. Greer, an MD and former head of a hospital ER, is the head of the Disclosure Project , which has riveting testimony from over 400 government and military witnesses on the UFO cover-up. Dr. Greer has met a few of the top echelon within the secret group. He estimates that as many as 40% of the top leaders in this secret structure now feel that everything has gone too far, and that it?s time for a large-scale disclosure. Major shifts and changes are happening in this structure as people all over are gradually awakening to the fact that we are all interconnected at the deepest levels. Disempowering ETs Like humans, ETs have their strengths and weaknesses. It appears that while many, if not most ETs are either benevolent or neutral, others are more interested in control and dominance. Some of these work with key individuals both inside and outside of the secret group which manages the cover-up. They particularly interact with a select group of powerful men we might call ?the controllers.? These are the ones at the top of the pyramid in the ?brotherhood? mentioned above. These controllers now have unprecedented control over the press, corporations, drug trade, stock market, oil and energy production, and lots more. They facilitated the 9/11 attacks in order to promote fear and war. Empowering ETs and Humans Other ETs, along with groups of humans and many individuals like myself, are focused on uncovering the intentions of the controllers at the same time as we lay the foundations for planetary transformation. We are working to help humanity wake up to all that is going on around them and to the infinite potential within them, so that humankind might eventually join the galactic community. We are focused, each in our own way, on spreading love and empowerment with no desire to work against anyone. We know that the controllers don?t fully understand what they are doing, as their personalities and beliefs have been twisted by their own upbringing and many other factors. We are actively working to stop the destructive behavior of these controllers, yet even as we do this, we recognize that all beings are in their essence divine and fully worthy of love and empowerment. Both advanced ETs and humans working with them have no doubt that in the end, love always prevails. Other Beings Aside from these ETs, there are a large variety of beings or spirits who do not have physical bodies. The vast majority of these beings are far advanced of us spiritually, though like the ETs, among them are some less evolved spirits who don?t yet understand the transformative power of love. By asking for guidance from the spirits (call them angels if you like) who spread love and empowerment, we can deeply enrich our personal lives and help to shift the planet into a new paradigm. We tend to attract to us whatever we hold deepest and strongest inside ourselves. Let us work to become more aware of both our conscious and unconscious beliefs as we develop clear intentions and seek guidance in this. There are many sources of guidance and inspiration if we only choose to open to them. By first committing ourselves to a path of love, healing, and empowerment, and then doing our best to fully live that path, and by inviting guidance from empowering ETs and other beings and forces more aware than ourselves, we can and will transform our lives and world. Global Control The controllers are working hard to consolidate the global economy under the multinational corporations which they own and control. They know that cheap new energy sources would allow people to become independent of the power grid that they now control. It would also destroy the oil economy which in so many ways dominates the world and keeps those in power rich. So they will take whatever measures necessary, including killing people, to keep new energy sources from becoming available. They often use ?national security? as the excuse to forward their plans. Patents for new energy devices and inventions are known to have been seized for national security reasons . These controllers now have incredible influence over the mass media, and thus public perception. Just 10 years ago, 50 corporations jointly controlled most of the mass media. Today it is dominated by less than ten enormous transnational conglomerates. The controllers also have their hands in the international drug trade (largely through the CIA), and can have great influence on the stock market through the huge amounts of cash they control as a result of the cash-only drug trade. One of the reasons these people wanted 9/11 was that the Taliban began to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan in mid 2000, thus decimating the cash income through drugs of the controllers. In 2000, Afghanistan provided over 70% of the world's heroin. By 2001, it had dropped to almost nothing. Yet by the end of 2002, under an American installed puppet (a former Unocal contractor), the opium trade had surpassed the levels of 2000! If you don?t believe it, follow the links. 9/11 provided a convenient pretext to invade Afghanistan and revive the profitable opium industry. Control Methods The controllers realize that there are several powerful methods to control people: (1) create as much fear as possible while encouraging people to feel like victims, (2) convince citizens of the need for ever more secrecy, (3) keep the public polarized and (4) distract people from their deeper purpose in life through promoting consumerism, empty sex, drugs, the money chase, and more. 9/11 and the war on terrorism are part of an extended plan to promote these methods so that the controllers can eventually gain unbridled control of the politics and economics of the whole planet. Transcending Control Ultimately, it is the collective fear, secrecy, polarization, and loss of purpose within all of us that has allowed leaders to take power who would subvert democracy, and who would take away our freedoms and liberties. By each one of us making a commitment to work on these issues both inside of ourselves and out in the world ? and to inspire others to do the same ? we can and will change our collective direction and build a solid foundation for a brighter future. The simple way to counteract the methods of the controllers is to do our best to (1) transform fear into love, (2) promote transparency, (3) recognize and overcome polarization, and (4) continually develop and refine our deepest intentions for life and then live these intentions. We can also empower ourselves by noticing when we feel like victims, and choosing instead to take responsibility for how we interpret our lives. Coming together to do this in groups provides support and magnifies all these efforts. The more people who join in these efforts, the less control the elite group has over our world. And it?s already happening ! We are rapidly developing a new paradigm on this planet!!! When we learn about things that appear to be ?bad? or ?wrong,? it?s easy to place the responsibility outside of ourselves. It?s very easy to blame others, like the controllers, for everything that?s wrong with our world. Yet ultimately, we all are co-creators here. We all play a role in everything that goes on. When we commit to look inside of ourselves for the reason things aren?t working the way we would like, we can make a big difference. By working to transform fear and hatred inside of ourselves, we can play a significant role in creating more love and empowerment not only in our own lives, but also in the world around us. I am totally committed to do my very best to love, heal, and empower myself and all beings on this planet and beyond. I invite you to join me in this in whatever way feels right to you. The Internet ? A Powerful Source of Information So I suspect there has been ET intervention throughout the history of humankind, with greatly increased contact over the last 50 years. For decades, there have been huge cover-ups around energy, wars, drugs, and news coverage of these. All this information has been strictly suppressed through a variety of means and for a variety of reasons. With the advent of the Internet, however, the flow of information on all the cover-ups has become much more difficult to control. The controllers are very aware of the power of the Internet. They have a very well developed disinformation campaign working through a great variety of websites and other sources to lead researchers astray. That is why WantToKnow.info has been very careful to focus on information that can be verified and that comes from trustworthy sources. If people are careful to verify and substantiate what they find on the Internet, they can now research and discover for themselves what is really going on in the world. This is another reason I?m very optimistic about the future. Does Anybody Want to Know? >From all this, it is clear that my entire view of the world shifted radically beginning in 2001. Before that, I was deeply convinced that there were no really huge cover-ups. Once I learned what was going on, however, I was eager to share this information with my friends. Yet to my great surprise, most of my friends didn?t want to hear about it. As almost everything I had learned was based on solid, verifiable evidence, I had assumed that others would be both concerned and fascinated. I was very wrong. I found that few even of my close friends really wanted to know anything that would disturb their comfortable view of reality. I?ve now become very clear that most people are not willing to let their established concepts of the world go so easily. It can feel threatening to most people to learn that they have been massively deceived. I?ve learned that I?m more flexible than most in changing even deeply held beliefs when presented with evidence which clearly shows these beliefs to be mistaken. I now encourage people to explore how to develop a more open mind and more fluid intelligence if they want to play a significant role in the transformation of our planet. I have also found that very few people are deeply committed to what?s best for all of us. Few are really interested even in consciously moving in that direction. On meeting new friends, I now generally expect most people not to be interested in all this, though I almost always put out feelers, just in case. I have no desire to push anyone into believing anything. Yet I do love talking about both the cover-ups and the transformation movements sweeping our planet with the few who are really open, and especially with the even fewer who already knew about some of this before I did. New Friends Thankfully, the deeper I open to all of this, the more I meet people from around the world who do share my commitment and my desire to know what's really happening, no matter how ugly it may be. It?s great to now be in contact with courageous, pioneering people not only from across the U.S., but also from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and many other countries. Yet no matter how little or how much friends support me, I?m just excited to have gained all of this knowledge. I truly want to know what?s happening in the world, so that I can be more effective in promoting transformation. I?m aware now that some of the controllers would like to steer us into World War III. And I?m really OK with that. Even if in a worst-case scenario we end up completely destroying the planet, I know that this would simply mean that all of our souls would migrate somewhere else to try again to learn that love is the way back into wholeness. Now I highly doubt that we will destroy the Earth. I?m actually incredibly optimistic, yet I?m also prepared for anything. Based on my belief in the divine interconnectedness of all beings, I fully trust that what?s best for all is what happens always. No Fear. It?s Why I?m Here! It?s remarkable how I?ve hardly felt scared by even the most twisted activities I?ve learned about. The reason is that for the first time in my life, it?s very clear to me why I ended up living on this planet now. I'm here because this is a unique time when many souls on the planet are awakening from their slumber and being presented with a choice. We have the choice, upon being exposed to all this, to go back to sleep and be led into disempowering realms, or to wake up and join in creating a beautiful new paradigm based in love and cooperation. I am very clear that I am here with many others to invite all people on this planet to choose a new paradigm now and to help create it together. I am totally jazzed and passionate about playing my role in transforming this planet into a place of love, healing, and empowerment for all! Yea!!! In the years since learning about all the cover-ups, I have become incredibly clear that I was called here not just to invite people to awaken, but also to help spread love and empowerment to all who are open to it. What a joyful mission to have, no matter what might happen in the future! I am very excited about inviting all I meet to work towards transforming fear into love, towards moving from victim consciousness to becoming powerful creators in our lives, towards developing and refining our purpose and intentions in life, and towards truly seeing all beings as divine. What an exciting mission to have! And I get to work with many wonderful, courageous souls who are passionate about this work, too! How awesome is that!!! Shifting Focus to the New Paradigm Having researched major cover-ups almost full time for several years now, I feel I have the big picture pretty well down. I see the plan of the controllers, yet I also surrender to the greater divine plan of All That Is. The knowledge I've gained has helped me to awaken to who I am and what I?m doing here. I?m now ready and very excited to spend much less time on researching the cover-ups, and focus my energies much more on creating a new paradigm of love, healing, and empowerment for all. I'm thrilled about all the transformation happening in my own life and in the world around me! If you feel that you are called to be a part of this planetary change, we have developed an empowering website specifically for you, which you can find by clicking here . As we join together in building bridges to a new paradigm for our world, we are paving the way for our planet to join the galactic federation, and for humanity to join the galactic family which patiently and lovingly awaits us. It's an exciting time to be alive and a privilege to be committed fully in service to all of us. Thank you to all of you for wanting to know and for working together to build a brighter future for us all! _____ For several other excellent summaries of the big picture of life on our planet, click here For my personal favorite spiritual writings on the deeper reasons behind it all, click here For an 80-minute talk I gave on global transformation and the meaning of life, click here For what I feel are the most inspirational and transformative materials available, click here _____ Bookmark and Share Final Note: WantToKnow.info believes it is important to balance disturbing cover-up information with inspirational writings which call us to be all that we can be and to work together for positive change. Please visit our Inspiration Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/inspirational for an abundance of uplifting material. See our archive of revealing news articles at www.WantToKnow.info/indexnewsarticles Your tax-deductible donations, however large or small, help greatly to support this important work. To make a donation by credit card, check, or money order: www.WantToKnow.info/donationswtk Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the nonprofit PEERS network: www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all To respond to this message, visit www.WantToKnow.info/contactus.php To subscribe to or unsubscribe from the WantToKnow.info list (one email every few days): www.WantToKnow.info/subscribe _____ Change email address / Leave mailing list Powered by YourMailingListProvider -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From 121Rhahl at kilowattcards.com Fri Feb 19 05:08:23 2010 From: 121Rhahl at kilowattcards.com (Robert Hahl) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:08:23 -0700 Subject: [GJM] Why was the Industrial Revolution British? Message-ID: <7ee0cbdb$2127e80d$3652a907$@com> http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3570 Why was the Industrial Revolution British? Robert C. Allen 15 May 2009 *Print* *Email* *Comment* *Republish * * It is still not clear among economic historians why the Industrial Revolution actually took place in 18th century Britain. This column explains that it is the British Empire's success in international trade that created Britain's high wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the spring board for the Industrial Revolution. * Why did the Industrial Revolution take place in eighteenth century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? Answers to this question have ranged from religion and culture to politics and constitutions. In a just published book, *The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective*, I argue that the explanation of the Industrial Revolution was fundamentally economic. The Industrial Revolution was Britain's creative response to the challenges and opportunities created by the global economy that emerged after 1500. This was a two step process. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries a European-wide market emerged. England took a commanding position in this new order as her wool textile industry out competed the established producers in Italy and the Low Countries. England extended her lead in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by creating an intercontinental trading network including the Americas and India. Intercontinental trade expansion depended on the acquisition of colonies, mercantilist trade promotion, and naval power. The upshot of Britain's success in the global economy was the expansion of rural manufacturing industries and rapid urbanisation. East Anglia was the centre of the woollen cloth industry, and its products were exported through London where a quarter of the jobs depended on the port. As a result, the population of London exploded from 50,000 in 1500 to 200,000 in 1600 and half a million in 1700. In the eighteenth century, the expansion of trade with the American colonies and India doubled London's population again and led to even more rapid growth in provincial and Scottish cities. This expansion depended on vigorous imperialism, which expanded British possessions abroad, the Royal Navy, which defeated competing naval and mercantile powers, and the Navigation Acts, which excluded foreigners from the colonial trades. The British Empire was designed to stimulate the British economy-and it did. The growth of British commerce had three important consequences. First, the growth of London created a shortage of wood fuel that was only relieved by the exploitation of coal. Figure 1 shows the real price per million BTUs of energy in London from wood and coal in this period. In the fifteenth century, the two fuels sold at the same price per million BTU's which meant that the market for coal was limited given its polluting character. As London grew after 1500, the price of wood fuels rose and by the end of the sixteenth century, charcoal and firewood were twice the price of coal per unit of energy. With that premium, consumers began to substitute coal for wood. Instead of a wood burning hearth in the middle of a large central room, houses were built with narrow fireplaces and chimneys to burn coal. The coal burning house was invented. It then paid to mine coal in Northumberland and ship it down the coast to London. The coal trade began. On the coal fields (in Newcastle, for instance), Britain had the cheapest energy in the world. Energy was more expensive on the European continent and particularly expensive in China (Figure 2). *Figure 1. * *Figure 2.* ** Second, the growth of cities and manufacturing increased the demand for labour with the result that British wages and living standards were the highest in the world. Figure 3 shows the wages of labours in leading cities in Europe and Asia from 1375 to 1875. The wages have been deflated by a consumer price index so that they show the purchasing power across space as well as over time. A value of one means that a labourer employed full time, full year could earn just enough to keep his family at a subsistence standard of living of 1940 calories per adult male equivalent per day. The budget used to define the consumer price index is set so that most of the spending is on food and most of that is on the cheapest carbohydrate available (oatmeal in northwestern Europe, polenta in Florence, sorghum in Beijing, millet chapatis in Delhi). Only tiny quantities of meat, oil, cloth, fuel, and housing are included in the budget. After the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, the standard of living of workers everywhere was high; they typically earned three or four times subsistence. In the ensuing centuries, population growth in Europe and Asia led to falling real wages, so that most workers ended up in the eighteenth century earning just enough to purchase the subsistence standard of living. The only countries to avoid that fate were Britain and the Low Countries. Their populations, in fact, grew more rapidly than those elsewhere, but this effect was offset by the booms in their economies due to international trade. Workers in London and Amsterdam did not, however, buy four times as much oatmeal as they needed for subsistence. Instead they upgraded their diets to beef, beer, and bread, while their counterparts in much of Europe and Asia subsisted on quasi-vegetarian diets of boiled grains with a few peas or lentils. Workers in northwestern Europe also had surplus income to buy exotic imports like tea and sugar as well as domestic manufactures like books, pictures, watches, and better clothes. *Figure 3. * Third, the growth of cities and the high wage economy stimulated agriculture. The strong demand for food and particularly meat, butter, and cheese led to the conversion of arable to pasture, convertible husbandry, and the production of fodder crops (beans, clover, turnips), most of which raised soil nitrogen levels and pushed up the yields of wheat and barley. The urban demand for labour led to the amalgamation of small holdings into large farms, which employed fewer people per acre, a development also entailed by the conversion of ploughed land to grass. Agriculture was revolutionised because cities expanded, rather than the reverse as historians have often maintained. Success in international trade created Britain's high wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the spring board for the Industrial Revolution. High wages and cheap energy created a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for labour. These incentives operated in many industries. Pottery, for instance, was manufactured in both England and China. The design of the kilns differed greatly, however. English kilns were cheap to build but very fuel inefficient; much of the energy from the burning fuel was lost through the vent hole on the top (Figure 4). The typical Chinese kiln, on the other hand, was more expensive to construct and, indeed, required more labour to operate. Figure 5 shows how heat was drawn into the chamber on the left and then forced out a hole at floor level into a second chamber. The process continued through many chambers until the air, by then denuded of most of its heat, finally exited up a chimney. In England, it was not worth spending a lot of money to build a thermally efficient kiln since energy was so cheap. In China, however, where energy was expensive, it was cost effective to build thermally efficient kilns. The technologies that were used reflected the relative prices of capital, labour, and energy. Since it was costly to invent technology, invention also responded to the same incentives. *Figure 4. English kiln* *Figure 5. Chinese kiln* The famous inventions of the Industrial Revolution were responses to the high wages and cheap energy of the British economy. These inventions also substituted capital and energy for labour. The steam engine increased the use of capital and coal to raise output per worker. The cotton mill used machines to raise labour productivity in spinning and weaving. New technologies of iron making substituted cheap coal for expensive charcoal and mechanised production to increase output per worker. These technologies eventually revolutionised the world, but at the outset they were barely profitable in Britain, and their commercial success depended on increasing the use of inputs that were relatively cheap in Britain. In other countries, where wages were lower and energy more expensive, it did not pay to use technology that reduced employment and increased the consumption of fuel. The French government was very active in trying to promote advanced British technology in the eighteenth century, but its efforts failed since the British techniques were not cost effective at French prices. James Hargreaves perfected the spinning jenny, the first machine that successfully spun cotton, in the late 1760s. In 1771, John Holker, an English Jacobite who held the post of Inspector General of Foreign Manufactures, spirited a jenny into France. Demonstration models were made, but the jenny was only installed in large, state supported workshops. By the late 1780s, over 20,000 jennies were used in England and only 900 in France. Likewise, the French government sponsored the construction of an English style iron works (including four coke blast furnaces) in Burgundy in the 1780s. The raw materials were adequate, the enterprise was well capitalised, and they hired outstanding and experienced English engineers to oversee the project. Yet it was a commercial flop because coal was too expensive in France. Since the technologies of the Industrial Revolution were only profitable to adopt in Britain, that was also the only country where it paid to invent them. The ideas embodied in the breakthrough technologies were simple; the difficult problem was the engineering challenge of making them work. Responding to that challenged required research and development, which emerged as an important business practice in the eighteenth century. It was accompanied by the appearance of venture capitalists to finance the R&D and a reliance on patents to recoup the benefits of successful development. The Industrial Revolution was invented in Britain in the eighteenth century because that was where it paid to invent it. The success of R&D programs in eighteenth century Britain depended on another characteristic of the high wage economy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of a manufacturing, commercial economy increased the demand for literacy, numeracy and trade skills. These were acquired through privately purchased education and apprenticeships. The high wage economy not only created a demand for these skills, but also gave parents the income to purchase them. As a result, the British population was highly skilled (by international standards), and those skills were necessary for the high tech revolution to unfold. The Industrial Revolution was confined to Britain for many years, because the technological breakthroughs were tailored to British conditions and could not be profitably deployed elsewhere. However, British engineers strove to improve efficiency and reduced the use of inputs that were cheap in Britain as well as those that were expensive. The consumption of coal in steam engines, for instance, was cut from 45 pounds per horse power-hour in the early eighteenth to only 2 pounds in the mid-nineteenth. The genius of British engineering undermined the country's technological lead by creating 'appropriate technology' for the world at large. By the middle of the nineteenth century, advanced technology could be profitably used in countries like France with expensive energy and India with cheap labour. Once that happened, the Industrial Revolution went world wide. *This article may be reproduced with appropriate attribution. See Copyright (below).* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 19 13:29:55 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:29:55 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [FixGov] Subverting Pre-Modern Knowledge Systems for Revealing Modernity in Africa Message-ID: <005601cab1a2$820f2790$862d76b0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS Thanks Jlhamel for your contribution to our discussion. With love and in gratitude. My comment here is that: I do believe that with regard to science there is a need to turn to the study of human biology as a means of discerning how human consciousness emanates. For thousands of years, what I refer to as "cultural baggage" has formed the basis for many of our belief systems. It is now time to clean this baggage out the closet and look as to how the human system works -- a view which must also include quantum physics. Formerly, instrumentation was not available with which to measure the subtle energy vibrations that make up the human body/mind field. However, with the advent of NASA and putting humans into space it became necessary to measure and monitor the energy fields of the astronaut while there. Consequently new equipment was designed allowing scientists to look into the human body and follow its energy patterns to see how they worked together to create the body/mind/spirit. One of the first to look into this in modern times was Robert O. Becker, M.D. Dr. Becker's work is recorded in his book: "The Body Electric - Electromagnetism and The Foundation of Life" written with Gary Selden. This book tells the story of our bioelectric selves as Becker, a pioneer in the field of regeneration and its relationship to electrical currents in living things, challenges the mechanistic understanding of the human body. In their search into the electromagnetic field as the foundation of life, Becker and Selden found clues to the healing process once proposed by 18th- Century vitalists that electricity is vital to the life process. Becker and Selden's book also explores new pathways in our understanding of evolution, acupuncture, psychic phenomenon, and cancer, and how natural healing takes place. Following up on this is LawrenceFagg, PhD Physics, author, Electromagnetism and the Sacred,. https://bdigital.ufp.pt/dspace/bitstream/10284/765/3/55-63Cons-Ciencias%2002 -4.pdf and http://www.elearn-university.org/Medicine/Science/22851.php Fagg, a former student of the Catholic University, writes to the effect that the electromagnetic energy field is God. A couple more suggested books are "Infinite Mind" - Valerie V. Hunt, Ph.d, Ph.d. and "The Biology of Belief" - Bruce H. Lipton, M.D. , Ph.d. In his book: Dr. Lipton reveals that at the moment of conception of either an egg or a seed the field is surrounded by the electromagnetic energy field confirming that this field is the underlying force for all of life. In his book: "The Biology of Transcendence - A Blueprint for the Human Spirit" - Joseph Chilton Pearce takes this another step further and reveals how the heart is connected to this field and as well to the rest of the universe. Note: The Chinese were quite familiar with this energy field calling it "chi". Out of their study of the human energy system over several thousand years, the arts of Tai Chi and Qigong came about. Qigong is has been noted by many as an excellent management system for the human energy field and was designed as a "healing modality" while Tai Chi, from which it is derived is the martial form of this art. Another related book is that of Leonard Horowitz: "Walk on Water" in which Horowitz reveals that the 528 tone of the Solfeggio Scale is that by which life is created. There is more to this as we get into Sacred Geometry, fractal evolution, the Zero Point Energy Field, etc., Walk on Water is related to the fact that our body is approximately 70% water. And, if we follow this line of thought, then we move over to V. Vernon Woolf's work recorded in his: "Dance of Life" where Dr. Woolf reveals that all information/memory is recorded in the ionized water of the microtubules of the human cell. This is a very complicated "tracking" process which overlaps in many areas and the works I have referenced here by no means form a complete picture. The whole story is very complex as it covers thousands of years of evolution and as well involves "creation" as exposed by the Sumerian Tablets and recorded by Zechariah Sitchin in his translations of them in the books entitled "The Earth Chronicles". I began this search and am recording what I find in "The Sacred Quest for the Who of I Am" as a pathway to peace. This project was started in hopes of creating a level playing field that would provide the information as to who we really are, for I have long recognized that to continue on with the cultural baggage we all carry as a basis for who or what God is, and who we are, means we would surely destroy ourselves as we waged wars with one another in a futile attempt to prove that "my God is better than your God." There has to be another way. What my hope is for people to come to the recognition that human consciousness should be mapped just as was the human genome - but until such time as this happens, I will continue to plug along unveiling truth whenever possible, and bringing attention to others whose work is related in some way. And wars will continue to be waged "in the name of God" as was done by George W. Bush until such time as the truth is fully revealed. While I have not previously made mention of it here, the search for the "who of we are" as the human family ties in to the revelations made by Fred Burks in his "Want To Know" of yesterday. I have included a few new people in these recent postings to the Co-learner's List as a sample of what we are discussing here. If, after having a chance to read what we are discussing, anyone who would like to be excluded please send a message to maryrose333 at att.net and I will immediately drop you from the list. With much love and in gratitude for all that we do together. From: FixGov at yahoogroups.com [mailto:FixGov at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of jlhamel Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 2:02 AM To: FixGov at yahoogroups.com Subject: [SPAM][FixGov] Subverting Pre-Modern Knowledge Systems for Revealing Modernity in Africa This is a speculative reflection on the power of modern science, technology and innovation systems (STI) for revealing some distinctive style of modernity in Africa. The modernization of these systems, as the backbones of any mode of modernity, also requires the modernization of our mental or intellectual costumes. This process is essentially the passage from closed, self-confirming, faith-based, customary, totalizing or terrorizing knowledge systems to essentially falsifiable, evidence-based, scientifically-established and technically-proven innovative knowledge systems. In these systems scientific knowledge can be construed as a theory of the real and as a technology of truth and understood as the epistemological foundation of any form of Afro-modernity. It is also the passage from the `Book of Scripture' to the `Book of Nature' or from the submission to the white man's colonizing gods to the more authentic and genuine African identities, beliefs and values, such as those embodied in the concept of ubuntu. In this perspective rejuvenating knowledge systems can purge Abrahamic and Shamanic worldviews of non-scientific constituents and open a path from the mostly totemic, enchanted, mystified, supernatural, patriarchal / phallocratic and over-religious worldviews and mindsets of pre-modern Africa to the more desacralized, secular, rational, liberal, enlightened and autonomous worldviews and mindsets of modernity. This paradigmatic shift toward modern ways of knowing and understanding requires championing the scientific method, the rule of technique and innovation as well as promoting decisive scientific arbitrations, increased technical mediations and a redefinition of STI's relationships with religious, cultural, social and economic life. For this shift to occur there is a need to better appreciate modern science as a method of both calculative and subversive thinking, as a means of achieving the systematic renovation of conventional / medieval / pre-modern realities and as a way to reconstruct and re-order African realities from fresh fundamentals and from the latest scientific insights. This may require strengthening various capacities to probe, undermine and rationalize oppressive systems (religious, cultural, social, economic, political). It may also require re-cosmologizing, re-mythologizing, `re-prophetizing', re-charlatanizing and re-directing the evolution of the African reality toward a region free of wishful thinking, fallacies, lies, superstitions, prejudices, magic and witchcraft and toward an Islam-free and Christian-free scientifically-informed free-thinking innovative post-colony. The necessary capacities for achieving this shift toward more innovative scientific and technical orders and systems are grouped into eight areas. Full reflection here: http://sites.google.com/site/revealingmodernityinafrica/newpaper My website: http://sites.google.com/site/revealingmodernityinafrica/ Join me on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueshamel __._,_.___ Reply to sender | Reply to group Messages in this topic (1) Recent Activity: . New Members 1 Visit Your Group Start a New Topic MARKETPLACE Going Green: Your Yahoo! Groups resource for green living Yahoo! Groups Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest . Unsubscribe . Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 19 18:57:26 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:57:26 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Part III: Exposing Our Enemy - Meet the Economic Elite Message-ID: <001a01cab1d0$45c60640$d15212c0$@net> -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 12:17 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Part III: Exposing Our Enemy - Meet the Economic Elite Part III: Exposing Our Enemy - Meet the Economic Elite Posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 http://ampedstatus.com/part-iii-exposing-our-enemy-meet-the-economic-elite "The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money powers of the country will endeavor to prolong it's reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln I don't view the Economic Elite as a small group of men who meet in secrecy to control the world. They do feature elements of conspiracy and are clearly composed of secretive organizations like the Bilderberg Group - this is not a conspiracy theory, this is a conspiracy fact - but as a whole the Economic Elite are primarily united by ideology. They're made up of thousands of individuals who subscribe to an ideology of exploitation and the belief that wealth and resources need to be concentrated into the fewest hands possible (theirs), at the expense of the many. That being said, there are some definite lead players in this group and it is important that we are not too vague and expose the individuals who publicly lead them. Focusing on the fundamental structure of the US economy, we have people like Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, John Mack, Vikram Pandit, John Thain, Hank Greenberg, Ken Lewis, John J. Castellani, Edward Yingling and Tom Donohue. In total, the Economic Elite are made up of about 0.5% of the US population. At the center of this group is the Business Roundtable, an organization representing Fortune 500 CEOs that is also interlocked with several lead elite organizations. Most Americans have never heard of the Business Roundtable. However, in my analysis, it is the most influential and powerful Economic Elite organization. "The Business Roundtable joined the Business Council at the heart of both the corporate community and the policy-formation network and now has the most powerful role.. The Roundtable's interlocks with other policy groups and with think tanks are presented [below]." -- G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America: Part III: Exposing Our Enemy - Meet the Economic Elite The Roundtable's first year of operation was 1972, which coincided with the beginning of the CEO salary explosion, and has been the driving force behind the unprecedented concentration of wealth since their inception. Their dominance over the US economy and government is unparalleled. Their members are a Who's Who of everything that is wrong with our economy. Here is a partial list of some of their lead members: Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs ---James Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co. ---James P. Gorman, Morgan Stanley ---Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup, Inc. ---Brian T. Moynihan, Bank of America ---Brendan McDonagh, HSBC ---Robert W. Selander, MasterCard Incorporated ---Kenneth I. Chenault, American Express Company ---Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation ---Glenn A. Britt, Time Warner Cable Inc. ---Philippe Dauman, Viacom, Inc. ---Jeffrey R. Immelt, General Electric Company ---Brian L. Roberts, Comcast Corporation ---Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft Corporation ---John T. Chambers, Cisco Systems, Inc. ---Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T Inc. ---Ivan G. Seidenberg, Verizon Communications ---David G. DeWalt, McAfee, Inc. ---Steven R. Loranger, ITT Corporation ---Paul T. Hanrahan, AES Corporation, The ---Riley P. Bechtel, Bechtel Group, Inc. ---W. James McNerney , Boeing Company, The ---Rex W. Tillerson, Exxon Mobil Corporation ---Marvin E. Odum, Shell Oil Company ---John S. Watson, Chevron Corporation ---James J. Mulva, ConocoPhillips ---John B. Hess, Hess Corporation ---James E. Rogers Duke Energy Corporation ---J. Larry Nichols, Devon Energy Corporation ---Ronald A. Williams, Aetna Inc. ---David Cordani, CIGNA ---Jeffrey B. Kindler , Pfizer Inc. ---Angela F. Braly, WellPoint, Inc. ---John C. Lechleiter, Eli Lilly and Company ---Edward B. Rust, Jr., State Farm ---Andrew N. Liveris, Dow Chemical ---James W. Owens, Caterpillar Inc. ---Ellen J. Kullman, DuPont ---Edward E. Whitacre Jr., General Motors Company ---Michael T. Duke, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. The Business Roundtable is the most powerful activist organization in the United States. Their leaders regularly lobby members of Congress behind closed doors and often meet privately with the President and his administration. Any legislation that affects Roundtable members has almost zero possibility of passing without their support. For three major examples, look at healthcare and financial reform, along with the military budget. The healthcare reform bill devolved into what amounts to an insurance industry bailout and was drastically altered by Roundtable lobbyists representing interests like WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. Obama and Congress are trying to please the Roundtable with a bill that supports their interests. This led to the dropping of the public-option put forth in the House bill. However, when it came to finishing the bill, Roundtable members began to walk away from the process. That's the real reason why the reform bill has stalled. Obama will be meeting with the Roundtable on February 24th, in hopes of getting healthcare reform back on track. After that meeting, he will then hold a bipartisan healthcare meeting with members of congress. Also being addressed in Obama's upcoming meeting with the Roundtable are issues concerning financial reform. Almost every aspect of financial reform has been D.O.A. thanks to Roundtable lobbyists representing the interests of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, Master Card and American Express. They even pushed to make sure Ben Bernanke was reconfirmed as the head of the Federal Reserve and they have also guided Obama into focusing on deficit reduction, now that their member companies are healthy again and making record profits after receiving trillions in government subsidies. The Roundtable played a pivotal role in the appointment of Hank Paulson, formerly the CEO of Roundtable member Goldman Sachs, who replaced Roundtable member John Snow as US Treasury Secretary. The Roundtable also strongly lobbied on behalf of current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House National Economic Council Director Larry Summers. Although there has been recent talk of Geithner being replaced at the Treasury, the lead choice to replace him is Jamie Dimon, Roundtable member and CEO of JP Morgan Chase. The drastic rise in military spending is also a result of Roundtable lobbyists pushing the interests of large military companies like Boeing and Bechtel, along with the largest oil companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, Hess and Chevron. The Roundtable tells politicians what they want done, and the politicians do it. At times, Roundtable members even write the laws themselves. On financial reform alone, those representing Wall Street firms gave "$42 million to lawmakers, mostly to members of the House and Senate banking committees and House and Senate leaders." During the 2008 election cycle, they gave $155 million: $88 million to Democrats and $67 million to Republicans. Keep in mind, this is the spending on just their financial reform initiative. When it came to health reform, they gave even more. When it comes to getting elected, over 90% of the time the candidate who simply spends more money on their campaign wins the election. The Roundtable and politicians recognize this fact, so the overwhelming majority of current elected officials relied heavily on campaign funding from Roundtable members, including President Obama. Shortly after Obama's inauguration he held a meeting with Roundtable members at the St. Regis Hotel. The president of the Business Roundtable is John J. Castellani. Throughout the first nine months of Obama's presidency, Castellani met with him at the White House more than any other person, with the exception of Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue. If you look at the records of people who have spent the most time with Obama in the White House, other than these two, another frequent visitor is Edward Yingling, the president of the American Bankers Association. These organizations - the Business Roundtable, Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association - along with the Federal Reserve, a secretive quasi-government private institution, form the center of the Economic Elite's power structure. Since the bailout, the Federal Reserve has been working closely with private firm BlackRock. Due to this relationship, BlackRock has emerged as the world's largest money manager and now manages more assets than the Federal Reserve. They also "manage many of the Treasury Department's big investments." On a global level, you have economic institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and international treaties like NAFTA. These organizations already form a de facto world government that has rights beyond our constitutional rights and national sovereignty. If the WTO makes a ruling that goes against US law, the WTO ruling supersedes US law and wins out. Here is how Global Exchange explains these global institutions: "The World Trade Organization is the most powerful legislative and judicial body in the world. By promoting the 'free trade' agenda of multinational corporations above the interests of local communities, working families, and the environment, the WTO has systematically undermined democracy around the world.. Unlike United Nations treaties, the International Labor Organization conventions, or multilateral environmental agreements, WTO rules can be enforced through sanctions. This gives the WTO more power than any other international body. The WTO's authority even eclipses national governments. [World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)] When the Bank and the Fund lend money to debtor countries, the money comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called 'structural adjustment policies.' These policies-or SAPs, as they are sometimes called-require debtor governments to open their economies to penetration by foreign corporations, allowing access to the country's workers and environment at bargain basement prices. Structural adjustment policies mean across-the-board privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They mean the slashing of government budgets, leading to cutbacks in spending on health care and education.. And, as their imposition in country after country in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has shown, they lead to deeper inequality and environmental destruction." In addition to dominating our political and economic system, the Economic Elite have already created their own private military. Their private military is now more powerful than the US military. As mentioned earlier, private mercenaries now outnumber US soldiers and receive the lion's share of military spending. Corporations like SAIC, Blackwater, Bechtel, Raytheon and Halliburton are composed of the most elite worldwide intelligence and military officers. These are the highly profitable and powerful entities that the Economic Elite turn to when national militaries and intelligence agencies - like the CIA, FBI or other government run entities - can't get the job done. For instance, SAIC, a "stealth company" that most people have never heard of, is considered to be the brains of the entire US intelligence apparatus, more powerful than the much more popularly known CIA, NSA and FBI - all agencies that SAIC is deeply intertwined with. I urge you to research SAIC to get a crash course in how the true power structure functions. You can start by reading an excellent investigative report by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele titled, "Washington's $8 billion shadow." The Economic Elite dominate US intelligence and military operations. Other than the obvious geo-strategic reasons, the never-ending and ever-expanding War on Terror's objective is to drain the US population of more resources and further rob US taxpayers, while using our tax money to create a private military that is more powerful than the US military. I think any logical person can see the ominous implications of having such a vast and powerful private military and intelligence complex, created for and used, in secrecy, by the Economic Elite. Outside of the blatant economic policy attacks, heavily armed and sophisticated covert powers led by small groups of Economic Elite are now a serious risk and present danger. Buy the Book: The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of AmericaIn conclusion, these economic and government policy forming organizations, along with their private military and intelligence corporations, form the core of the Economic Elite power structure. From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 19 20:01:56 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:01:56 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Three timely and interrelated articles courtesy of Trading Post Paul. Message-ID: <002001cab1d9$493fad90$dbbf08b0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS The Fierce Urgency of This Spring: Veggie Seeds & Nut Seedlings for Us All by Dan Allen Published Feb 18 2010 excerpt from http://www.energybulletin.net/51610 BUILDING RESILIENCY: FOOD FIRST! So here is our challenge as individuals, families, and communities: As rapidly as possible (for time is short), begin replacing our doomed industrial infrastructures with resilient structures perhaps capable of being sustained through the turbulent times ahead. Such structures must be able to, at the very least, provide the 'basics' for our species as we scramble to reconfigure our lives around a reality defined by much lower energy inputs. The key low-energy systems we need can be categorized as such: food, clean water, shelter, manufacturing of basic goods, and transportation. And I would suggest that, among these required resilient structures, food is perhaps paramount. For what good are functioning low energy transportation systems between walkable communities of cozy, energy-efficient dwellings if we have no food? Of course, all these required systems are related and need to be interwoven in some fashion -- but at this late date, we need to practice some triage. .So food first! THREE REQUIREMENTS FOR A RESILIENT FOOD SYSTEM So what are the requirements for a resilient, low-energy-input food system - one that can take hit after hit, and still keep producing food? I can think of three off the top of my head. (Click on link above to read rest of article.) The Peak Oil Crisis: The Crunch By Tom Whipple Wednesday, February 17 2010 20:05 http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/5919-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-crunch. html Another study warning governments of the imminence and danger of peak oil was released last week. This one was an updated version of a similar report produced by a group of British industrialists 14 months ago. The intended audience of the report is the new British government that will take office after an election later this year. The authors hope that a new government will take a more serious view of the dangers to Britain (and everywhere else for that matter) of impending high oil prices and shortages which previous British governments were unwilling to confront or prepare for. The English-speaking world has always been entranced with noble titles - Duke, Earl, Count, even Sir. When you combine "Sir" with the words multi-billionaire and virgin you have a sure winner. Even if the topic is as mundane as peak oil, much of the world press pays attention. When the spokesman for the recent report turned out to be none other than billionaire and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson, many British publications and even a few American, including Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor, felt impelled to write serious stories about what Branson had to say. The new report, produced by the UK's Industry Taskforce for Peak Oil and Energy Security, is of interest because it updates the estimates of when the oil "crunch" (when demand exceeds production) will occur to account for the global economic slowdown. In addition, the amount of unbiased attention that has been given to the report including that of the British government shows that a wider understanding of the problem is starting to take hold. For most, the key concern is not whether there will be much higher gasoline prices ahead, but when. To answer this question, we have to take into account trends in the three major variables that determine oil prices and also be aware that there are numerous geopolitical factors affecting the situation, such as the Iranian nuclear standoff; stability of the Iraqi government after the US pullout; the drought in Venezuela; and the Nigerian insurgency. The first two issues encompass the balance of new oil supplies and declining production from existing oil fields. Here the report suggests a fairly specific time frame when significant additions of new production to the world's oil supply is likely to end. The report says time is around the end of the current year. From 2011 on, the relentless drop in production of just over 4 million b/d from the fields that are currently producing about 85 million barrels a day will be just barely balanced with production from new projects through 2014. After that world production will go into decline. ~~~~~~~~ Tom Whipple is a retired government analyst and has been following the peak oil issue for several years. What "Lower Consumption" Means by Dan Allen Published Nov 5 2009 http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50617 The fevered frenzy of Industrial Civilization's resource consumption appears to have finally reached its apex and begun its decline in this, the first decade of the twenty-first century. A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin' civilization. Resource depletion is a predicament requiring adaptation to an entirely new low-consumption paradigm, rather than a problem to be solved with technological or social solutions. As a country, we need to start the conversation about what a lower-consumption, resource-poor society would look like, and begin the appropriate preparations. The Insatiable Hunger of Industrial Civilization Over the past 150 years, the relentless combination of exponentially-increasing population and exponentially-increasing per-capita (i.e. per-person) consumption has significantly depleted a wide-range of resources necessary for the continuation of our modern Industrial Civilization. These include both non-renewable resources (ex: fossil fuels, metal ores, phosphate fertilizers, etc.) and theoretically-renewable resources that are being abused to such an extent that they are becoming essentially non-renewable on useful timescales (ex: fisheries, topsoil, freshwater, etc.). Pick any of these key resources and the annual extraction rate data will likely show an exponential increase from the mid-1800's to the present. Ask scientists about the resource and they will tell you the bad news: the annual extraction rate curve is near, at, or past the point of collapse. Ask conventional economists or politicians and they will tell you the good news: "Everything's going to be OK; the market will take care of it; It always has." So who do we believe? Taking a quick look past the rhetoric, the situation becomes clear -- alarmingly so for those who wish the industrial party to continue, as well as for those who fear we are not properly prepared for what follows. The Easy Stuff's Gone As modern Industrial Civilization built momentum, the easiest resources, the "lowest hanging fruit," were logically picked first: the high purity coal, metal ores, and phosphate-bearing minerals at or near the surface; the light, sweet crude oil and gas that burst at great pressure from shallow wells; the huge, dense schools of protein-rich fish that practically jumped into the boats; the deep-rich top-soils that required minimal inputs to produce bountiful crop yields. While the ease of extraction and high quality of these resources gave us a great confidence as a civilization, ever-increasing consumption rates actually became ingrained as a necessity for the continuation of our industrial economies. As this consumptive frenzy gained momentum, however, these once-easy resources became "high graded;" meaning that as the easiest stuff was skimmed off every year, the resources that remained were of increasingly lower quality. What remains now, of course, at our currently-advanced stage of depletion, are resources that are much more expensive, of much lower quality, and much more difficult to extract. These are the low-purity metal ores thousands of feet underground; heavy crude oil and gas laced with toxins that must be coaxed with great effort from beneath thousands of feet of ocean, rock, and salt; sparse schools of lower-quality fish requiring monstrous nets and huge ships for their economical extraction; and the nutrient-depleted, thinned-out top-soil requiring significant inputs to obtain reasonable yields. The Difficult Stuff's Too Difficult Let's assume to a very rough (but not entirely unreasonable) approximation that half of all theoretically-extractable resources have been depleted as we begin the 21st century - fossil fuels, metal ores, phosphate fertilizer, fisheries, etc. The industrial consumers say, "Wow, that still leaves half remaining to be extracted. We still have another 150 years of fun. Party on!" There are, however, two key problems that will undermine their (understandable) exuberance. First, due to much-increased population and per-capita consumption rates, we are burning through these resources at a significantly faster rate than at the start of the first 150 years. Even if the second half of the resources were easily obtained, they would be likely be gone in a matter of a few decades. Secondly, the first half of the resources was the cheap, easy half. What remains is so increasingly difficult to access that it would require actual extra-terrestrial energy inputs for their complete extraction - i.e. it's not gonna happen. Not even close. Here's the dark irony of our resource predicament: The low-quality, difficult half of the resources that remain require an infrastructure for their extraction that can only exist in the presence of the high-quality, easy half of the resources -- the ones that no longer exist. Please read that again. In other words, a relatively large percentage of the low-quality, difficult resources that remain will likely never be extracted. The age of cheap, easy, high-quality resources to power the current version of Industrial Civilization is over, and the age of expensive, difficult, low-quality resources to power a future version of Industrial Civilization will simply never occur. Our beloved Industrial Civilization, this pinnacle of human ingenuity, this shining beacon of light in an otherwise backward Universe, (this destructive monster killing the biosphere) is just about out of fuel. It's time to get out and start walking. So what does all this "bad" news mean for our everyday lives? The short answer is that we can expect a rather drastic involuntary reduction in resource use in the not-too-distant future, gradually worsening, and extending into the distant future. This coming resource supply-reduction may well proceed in a stair-step fashion -- unexpected drop, period of stability, unexpected drop, period of stability.etc, giving repeated temporary illusions of "the bottom." The steady erosion of the resource pipeline will not only utterly cripple our growth-requiring Industrial economy, it will send ripple effects through every facet of our formerly-industrial lives, changing them almost beyond belief. We will not only have less and less of the "primary" extractable resources available to us every year -- less oil, less coal, natural gas, less phosphate fertilizer, less metals, etc; but we will also have less and less of the "secondary" resources that the primary resources make possible: less electricity, less nitrogen fertilizer, less water treatment, less transportation, less computers and electronic communication, etc. Again, it's important to state here that not only will this decline be involuntary, it will not be preventable by any combination of political, social, or technological solutions. It will simply occur, and we must simply respond to it. How we respond, of course, will make a great deal of difference as to whether our predicament becomes disastrous or just very difficult. Moral guidance will be greatly needed throughout. The varied fields of Ecology, Biophysical Economics, Permaculture, and Natural Systems Agriculture (among others) have much to teach us about adapting to our changing resource situation, and we certainly should listen to them. (Note to Obama: Please contact the Post Carbon Institute. Invite Wendell Berry over for a beer. Heck, Derrick Jensen too.) Also realize that there are many important facets of our lives which need not decline in the upcoming future - indeed, they may even increase: personal connections with our families, communities, and the natural world; block parties and potlucks; tag-football and pickup-basketball; joking around and shooting the breeze; love in our hearts, etc. In other words, it's quite possible we just may find a lot more important and fulfilling things than we're losing. Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From 121Rhahl at kilowattcards.com Sat Feb 20 13:38:18 2010 From: 121Rhahl at kilowattcards.com (Robert Hahl) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:38:18 -0700 Subject: [GJM] Addiction to Borrowed Money Message-ID: http://cpd.org.au/sites/cpd/files/u51504/KeenCPD_DeeperInDebt_NoApp.pdf Deeper in Debt Australia's Addiction to Borrowed Money Dr Steve Keen CENTRE FOR POLICY DEVELOPMENT ISSN 1835-0135 OCCASIONAL PAPER S - NUMBER 3 September 2007 This is a perceptive and educational description of Autralia's financial situation, that seems to apply to Europe and the US without much difference, e.g., ...Another long-running economic fantasy that will need to be abandoned is the belief that commodity price inflation is always and everywhere a bad thing, while asset price inflation is always benign (have you ever heard an economist describe an increase in commodity prices as a good thing, or an increase in asset prices as a bad thing?). This intellectual affliction has its origins in the bowels of conventional economic dogma, where commodity price inflation is the fault of non-market forces (governments and unions), while the asset price level reflects the rational valuations of well-informed markets... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 20 18:11:28 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:11:28 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Looting Social Security Message-ID: <000001cab292$ffb03db0$ff10b910$@net> Moving Into TOTAL WELLNESS Years ago I learned that Social Security was really enacted in order to fund the wars the elite wanted to indulge themselves in since war is more profitable than any other enterprise going. So, if there was an ulterior purpose in creating this fund, then is it something we really want or need in the financial system that has been cooked up for us? Granted, I really count on my Social Security check today and don't know what I would do without it at this point even though it barely covers my living expenses and I have to live on the outer periphery of society in order to manage this. However, I do understand that if we would move into a sustainable living community configuration on a mass basis, no one would need a Social Security check because everyone would be taken care of within the community. And, we would not have millions of people in migration around the world in search of a way to keep food in mouth and roof over head. We would not have the slums, the homeless, and the economic ups and downs we have today AND we would be able to maintain the "no growth society" so necessary to surviving global climate change. With the number of jobless people in the system today, how many are able to pay in to the Social Security plan? What is needed IMHO is for the corporations, which are replacing human labor with advanced technologies, to set aside a percentage of the profits they are making to aid those for whom there are no longer jobs. If one runs a tab on the benefits to the corporations when they replace human labor with advanced technology it is huge. Some of the costs they eliminate are: 1) payroll, 2) sick leave, 3) vacations, 4) parking lots, restrooms, cafeterias, lounges 5) personnel administration departments, 6) personnel problems, 7) child care programs, 8) etc. What they gain are 1) tax write offs on capital improvements (machinery), 2) no downtime, 3) more efficiency, 4), no relocation problems, 5) less management, 6) less need to own real estate. With regard to this last item, many companies are now renting the facilities they need to do their business in since most of what is done today is not accomplished long term as it was in yester year. With new technologies fast replacing older versions, a company may only plan on using the equipment they lease to do a job on a short term basis 3 - 5 years. So, they bring a management team together, set up the job, do it with leased equipment until newer and better technology comes along. When this happens they then bring in a whole new team already familiar with the new technology so they can immediately get on with the job in a new facility. Where people use to have one or two jobs in their lifetime, in today's world people will have 10 to 12 jobs. And in between jobs they will be forced to retrain for new jobs if we maintain the high-tech society of today. This places people in a very high-stress position. So, the question now becomes: How many people are going to be able to withstand this kind of stress? Statistics now show that by the year 2015 the highest death rate will be from Biopolar Disorder. The way our society is configured today is a "crazy-maker" and few are able to stand up under it. As I have been writing, fully 26% of the population of the U.S. today can be legally defined as "mentally ill." And our lifestyles certainly reflect this as we eat toxic food, pollute our air, and wage non-stop war. Maybe we need to stop and think about making major systemic changes before we fall over the cliff of no return to which we are very close. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 10:47 AM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Looting Social Security Wall Street Targets the Elderly Looting Social Security http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02192010.html By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS February 19 - 21, 2010 Hank Paulson, the Gold Sacks bankster/US Treasury Secretary, who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new US debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives. Wall Street's approach to the poor has always been to drive them deeper into the ground. As there is no money to be made from the poor, Wall Street fleeces them by yanking away their entitlements. It has always been thus. During the Reagan administration, Wall Street decided to boost the values of its bond and stock portfolios by using Social Security revenues to lower budget deficits. Wall Street figured that lower deficits would mean lower interest rates and higher bond and stock prices. Two Wall Street henchmen, Alan Greenspan and David Stockman, set up the Social Security raid in this way: The Carter administration had put Social Security in the black for the foreseeable future by establishing a schedule for future Social Security payroll tax increases. Greenspan and Stockman conspired to phase in the payroll tax increases earlier than was needed in order to gain surplus Social Security revenues that could be used to finance other government spending, thus reducing the budget deficit. They sold it to President Reagan as "putting Social Security on a sound basis." Along the way Americans were told that the surplus revenues were going into a special Social Security trust fund at the U.S. Treasury. But what is in the fund is Treasury IOUs for the spent revenues. When the "trust funds" are needed to pay Social Security benefits, the Treasury will have to sell more debt in order to redeem the IOUs. Social Security was mugged again during the Clinton administration when the Boskin Commission jimmied the Consumer Price Index in order to reduce the inflation adjustments that Social Security recipients receive, thus diverting money from Social Security retirees to other uses. We constantly hear from Wall Street gangsters and from Republicans and an occasional Democrat that Social Security and Medicare are a form of welfare that we can't afford, an "unfunded liability." This is a lie. Social Security is funded with an earmarked tax. People pay for Social Security and Medicare all their working lives. It is a pay-as-you-go system in which the taxes paid by those working fund those who are retired. Currently these systems are not in deficit. The problem is that government is using earmarked revenues for other purposes. Indeed, since the 1980s Social Security revenues have been used to fund general government. Today Social Security revenues are being used to fund trillion dollar bailouts for Wall Street and to fund the Bush/Obama wars of aggression against Muslims. Having diverted Social Security revenues to war and Wall Street, Paulson says there is no alternative but to take the promised benefits away from those who have paid for them. Republicans have extraordinary animosity toward the poor. In an effort to talk retirees out of their support systems, Republicans frequently describe Social Security as a Ponzi scheme and "unsustainable." They ought to know. The phony trust fund, which they set up to hide the fact that Wall Street and the Pentagon are running off with Social Security revenues, is a Ponzi scheme. Social Security itself has been with us since the 1930s and has yet to wreck our lives and budget. But it only took Hank Paulson's derivative Ponzi scheme and its bailout a few years to inflict irreparable damage on our lives and budget. Years ago with stagflation defeated and a rising stock market, I favored privatizing Social Security as a way of creating a funded retirement system and producing greater savings and larger incomes for retirees. At that time Wall Street was interested, not for my reasons, but in order to collect the fees from managing the funds. Had Social Security been privatized, I doubt that Wall Street would have been permitted to deregulate the financial system. Too much would have been at stake. After the latest crisis brought on by Wall Street's dishonesty and greed, trusting Wall Street to manage anyone's old age pension requires a leap of faith that no intelligent person can make. Wall Street has got away with its raid on the public treasury. Now, pockets full, it wants to pay for the heist by curtailing Social Security and Medicare. Having deprived the working population of homes, jobs, and health care, Wall Street is now after the elderly's old age security. Social Security, formerly an untouchable "third rail of politics," is now "unsustainable," while the real unsustainables--a pre-1929 unregulated financial system and open-ended multi-trillion dollar Global War Against Terror--are the new untouchables. This transformation signals the complete capture of American democracy by an oligarchy of special interests. Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts at yahoo.com From maryrose333 at att.net Sat Feb 20 18:50:49 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:50:49 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Grow Veggies Anywhere with Our Exclusive Grow Bags! Message-ID: <001b01cab298$80210060$80630120$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS As everyone knows, I seldom forward anything with advertising, but could not resist this one as it makes the ?kitchen? gardens I have been writing about so easy to do. These Grow Bags are perfect for creating a garden in a very small space outside your kitchen door so that you are eliminating the transportation challenge associated with getting food from where it is grown to the retail market as the price of oil escalates as cheap supplies dwindle. If you read the article that accompanies this, it reveals that the company planted a comparable garden in the earth to compare results. And the production from the Grow Bags was twice that of direct earth planting. Granted you are going to have more costs the first year but after that the start-up costs will be minimal as these bags should last several years. The soil in them will also be re-useable and only the fertilizer will need be replaced each year. An automatic watering system can easily be set up to take care of this need, and I see that watering pans can be ordered so that watering every other day is OK. Also check out the upside down bag for growing tomatoes. My landlady has used one two years in a row. The first year, she did not use the recommended soil and fertilizer and had little success. Last summer she made adjustments and had tomatoes galore. Now one thing I do not like about this is the plastic used in the Grow Bags. But what I see is that some company will come up with a comparable fabric to make them from that is organic. Something made from hemp I suspect that is entirely biodegradable since so many products are now being made from this old standby. Another thing that I notice here is the gardening soil they are promoting could also be replaced by the BioChar product that is being promoted by Reinhold Ziegler from Pacific Synergy. And Reinhold sent me a brochure not long ago on a rack which had revolving containers with grow lights attached so that as the containers revolved the light flooded them at all times. Could you resend this Reinhold? I do not know where I filed it. What we need to be looking at here is price. The racks that Gardener?s Supply is promoting IMHO are terribly expensive given the number of people who are out of work and will need these. However, I suspect that some very ingenuous people will think up something like making the racks from bamboo and wiring up a light system that brings the price down considerably. Here is an article on BioChar and I suggest that everyone become familiar with this product because it increases production tremendously and has other benefits as well. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/03/30/biochar.warming.energy/index.html From: Gardeners Supply [mailto:gardeners at e-news.gardeners.com] Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 3:37 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Grow Veggies Anywhere with Our Exclusive Grow Bags! Gardener's Supply Company Trouble viewing this e-mail? Click here to see it online. No Place to Garden? Try Our NEW Grow Bags Tomato Grow Bag - Pepper Grow Bag - Potato Grow Bag - Herb Grow Bag - Salad Grow Bag Plant Veggies Anywhere Tomato Grow Bag - $14.94 Salad Grow Bag - $19.95 Pepper Grow Bag - $12.95 Potato Grow Bag - $14.95 Herb Grow Bag - $14.95 Funtional Favorites for the Garden Tomato Ladders, Set of 3 Self-Watering Container Mix Eco Stack™ Composter Four-Arm Plant Hanger Tomato Ladders (3) $49.95 Self-Watering Container Mix $9.95 Eco Stack Composter $119.00 Four-Arm Plant Hanger $99.95 Grow Beds Raised Bed Corners Biodegradable Cowpots™ Tomato Success Kit Grow Beds From $39.95 Raised Bed Corners From $16.95 Biodegradable Cowpots? From $7.95 Tomato Success Kit $64.95 Deluxe Rain Barrels Women?s Mid Boot, Cosmos/Brown Cold Frame with Greenhouse Cover APS Starter Kit Deluxe Rain Barrels $169.00 Women?s Mid Boot $84.95 Cold Frame with Greenhouse Cover $89.95 APS Starter Kit $49.95 Growing Vegetables? New & Improved Veggies for Your Garden - Read More Grow Tomatoes Upside Down SHOP BY DEPARTMENT Gardening Growlights & Stands Seedstarting Plants & Seeds Vegetable Gardening Composting Flower Gardening Gardening Tools Watering Garden Pest Controls Houseplant Solutions Garden Essentials Greenhouses Yard & Landscaping Yard & Garden D?cor Backyard Birding Solar Lights Yard Tools & Carts Landscaping Yard Pest Controls Pond Maintenance Pots & Planters Outdoor Planters Indoor Planters Soil & Accessories For the Home Indoor Living Aromatherapy & Spa In the Kitchen Outdoor Furniture Reforest Teak Winter Safety Footwear & Apparel Weather Instruments Find Great Savings in Our Garden Outlet SAVE 63% SAVE 55% SAVE 51% SAVE 72% SAVE 80% Deal of the Week Super Savers Further Reduced Just Added Deals Under $20 Deal of the Week Super Savers Further Reduced Just Added Deals Under $20 Shop the Entire Gardener's OUTLET Share this email: Facebook Twitter StumbleUpon Digg Delicious Forward To place your order by phone, please call 1-888-833-1412 and mention code RNA7007B. Don't lose touch with us! Please add "gardeners at e-news.gardeners.com" to your e-mail address book to ensure our emails reach your inbox (not bulk or junk folders). Trouble viewing this page? Just click here. Read our Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe Info: You are subscribed as: maryrose333 at att.net. If you would like to change or modify your subscription, or unsubscribe, please click here. To contact us click here or call 1-888-235-6739. Gardener's Supply Company | 128 Intervale Road | Burlington, VT 05401 Copyright ? 2010 America?s Gardening Resource, Inc. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Sun Feb 21 06:26:13 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:26:13 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Why was the Industrial Revolution British? References: <7ee0cbdb$2127e80d$3652a907$@com> Message-ID: <015501cab2f9$70f22a40$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Bob, 1. As regards the causes of the Industrial Revolution in 18C Britain rather than elsewhere, there are a number of factors. Two which have always interested me are the moist atmosphere in the Pennine hills/mountains of Lancashire (so that the threads of cotton do not keep breaking) and the fast-running streams coming down the hillsides (which provided the early power). Another factor was the relative laxity of social pressure and law in Lancashire (in contrast to, say, London). 2. Binary economics analyses the Industrial Revolution and fundamentally challenges the conventional interpretation. Conventional economics sees the huge increase in overall output and output per head as a function of human productivity. (i.e. the result of an increase of human skills). In contrast, binary economics sees an increase in human productiveness and a much greater increase in capital productiveness . (of the Industrial Revolution machinery). It follows that, if productive capacity is to be spread throughout the population the ownership of productive capital must be spread -- see the page on Productiveness at www.binaryeconomics.net 3. But, whatever the causes of the Industrial Revolution, the key point is that productive capital must become widely distributed and that labour alone cannot be sufficient to ensure that everybody has a proper income (even if they have a job). Rodney Shakespeare. ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Hahl To: discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 12:08 PM Subject: [GJM] Why was the Industrial Revolution British? http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3570 Why was the Industrial Revolution British? Robert C. Allen 15 May 2009 *Print* *Email* *Comment* *Republish * * It is still not clear among economic historians why the Industrial Revolution actually took place in 18th century Britain. This column explains that it is the British Empire's success in international trade that created Britain's high wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the spring board for the Industrial Revolution. * Why did the Industrial Revolution take place in eighteenth century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? Answers to this question have ranged from religion and culture to politics and constitutions. In a just published book, *The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective*, I argue that the explanation of the Industrial Revolution was fundamentally economic. The Industrial Revolution was Britain's creative response to the challenges and opportunities created by the global economy that emerged after 1500. This was a two step process. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries a European-wide market emerged. England took a commanding position in this new order as her wool textile industry out competed the established producers in Italy and the Low Countries. England extended her lead in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by creating an intercontinental trading network including the Americas and India. Intercontinental trade expansion depended on the acquisition of colonies, mercantilist trade promotion, and naval power. The upshot of Britain's success in the global economy was the expansion of rural manufacturing industries and rapid urbanisation. East Anglia was the centre of the woollen cloth industry, and its products were exported through London where a quarter of the jobs depended on the port. As a result, the population of London exploded from 50,000 in 1500 to 200,000 in 1600 and half a million in 1700. In the eighteenth century, the expansion of trade with the American colonies and India doubled London's population again and led to even more rapid growth in provincial and Scottish cities. This expansion depended on vigorous imperialism, which expanded British possessions abroad, the Royal Navy, which defeated competing naval and mercantile powers, and the Navigation Acts, which excluded foreigners from the colonial trades. The British Empire was designed to stimulate the British economy-and it did. The growth of British commerce had three important consequences. First, the growth of London created a shortage of wood fuel that was only relieved by the exploitation of coal. Figure 1 shows the real price per million BTUs of energy in London from wood and coal in this period. In the fifteenth century, the two fuels sold at the same price per million BTU's which meant that the market for coal was limited given its polluting character. As London grew after 1500, the price of wood fuels rose and by the end of the sixteenth century, charcoal and firewood were twice the price of coal per unit of energy. With that premium, consumers began to substitute coal for wood. Instead of a wood burning hearth in the middle of a large central room, houses were built with narrow fireplaces and chimneys to burn coal. The coal burning house was invented. It then paid to mine coal in Northumberland and ship it down the coast to London. The coal trade began. On the coal fields (in Newcastle, for instance), Britain had the cheapest energy in the world. Energy was more expensive on the European continent and particularly expensive in China (Figure 2). *Figure 1. * *Figure 2.* ** Second, the growth of cities and manufacturing increased the demand for labour with the result that British wages and living standards were the highest in the world. Figure 3 shows the wages of labours in leading cities in Europe and Asia from 1375 to 1875. The wages have been deflated by a consumer price index so that they show the purchasing power across space as well as over time. A value of one means that a labourer employed full time, full year could earn just enough to keep his family at a subsistence standard of living of 1940 calories per adult male equivalent per day. The budget used to define the consumer price index is set so that most of the spending is on food and most of that is on the cheapest carbohydrate available (oatmeal in northwestern Europe, polenta in Florence, sorghum in Beijing, millet chapatis in Delhi). Only tiny quantities of meat, oil, cloth, fuel, and housing are included in the budget. After the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, the standard of living of workers everywhere was high; they typically earned three or four times subsistence. In the ensuing centuries, population growth in Europe and Asia led to falling real wages, so that most workers ended up in the eighteenth century earning just enough to purchase the subsistence standard of living. The only countries to avoid that fate were Britain and the Low Countries. Their populations, in fact, grew more rapidly than those elsewhere, but this effect was offset by the booms in their economies due to international trade. Workers in London and Amsterdam did not, however, buy four times as much oatmeal as they needed for subsistence. Instead they upgraded their diets to beef, beer, and bread, while their counterparts in much of Europe and Asia subsisted on quasi-vegetarian diets of boiled grains with a few peas or lentils. Workers in northwestern Europe also had surplus income to buy exotic imports like tea and sugar as well as domestic manufactures like books, pictures, watches, and better clothes. *Figure 3. * Third, the growth of cities and the high wage economy stimulated agriculture. The strong demand for food and particularly meat, butter, and cheese led to the conversion of arable to pasture, convertible husbandry, and the production of fodder crops (beans, clover, turnips), most of which raised soil nitrogen levels and pushed up the yields of wheat and barley. The urban demand for labour led to the amalgamation of small holdings into large farms, which employed fewer people per acre, a development also entailed by the conversion of ploughed land to grass. Agriculture was revolutionised because cities expanded, rather than the reverse as historians have often maintained. Success in international trade created Britain's high wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the spring board for the Industrial Revolution. High wages and cheap energy created a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for labour. These incentives operated in many industries. Pottery, for instance, was manufactured in both England and China. The design of the kilns differed greatly, however. English kilns were cheap to build but very fuel inefficient; much of the energy from the burning fuel was lost through the vent hole on the top (Figure 4). The typical Chinese kiln, on the other hand, was more expensive to construct and, indeed, required more labour to operate. Figure 5 shows how heat was drawn into the chamber on the left and then forced out a hole at floor level into a second chamber. The process continued through many chambers until the air, by then denuded of most of its heat, finally exited up a chimney. In England, it was not worth spending a lot of money to build a thermally efficient kiln since energy was so cheap. In China, however, where energy was expensive, it was cost effective to build thermally efficient kilns. The technologies that were used reflected the relative prices of capital, labour, and energy. Since it was costly to invent technology, invention also responded to the same incentives. *Figure 4. English kiln* *Figure 5. Chinese kiln* The famous inventions of the Industrial Revolution were responses to the high wages and cheap energy of the British economy. These inventions also substituted capital and energy for labour. The steam engine increased the use of capital and coal to raise output per worker. The cotton mill used machines to raise labour productivity in spinning and weaving. New technologies of iron making substituted cheap coal for expensive charcoal and mechanised production to increase output per worker. These technologies eventually revolutionised the world, but at the outset they were barely profitable in Britain, and their commercial success depended on increasing the use of inputs that were relatively cheap in Britain. In other countries, where wages were lower and energy more expensive, it did not pay to use technology that reduced employment and increased the consumption of fuel. The French government was very active in trying to promote advanced British technology in the eighteenth century, but its efforts failed since the British techniques were not cost effective at French prices. James Hargreaves perfected the spinning jenny, the first machine that successfully spun cotton, in the late 1760s. In 1771, John Holker, an English Jacobite who held the post of Inspector General of Foreign Manufactures, spirited a jenny into France. Demonstration models were made, but the jenny was only installed in large, state supported workshops. By the late 1780s, over 20,000 jennies were used in England and only 900 in France. Likewise, the French government sponsored the construction of an English style iron works (including four coke blast furnaces) in Burgundy in the 1780s. The raw materials were adequate, the enterprise was well capitalised, and they hired outstanding and experienced English engineers to oversee the project. Yet it was a commercial flop because coal was too expensive in France. Since the technologies of the Industrial Revolution were only profitable to adopt in Britain, that was also the only country where it paid to invent them. The ideas embodied in the breakthrough technologies were simple; the difficult problem was the engineering challenge of making them work. Responding to that challenged required research and development, which emerged as an important business practice in the eighteenth century. It was accompanied by the appearance of venture capitalists to finance the R&D and a reliance on patents to recoup the benefits of successful development. The Industrial Revolution was invented in Britain in the eighteenth century because that was where it paid to invent it. The success of R&D programs in eighteenth century Britain depended on another characteristic of the high wage economy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of a manufacturing, commercial economy increased the demand for literacy, numeracy and trade skills. These were acquired through privately purchased education and apprenticeships. The high wage economy not only created a demand for these skills, but also gave parents the income to purchase them. As a result, the British population was highly skilled (by international standards), and those skills were necessary for the high tech revolution to unfold. The Industrial Revolution was confined to Britain for many years, because the technological breakthroughs were tailored to British conditions and could not be profitably deployed elsewhere. However, British engineers strove to improve efficiency and reduced the use of inputs that were cheap in Britain as well as those that were expensive. The consumption of coal in steam engines, for instance, was cut from 45 pounds per horse power-hour in the early eighteenth to only 2 pounds in the mid-nineteenth. The genius of British engineering undermined the country's technological lead by creating 'appropriate technology' for the world at large. By the middle of the nineteenth century, advanced technology could be profitably used in countries like France with expensive energy and India with cheap labour. Once that happened, the Industrial Revolution went world wide. *This article may be reproduced with appropriate attribution. See Copyright (below).* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stevenieman at mac.com Sun Feb 21 12:52:08 2010 From: stevenieman at mac.com (Steve Nieman) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:52:08 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Campaigning for State-owned Banks -- latest Ellen Brown article In-Reply-To: <015601cab22e$410fe180$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> References: <015601cab22e$410fe180$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Message-ID: <5AC5C7A8-01F8-4948-8DB6-6C5F9D94646C@mac.com> Hello All, A "public" option for banking certainly seems like a good way to go. Heaven knows that the corporate banking option has been an unmitigated disaster for all the world's humanity. That doesn't mean that corporate banking should be outlawed. There are places in business where this type of finance might have a place. Corporate banks would just have to compete or find a place in the market against the backdrop of low-interest or interest-free banking from public financial institutions, i.e. state or federally- run banks. I don't see how anyone could arrive at a different conclusion based on the worldwide economic mess we are currently in. Regards, Steve Nieman ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Feb 20, 2010, at 5:11 AM, Rodney Shakespeare wrote: > Dear All, > Here is the latest Ellen Brown article. > > Rodney Shakespeare. > > "Campaigning for State-owned Banks" > http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/campaign-for-state-owned-banks > > > > _______________________________________________ > Discussion mailing list > Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net > http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/ > discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Sun Feb 21 14:44:53 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:44:53 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Campaigning for State-owned Banks -- latest EllenBrown article References: <015601cab22e$410fe180$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> <5AC5C7A8-01F8-4948-8DB6-6C5F9D94646C@mac.com> Message-ID: <004d01cab33f$1a18b9a0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Hi Steve, Yes, the public bank option can not only exist in its own right but, crucially, can be a mechanism through which interest-free loans (stemming from the national bank) can be channelled and administered. Rodney Rodney----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Nieman To: Discussion Forum for Global Justice Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 7:52 PM Subject: Re: [GJM] Campaigning for State-owned Banks -- latest EllenBrown article Hello All, A "public" option for banking certainly seems like a good way to go. Heaven knows that the corporate banking option has been an unmitigated disaster for all the world's humanity. That doesn't mean that corporate banking should be outlawed. There are places in business where this type of finance might have a place. Corporate banks would just have to compete or find a place in the market against the backdrop of low-interest or interest-free banking from public financial institutions, i.e. state or federally-run banks. I don't see how anyone could arrive at a different conclusion based on the worldwide economic mess we are currently in. Regards, Steve Nieman ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Feb 20, 2010, at 5:11 AM, Rodney Shakespeare wrote: Dear All, Here is the latest Ellen Brown article. Rodney Shakespeare. "Campaigning for State-owned Banks" http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/campaign-for-state-owned-banks _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mukhtaralam2000 at yahoo.com Mon Feb 22 00:34:07 2010 From: mukhtaralam2000 at yahoo.com (Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:04:07 +0530 (IST) Subject: [GJM] Campaigning for State-owned Banks -- latest EllenBrown article In-Reply-To: <004d01cab33f$1a18b9a0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> References: <015601cab22e$410fe180$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> <5AC5C7A8-01F8-4948-8DB6-6C5F9D94646C@mac.com> <004d01cab33f$1a18b9a0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Message-ID: <783536.28219.qm@web94911.mail.in2.yahoo.com> Dear all, Nationalisation of banks in India was a major achievement?brought?in by?late?Indira Gandhi.?India has seen the entry of new?private banks after the new?regime of the?lieberalisation by the current PM under then Congress government of PV Narsimha Rao.There are times calls are made for deeper reforms?and there are unathorised and minority?populated?locations where access to credit is difficult in New?Delhi. Nationalisation of banks with?interest free loans are an options that?indeed needs to integrated in all the communication outputs. Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam 58-C, Top Floor,DDA Janta Flats, Ashok Vihar-III,Delhi-110052,India Tel:+9968345380 http://slideshare.net/mukhtaralam http://transitionurbanindia.ning.com http://ecostrategiccommunicators.ning.com http://muhammad_mukhtar_alam.tigblog.org ________________________________ From: Rodney Shakespeare To: Discussion Forum for Global Justice Sent: Sun, 21 February, 2010 1:44:53 PM Subject: Re: [GJM] Campaigning for State-owned Banks -- latest EllenBrown article Hi Steve, Yes, the public bank option can not only exist in its own right but, crucially, ?can be?a mechanism through which interest-free loans (stemming from the national bank) can be channelled and administered. ? Rodney ? > >Rodney----- Original Message ----- >From: Steve Nieman >To: Discussion Forum for Global Justice >Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 7:52 PM >Subject: Re: [GJM] Campaigning for State-owned Banks -- latest EllenBrown article > >Hello All, > > >A "public" option for banking certainly seems like a good way to go. ?Heaven knows that the corporate banking option has been an unmitigated disaster for all the world's humanity. > > >That doesn't mean that corporate banking should be outlawed. ?There are places in business where this type of finance might have a place. ?Corporate banks would just have to compete or find a place in the market against the backdrop of low-interest or interest-free banking from public financial institutions, i.e. state or federally-run banks. > > >I don't see how anyone could arrive at a different conclusion based on the worldwide economic mess we are currently in. > > >Regards, >Steve Nieman >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >On Feb 20, 2010, at 5:11 AM, Rodney Shakespeare wrote: > >Dear All, >>Here is the latest Ellen Brown article. >>? >>Rodney Shakespeare. >> >>"Campaigning for State-owned Banks" >>http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/campaign-for-state-owned-banks? >>? >>? >>? >>_______________________________________________ >>Discussion mailing list >>Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net >>http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net > ________________________________ _______________________________________________ >Discussion mailing list >Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net >http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Feb 22 07:11:09 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:11:09 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Two Monetary Reform Sites... Message-ID: <900418.27540.qm@web27407.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? ????????? The following data may be of interest.. ? ? ? http://www.economicstability.org/ ? ? ?? And the following from John Kendall......... ? ????? BBC Forum has this week good introduction into the alternative currency problematics. Check the Forum of Feb 14 and particulary http://www.lietaer.com/ ? Not common to hear such open language from people involved in current economics. And, sure, there is the recent series of the Archdruid Report dealing with the matter. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Mon Feb 22 07:31:59 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:31:59 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Elisabet Sahtouris. Message-ID: <612860.99702.qm@web27408.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear Mary Rose, et al, ? ??????????????? Elisabet Sahtouris expressed an interest in my project of Multi-Dimensional Science. I still have her communication "on file" so to speak. ? ? http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Multi-Dimensional_Science ? Robert Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 23 07:19:41 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:19:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Robin Hood Tax Site Message-ID: <950473.46725.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? May be of interest.. ? ???????? http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/ ? R.Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 23 07:40:01 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:40:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Peter Joseph, and his lack of vision on monetary reform...... Message-ID: <201528.89649.qm@web27401.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? ????????? Peter Joseph isn t interested in monetary reform! ? ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FoMKXAArPc ? The key to the future as far as I am concerned is the development of Transfinancial Economics.. ? http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 23 07:49:21 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:49:21 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Mitchell, and Wray.... Message-ID: <970425.35198.qm@web27408.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Dear All, ? ???????? Interesting YouTube site... ? http://www.youtube.com/user/billyboyblue2007#p/a/u/0/4J0j5VwnD7I ? R.Searle.. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 23 08:17:01 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:17:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] A Question for Warren Mosler!! Message-ID: <899056.12172.qm@web27407.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? This may be of interest!! ? ??? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw4Ijxj87CY ? ? R.Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 23 08:40:25 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:40:25 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Warren Mosler on "Printing Money" Message-ID: <516492.85198.qm@web27404.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? The video may be of interest! ? ? http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/02/warren-mosler-obvious-answer-to-problem.html ? Warren Mosler also has a YouTube Site...... ? R.Searle. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Tue Feb 23 08:48:18 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:48:18 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Peter Joseph, and his lack of vision on monetary reform...... References: <201528.89649.qm@web27401.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <006901cab49f$9f26cb80$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Robert, The video is shallow and negative. Rodney Shakespeare. ----- Original Message ----- From: robert searle To: discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 2:40 PM Subject: [GJM] Peter Joseph, and his lack of vision on monetary reform...... Dear All, Peter Joseph isn t interested in monetary reform! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FoMKXAArPc The key to the future as far as I am concerned is the development of Transfinancial Economics.. http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 23 08:53:29 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:53:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] More on Mosler Message-ID: <668927.67467.qm@web27408.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? More Mosler! I did have contact with him a long while ago but he did not seem to fully understand TFE which was then in its very early stage of development ? http://www.warrenmoslerforcongress.org/mosler2004/Leiberman.htm ? R.Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 23 08:55:59 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:55:59 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] The Natural Rate of Interest is Zero. Message-ID: <886986.68633.qm@web27405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Maybe of interest.. ? http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=LD6BKcDsk2vyXd8JLSfhRc1MSrNQzcTGMM2yL8y5Hy01Zd9FH9nC!1100738038!-1477544921?docId=5009748859 ? ? R.Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Tue Feb 23 09:10:48 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:10:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Moslers Site... Message-ID: <858336.76825.qm@web27408.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? This may be of interest...Neo-Chartalism...! ? http://moslereconomics.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 24 05:00:44 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:00:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Quantitative Easing Lessons from History by George Trefgarne Message-ID: <68609.20141.qm@web27403.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> I originally heard about this publication on Radio Four. I have transmitted here a cut, and paste copy? of it. However, there are several pdfs on the internet if anyone is at? all interested. But I do not include a link here.. ? Robert Searle. ? http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics ? ? QUANTITATIVE EASING ? LESSONS FROM HISTORY GEORGE TREFGARNE ? ? SUMMARY ? ? One of the biggest policies undertaken in the 12 years of the Labour Government has been printing money, some ?170 billion to date. ? There are signs that Quantitative Easing, as the policy is known, has so far been a success, reducing long-term interest rates, lifting the stock market and improving company balance sheets. ? However, the policy carries many significant risks. It has already had a serious impact on pension deficits and annuities, and is likely to be undermining the pound. It could also be very expensive. How and when will it end? Will it cause inflation? What criteria should we use to judge how it is working? ? The policy has also received little scrutiny by Parliament. There has been no primary legislation on QE. The only secondary legislation on QE has been a statutory instrument, exempting the policy from the FSA?s authorization regime. ? The Bank of England now controls QE policy. It claims as its authority its independent right to control interest rates. This is a very thin justification for such an important role. ? There are useful lessons to be learned from history. On two out of three previous occasions that printing money has been used, it resulted in high inflation. The worst resulted in inflation reaching a record 36.5%. ? The political and legislative process for printing money was superior in the past. In 1810 the Bullion Committee was formed by Parliament to scrutinise the policy. Similarly, today a special Select Committee of Parliament should be formed to: ? scrutinize QE on an ongoing basis; ? report on progress and the risks on an at least quarterly basis; and, ? consider the timing and method by which QE can be safely brought to an end. 2 INTRODUCTION There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.1 J K Galbraith The four most dangerous words in investing are ?This time, it?s different?. Sir John Templeton We have become so used to the enormous sums of public money tossed around during the credit crunch that one of Labour?s biggest ever policy actions ? the decision to print money ? has been largely overlooked. Yet this policy, known by its technical name, Quantitative Easing (QE), exceeds even the sums injected into RBS and Lloyds; or the debts the Government has assumed from Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.2 So far, the Bank of England has printed around ?170 billion and spent that staggering sum on buying up Government debt. As the Bank is itself owned by the Government and its liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer, this is an oddly circular scheme, equivalent to an individual taking out new credit cards to pay off their debts. That ?170 billion, a sum bigger even than the NHS budget, is being held by an obscure company registered at Companies House called ?Bank of England Asset Purchase Fund Facility?, or BEAPFF Ltd. This entity is owned by 1 A Short History of Financial Euphoria, Penguin, 1994. 2 According to the ONS, the bank interventions have totalled ?141 billion. the Bank of England and has two Bank employees as its sole directors.3 But its accounts are not consolidated, making it one of the largest of the UK Government?s famed off balance-sheet liabilities.4 BEAPFF?s assets are so big that if it listed on the stock market, it would probably be the biggest member of the FTSE 100, bigger even than BP or Shell. The future of BEAPFF Ltd is not only fundamental to assessing the authorities? success in tackling the recession; it also has profound political and constitutional implications. Yet, if current form is anything to go by, its existence will hardly feature in the debate running up to the next election. Few people know about BEAPFF Ltd, or the policy of printing money and fewer still understand the issues involved. None of the major parties has said what it plans to do about BEAPFF Ltd. Overall, there has been a lamentable lack of Parliamentary debate on this subject. It is time that the policy received proper scrutiny and it was put on a more transparent and secure legal footing. IT HAS WORKED, SORT OF Not even the Bank of England is entirely sure about the precise effects of QE. This is partly because it has coincided with massive stimulus policies elsewhere, notably by the US Federal Reserve, which is also printing money. 3 Chief economist Spencer Dale and Markets Director Paul Fisher. 4 According to Note 15a) Bank of England Accounts 2009, the Bank holds 100 ?1 ordinary shares in BEAPFF Ltd. This investment is held at cost on the Bank?s balance sheet. HM Treasury have indemnified BEAPFF and the Bank against any loss arising from the activities of BEAPFF and will receive any surplus arising. The Bank has not consolidated BEAPFF in its financial statements as it has no economic interest in its activities. 3 But there are nonetheless signs that QE is working much better than Gordon Brown?s many critics5 have hitherto been prepared to concede. A 1930s-style Depression has been avoided (at least, so far). Indeed, if the policy does not go wrong, it may one day be seen as the most significant achievement of the Brown administration, alongside the decision to recapitalize the banks. According to both the CBI and the Bank of England, Britain is slowly moving out of recession. There is evidence to suggest that QE has reduced long term interest rates, helped fuel the record-breaking rise in the stock market since March, kick-started the corporate bond market and enhanced confidence. In fact, the real risk may not be that the policy is failing, but that it is working too well. For the benefits it has brought have come with some serious long-term risks and the longer it goes on, the worse those risks become. Questions about where we go from here abound. How long should QE go on for? How exactly should it be ended? If QE has boosted asset prices, will it set off a bout of inflation? Who is in control, Parliament, the Treasury or the Bank of England? Why is the intervention taking place off balance sheet?6 Is it right that the policy has, in effect, enabled Labour to continue funding its entire spending programme, much of which is politically contentious? The Opposition parties have been slow in asking these questions. And none of them have been answered by the Government or the Bank of England. 5 See for example, John Redwood MP on 30 September wrote on his blog ?What is the point of QE?? 6 Despite the off-balance sheet approach, the Bank of England?s disclosure and openness has been exemplary. The front page of its website has a counter proclaiming how much it has spent on QE and the results of the auctions are announced daily. SOME LESSONS FROM HISTORY QE is not a new idea. It was originally pioneered in this country by a Tory administration over 200 years ago, which in response to a banking crisis, flooded the system with funds, by printing money. QE is merely a fancy expression to describe the modern, technical aspects of that process. There have been three major precedents for QE. 1. The Restriction Period The first example of printing money is 1797, the so-called Restriction Period. In February of that year, a 2,000-strong brigade of Frenchman undertook the last invasion of Britain, landing in Pembrokeshire. The banking system was already in a skittish state, as the Government had made continuous demands on the Bank of England for gold bullion in order to fund the war against France and to subsidise Britain?s Continental allies. But the invasion ? which was widely expected after a botched landing in Bantry Bay, Ireland, the previous year ? was the last straw. Even though the French were swiftly defeated and rounded up by the Welsh gentry, the news triggered a widespread run first on the county banks, and then in the City. The Prime Minister, William Pitt the younger, responded swiftly to a request by two Bank of England directors and used an Order in Council to authorise the Bank to stop redeeming paper notes in gold. Until that time, members of the public could take, say, a five pound note to the Bank and demand gold instead. That is why, to this day, pound notes have ?I promise to pay the bearer on demand? printed on them and are signed by the cashier. Instead, during the Restriction, the Bank was able to conserve its dwindling stocks of bullion by issuing more paper in the form of new ?1 and ?2 notes. It also issued silver dollars which had been captured from Spanish ships in the past and Chart One: Inflation 1796 to 1820 Note: Finding reliable and comparable data for inflation 200 years ago is difficult. However, this chart is derived from data known as the Phelps Brown-Hopkins index, based on numbers from records from local markets, the accounts of colleges and hospitals and the Naval Victualling Service. 4 ?30 ?20 ?10 0 10 20 30 40 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 clumsily stamped them with a tiny image of George III over that of the Bourbon Charles IV. This caused some wit to compose a couplet: The Bank, to make their Spanish dollars pass Stamped the head of a fool on the neck of an ass. The issue, at 4s 9d, was not popular and numerous forgeries appeared. The Birmingham entrepreneur Matthew Boulton and his business partner James Watt were subsequently commissioned to overstrike the coins properly using their new steam press7. The Lord Mayor of London gathered City merchants at the Mansion House. 4,000 merchants signed a petition promising to honour the Bank?s new notes. 7 See speech by Mervyn King at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, 29 May 2009. The Restriction measure was supposed to be temporary but lasted 21 years and is the origin of Britain?s paper money system. By 1819 the House of Commons was becoming impatient with the policy which, by common consent, had ultimately led to inflation. Chart One shows that inflation hit an all-time record for Britain of 36.5% in 1800, three years after the Bank began printing money, before falling back, sometimes tipping into deflation. Inflation and the high price of food provided the economic backdrop to a series of disturbances, notably the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. An Act was passed ordering the Bank to get Parliamentary authority for buying up British Government bonds, or gilts, and the policy was abandoned soon after. 5 2. The Panic of 1825 The second precedent for QE occurred only a few years later in 1825, during Lord Liverpool?s Liberal Tory administration. Interest rates were kept low after the end of Restriction and a great speculation in South American bond and share issues began. Investors were flush with cash and were seeking new opportunities after the Treasury converted a portion of its post-war debts and reduced the coupon from 5% to 4%. 1825 was a typical stock market bubble, featuring various useless and phoney schemes. A fraudster named Gregor MacGregor took advantage of the mania and issued a bond and sold land on behalf of a fictitious Latin American country called Poyais. When the scheme was exposed and collapsed, it contributed to a run on the banks and, for the first time, the Bank of England had to use its lender of last resort facility. Lord Liverpool resisted requests to suspend gold payments, but there is some evidence that he gave the Bank unofficial permission to print money beyond the legal minimum and it certainly reissued ?1 and ?2 notes from a box in its vaults. The crisis passed within a few months.8 3. The First World War The third and final precedent for QE was in 1914 when the City took the declaration of war on Germany very badly. The Stock Exchange was closed for several days and when it was re-opened the Liberal administration announced a series of capital controls in order 8 Bizzarely, the best source for the crisis is E M Forster in Marianne Thornton: A Domestic Biography 1797-1887. Marianne was the great aunt who brought the novelist up and her brother, Henry, was a partner in Pole, Thornton ? a bank at the centre of the crisis. Although just 25 years old, Henry miraculously arranged a ?400,000 loan on a Saturday to keep Pole, Thornton going. Sadly, Pole, Thornton sank in the end but the incident is perhaps the origin of modern central banking. to steer investment into the war effort. In order to restore confidence, the Treasury ? and not the Bank ? issued ?1 and shilling notes. The Bank also suspended gold payments again. Yet again there was a bout of inflation, which peaked at 25% in 1917.9 Britain went back on the gold standard briefly in 1925, but came off again in 1931 and the Bank of England has not redeemed pound notes for gold since. BACK IN FASHION Printing money in response to a financial crisis therefore has a long and, if not exactly respectable pedigree, then certainly a wellunderstood one. However, it was not until 1933 that the policy was first given an eloquent rationale. In that year, the economist Irving Fisher coined the expression ?debt deflation? to describe the effects of a violent financial crisis, which can lead to fire-sales of assets and a total collapse in demand. It was this, according to Fisher, which led to the 1930s Depression. And the remedy he suggested was the one used in the past: central banks should keep prices rising by printing money. Fisher?s conclusions were endorsed by Milton Friedman in his Monetary History of the United States (1963) and his work is much admired by Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, which perhaps explains why he is in the driving seat of this powerful policy in 2009. Fisher was also quoted by Ben Bernanke, now the chairman the US Federal Reserve, in November 2002:10 9 Jim O?Donoghue and Louise Goulding, ?Consumer Price Inflation Since 1750?, Economic Trends, ONS, March 2004. 10 www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/ 2002 /20021121/default.htm 6 The US government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. He argued that it should do this to head off a potential depression. Indeed, for Bernanke, Friedman, Fisher et al, the big policy mistake of the 1930s was the failure to print money. Printing money in 2009 The QE process is essentially circular and goes like this. The Government, via its Debt Management Office, borrows by selling gilts to investors, typically pension funds. The pension funds then sell those gilts, or their existing gilt holdings, to the Bank of England. Only instead of paying cash, the Bank simply credits electronically the reserve accounts the big banks must have deposited with it. So if pension fund A banks at Barclays and sells ?50m of gilts, the Barclays account at the Bank of England is credited with the sum and, hey presto! ?50m of new money has been printed, at the press of a button. The consequence has been a massive expansion of the Bank?s balance sheet, both in terms of liabilities and assets. QE as currently executed in Britain differs from the equivalent policy in America. The Bank of England (like the Bank of Japan in 2001) has mostly bought up gilts, whereas the US Federal Reserve has also made significant purchases of corporate bonds and other private assets. Adam Posen, the newest member of the Bank?s Monetary Policy Committee, says this is because UK markets for corporate bonds, commercial paper and other corporate securities issued by non-banks are ?relatively thin?, and this limitation ?reveals a major long-term structural problem in UK financial markets which could be of potential harm as the UK economy begins to recover.?11 11 ?Getting Credit Moving?, a speech by Adam Posen, Cass Business School, 26 October 2009. Chart 2 shows the huge increase in the reserves held at the Bank of England by high street banks while Chart 3 shows the ?160 billion loan the Bank of England has made to BEAPFF Ltd to fund QE and its impact on the Bank?s balance sheet. WHAT HAVE BEEN ITS EFFECTS? There has been little independent analysis of how effective the policy has been. The most authoritative piece has come from the International Monetary Fund.12 It estimates that QE has reduced the benchmark 10-year interest rate on British Government debt ? the yield ? by between 40 and 100 basis points or 0.4% to 1%, lowering it to 3.5%. If anything, this could be an underestimate. In October last year, before the QE policy was being actively discussed, the Government was paying about 2.5% to 3.0% to borrow for two years or so, rising to 5% for 20 years. But since QE was introduced, the Government pays less than 1% to borrow for two years, rising to just under 4% for 20 years (see Chart 4). The reduction in gilt yields may not sound like much, but they are now at a near record-low. That means it is currently cheaper for the British Government to borrow than any time for the 300 years for which we have data. The stock market has moved in tandem with gilts, as investors have reinvested their gains from selling gilts to the Bank in shares. So the yield on the FTSE-100 index, (from company dividends, expressed as a percentage of the total value of the index) is also about 3.5%. By mid-October, that positive move alone had probably added between 600 and 1000 points to the FTSE 100. 12 Andr? Meier, Panacea, curse, or non-event? Unconventional policy in the United Kingdom, IMF, August 2009. 7 Chart Two: Bank of England balance sheet liabilities Chart Three: Bank of England balance sheet assets Chart Four: How UK Gilt Curves have shifted 8 0.000 1.000 2.000 3.000 4.000 5.000 6.000 UK GILT 5.75% 2009 UK GILT 4.75% 2010 UK GILT 6.25% 2010 UK GILT 4.25% 2011 UK GILT 9.00% 2011 UK GILT 5.00% 2012 UK GILT 5.25% 2012 UK GILT 4.50% 2013 UK GILT 8.00% 2013 UK GILT 5.00% 2014 UK GILT 4.75% 2015 UK GILT 8.00% 2015 UK GILT 4.00% 2016 UK GILT 8.75% 2017 UK GILT 5.00% 2018 UK GILT 4.50% 2019 UK GILT 4.75% 2020 UK GILT 8.00% 2021 UK GILT 5.00% 2025 UK GILT 4.25% 2027 UK GILT 6.00% 2028 UK GILT 4.75% 2030 UK GILT 4.25% 2032 UK GILT 4.25% 2036 UK GILT 4.75% 2038 UK GILT 4.50% 2042 UK GILT 4.25% 2046 UK GILT 4.25% 2049 UK GILT 4.25% 2055 Yield % Gilt Issues and Date of Maturity Oct-08 Nov-09 The buoyancy of the stock market has in turn enhanced confidence and allowed many companies to put their finances on a sounder footing by having rights issues (selling new shares to help pay off their debts). Other companies are also floating on the stock market for the first time or issuing bonds. So far this year, companies have raised ?60 billion of capital, compared to ?40 billion in 2008.14 The 10-year gilt yield is perhaps one of the most important numbers in finance as it is used as the benchmark for valuing many projects. Investors know they will get that return at a minimum ? assuming the British Government does not default ? and therefore use it as the ?hurdle rate? for testing whether other projects are worthwhile. A 3.5% yield is extremely low by historical standards and thereby encourages 14 ?Quantitative Easing, an interim report?, a speech by Charles Bean at the London Society of Chartered Accountants Annual Lunch, 13 October 2009. investors who are considering putting money into new investments, whether they be infrastructure, shares or property. However, on the negative side, actuaries use the 10-year gilt yield as the benchmark for measuring the potential return of assets held by pension funds. So one unfortunate sideeffect of the low gilt yields from QE has been a theoretical ballooning of pension deficits. The actuary Lane Clarke and Peacock estimates that cumulative pension deficits for FTSE-100 companies are now a record ?96 billion. The return of large pension deficits is a reminder of the distorting effects of QE and has probably contributed to a number of companies closing their final salary pension schemes. Gilt yields also underpin the annuity market. As a consequence, those retiring now find that their pension pots purchase perhaps the smallest incomes for a generation. 9 Finally, although large company balance sheets have improved, small businesses which cannot tap financial markets and instead rely on bank lending find that conditions remain exceptionally tight. This may be because banks are choosing to hoard their gains from QE in order to repair their balance sheets. The British Bankers Association says that lending to private non-financial corporations fell by ?3.9 billion in September and has been contracting at an average ?1.2 billion a month over the last six months. Adam Posen says this is one area where there is an uncomfortable parallel with Japan?s situation in the 1990s. The Japanese banking system was so weak that banks failed to lend, despite the stimulus provided by the Bank of Japan. This was a problem economists described as ?pushing on a string.? However, a decade later, lending has recovered and the Bank of Japan now regards its experiment with QE as a qualified success. The situation here is serious enough for Posen to claim: ?The relative limits in the UK on the availability of non-bank financing for smaller companies may constrain the emergence of a sustainable private-sector led recovery.?15 However, this issue is more correctly a failing of the banking system as opposed to QE itself. Just how the Bank of England itself measures the effectiveness of the policy is a bit of a mystery, but judging by the minutes of the Monetary Policy Committee, it initially relied on examining the money supply, to see if it has grown or not. The usual measure of the money supply used by the Bank is broad money, or M4. It is made up of bank accounts, deposits and notes and coins in circulation. However, about 18 months ago, the Bank started to use a new measure, M4X, which 15 Adam Posen, as above. strips out ?Other Financial Corporations?16 ? the off-balance sheet vehicles used by banks and hedge funds during the boom. According to M4X, the money supply is hardly moving, growing at just 2% compared to the usual 8% to 10%. For this reason, the monetary policy committee said in August that it wants to expand QE from ?150 billion to ?175 billion and the Governor Mervyn King even voted for it to be expanded to ?200 billion. Chart 5 Money supply, M4X But is M4X the right measure of money in these circumstances? Has it understated the true impact of QE? It is perfectly possible that the sums generated by QE have not found their way into the money supply at all, but gone straight into other instruments, such as equities and corporate bonds. After all, on the face of it, it seems pretty odd for the bank to print ?170 billion and for none of it to find its way into the money supply. 16 Intermediate OFCs are: mortgage and housing credit corporations; non-bank credit grantors; bank holding companies; and those carrying out other activities auxiliary to financial intermediation. Banks? business with their related ?other financial intermediaries? is also excluded, based on anecdotal information provided to the Bank by several banks. 10 If it is true that the money supply has not budged, then maybe QE is not being conducted in the most efficient way. Perhaps, for instance, the Bank should be buying up more commercial bonds as opposed to mostly gilts. The Bank itself now has misgivings about using the money supply to measure the effectiveness of QE. In September, David Miles, a member of the MPC, gave a speech in which he produced a host of different charts to measure QE?s effectiveness.17 Mr Miles said that the money supply ?is not a good measure of success.? Instead, he explained that by underpinning a rise in the stock market and in corporate bonds, QE has allowed companies to pay down their bank debts, or to ?deleverage?, in the jargon. He said that portfolio managers are selling gilts to the Bank of England, but instead of leaving the proceeds on deposit at virtually zero interest, they look for ?substitutes that are more natural places to invest,? ? that is, shares and corporate bonds. The resulting improvement in balance sheets means that companies are ?creating more head room to respond quickly to future investment opportunities by paying down bank debt.? Interestingly, Mr Miles is sanguine about bringing QE to an end. He says that banks are accumulating large reserves at the Bank of England ? without giving any figures ? which is a good thing because banks must, in future, hold more liquid assets if another crisis is to be avoided. ?Further down the road banks may well want to hold more of their liquid assets in gilts and rather less in reserves. This is one way in which QE can naturally roll-off as banks reduce their reserves by buying of gilts from the Bank of England,? he said. The FSA has 17 See David Miles Speech to 14th Northern Ireland Economic Conference in Belfast, September 2009. made such an outcome more likely by publishing new liquidity rules for banks,18 requiring them to hold more liquid assets as a buffer against a future crisis. The FSA has stuck to a narrow definition of liquid assets and this essentially means that banks will have to hold billions of pounds of extra gilts. The new liquidity rules have been attacked by the British Bankers Association, which said that the rules effectively forced banks to lend to the Government rather than individuals and companies. ?These proposals would oblige banks to hold high amounts of government bonds, rather than allowing them to diversify their assets. And self-evidently any money held in these 'liquidity buffers' is money that banks cannot lend to individuals and businesses.? While the BBA is right to point out the risk of so-called crowding out, it misses the essential point that the we should all be extremely grateful if the new liquidity rules allow such a radical policy as QE to end painlessly. THE RISKS Despite the successes of QE, there are several identifiable risks. As a matter of logic, the longer the policy goes on, the bigger those risks get. After all, the Bank of England surely cannot buy up the entire national debt and hide it off balance sheet. First, when QE finishes, it could be interpreted by the markets as an admission that the UK has used all its ammunition in the crisis. In this scenario, the most likely market response would be for investors to sell gilts, causing gilt yields to rise. As the gilt yield is a benchmark used for setting commercial interest rates, such a sell-off could cause long-term interest rates across the economy to rise sharply. 18 www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Library/Policy/Policy/2009/09_ 16.shtml 11 Such a deterioration could be quite sudden, especially if it was accelerated by coinciding with an inflationary shock set off by a boost to demand from QE. There is no sign of this yet. Indeed, you could argue that with the RPI currently falling, the opposite problem, deflation, is more of a threat. But historical experience shows how easy it could be for the Bank to overshoot and to print too much money. The markets certainly believe that Britain is more at risk from an inflationary shock than other major countries. Second, as the Bank of England is an agency of the Government and its liabilities are indemnified by the Treasury, any loss on the Bank?s QE portfolio ? potentially running into billions of pounds ? will rebound on the National Debt. Indeed, the signs are this is already happening. QE as a whole is regarded as off balancesheet by the ONS, but any losses on the portfolio held by BEAPFF Ltd do have to be accounted for. Losses arise, for instance, when the Bank of England pays more than the market price for gilts and corporate bonds. So far, some ?14.2 billion has been added to the National Debt in this way.19 Charles Bean, deputy Governor of the Bank, has said that these losses are merely notional, because the BEAPFF receives interest payments from the Government.20 Third, whatever the short-term economic benefits of QE, confusion over what happens next and growing alarm about the true state of the public finances is already undermining the pound. Some forecasters believe sterling could soon reach parity with the euro. Another big fall 19 See ONS, Public Sector Finances, August 2009, background note 6,. 20 See Charles Bean, above. in sterling should ideally be avoided, as it could jeopardize the nation?s credit rating, further adding to the cost of borrowing from foreign creditors. The fourth and final risk is political. A sideeffect of the policy has been vastly to enhance the power of the Bank of England, by effectively giving it control over fiscal policy. Some might say this is a good thing, given the record of politicians at running the public finances over the years. But we live in a democracy and central banks are not endowed with a monopoly on wisdom. The usual process for approving Government spending and borrowing is via Parliament. QE effectively circumvents that process by giving a generous interpretation to the terms of the Bank of England Act. WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME The Bank is, by far, the nation?s biggest creditor and QE gives the Governor and the monetary policy committee (which he chairs) a potential veto over every detail of fiscal policy and, by extension, over almost everything that the current or next Government says or does. This is an awesome power indeed and one which, so far, the Bank and the Treasury have preferred is mostly deployed out of the public eye. Furthermore, it cannot be right that the Bank is the judge of how effective the policy is. In 1797, 1825 and 1914 the Government and Parliament were in the driving seat of the policy. In 2009, by contrast, there has simply been a couple of exchanges of letters between the Governor and the chancellor, Alistair Darling. Yet those exchanges have given the Bank huge powers, powers which were never mentioned explicitly in the Bank of England Act. The decision to print money in 1797 was taken by the Government, the executive, via an Order in 12 Council signed by the King who was expressly called back from Windsor to an emergency meeting of the Privy Council. It was followed by fierce Parliamentary debates, culminating in the Restriction Act. During these debates the Whig MP Richard Sheridan coined the term ?old lady of Threadneedle Street? to describe the Bank of England and Gillray published a famous cartoon of it being ravished by Pitt. There were also two Parliamentary inquiries. The first was in secret. The second, the socalled Bullion Committee, argued forcefully that printing money had devalued sterling and caused inflation. It was influenced by the economist David Ricardo and its members included the writer Francis Horner and Tory MP William Huskisson. The resulting Bullion Report is celebrated as one of the founding documents of monetary economics.21 The Committee took evidence from 29 witnesses including a ?a very eminent Continental Merchant? who declined to be named but was thought to be Nathan Meyer Rothschild. The Bullionists, as the authors became known, blamed the decline of sterling on foreign exchanges on the ?excessive quantity of circulating medium?. The report was reprinted many times and its arguments gained momentum in the subsequent decade. This proved decisive when Restriction was finally abandoned in 1819. In 1825 it was Lord Liverpool who gave the Bank permission to use its lender of last resort facility. And in 1914, the Treasury itself printed the new notes, not the Bank, much to the chagrin of the then Governor, Lord Cunliffe. 21 To give it its full name: The Select Committee to enquire into the cause of the high price of gold bullion, and to take into consideration the state of the circulating medium and of the exchanges between Great Britain and foreign parts. BANK OF ENGLAND 1, PARLIAMENT 0 In 2009, there has been the smoothest possible co-operation between the Bank and the Treasury and almost no Parliamentary scrutiny. Furthermore, the policy is ultimately in the control of the Bank of England and neither ministers nor Parliament have had much say. In his party conference speech, David Cameron said that printing money could be inflationary and ?will have to stop?. But he may not have the power to do that, if he were Prime Minister. That authority apparently resides with the Bank of England. There has not been any new primary legislation specifically to authorise QE. The only secondary legislation has been a statutory instrument, exempting BEAPFF Ltd from the Financial Services Authority?s authorization regime. The instrument was rushed through on 29 January 2009, in less than the usual 21 days. As the House of Lords Statutory Instruments Committee subsequently commented: We are disappointed that HM Treasury?s failure to identify more promptly the need for this instrument has reduced the opportunity for pre-commencement Parliamentary scrutiny. Mervyn King told the Treasury Select Committee in November 2008 (before QE got underway), that the reason for the Bank?s pre-eminence is that QE is really an aspect of monetary policy which is the special responsibility of the Bank?s monetary policy committee. He said: It is clear that the Bank of England Act gives the authority to set decisions on monetary policy to the MPC, and monetary policy includes the Bank Rate but is not restricted to it? .So there would need, if we got to that point [ie, QE], to be close co-operation between the Treasury and the Bank, but the decision-making power as to what the Bank would do would still rest with the MPC. 13 In Mr King?s eyes, therefore, it is up to him and the MPC when and how QE should end. His legal authority for saying this is the Bank of England Act. But it is not as clear as he claims. Nowhere does the Act mention QE or any policy like it and in practice, as the Bank is underwritten by the Treasury, the chancellor does have some influence, but the legal position is not entirely clear. The scale of QE is also, we are told, almost exclusively a matter for the Bank and we only know of plans to increase its scale to ?175 billion through the monthly minutes of the monetary policy committee. How unusual for Parliament, the arbiter of the nation?s finances, not to have had a say. One interesting detail is that the working capital for BEAPFF actually came in the form of a ?810m loan from the Debt Management Office, the agency which issues debt on behalf of the Treasury22 ? a highly irregular arrangement. Was it Parliament?s intention when it approved the Government?s borrowing, that some of it should be used to fund an offbalance sheet vehicle to fund that very borrowing? WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE Quantitative Easing must be thoroughly scrutinised by Parliament. Politicians of all parties need to do a better job of bringing it into the public domain. Far from rubber-stamping an increase in QE ? as the Governor would apparently like ? politicians have a common interest and a duty to examine QE, to bring it into the daylight and to consider the outlines of an exit strategy before the next election. There are two reasons for this. First, the electorate needs to be able to make its choice at the next election with all the facts in front of it. 22 Note 31, Bank of England Accounts 2009. One unfortunate consequence of QE has been the circumvention of the usual public spending scrutiny process, allowing politicians to escape ? at least for the short term ? the consequences of the true state of the public finances. Second, a public debate on QE will have the effect of giving a democratic mandate for the policy which should, in the long term, improve market confidence. As it stands, there is a risk that voters will suddenly wake up to the effects of this important policy and turn against it when they realize the potential risks. That would almost certainly happen if the Bank overdoes things and sets off a bout of inflation or causes a spike in interest rates. Parliament should therefore form a special Select Committee, of equivalent status to the Bullion Committee of 1810, whose remit would be to take evidence from experts, including the Bank of England, and to review the policy and its implementation. It should have the authority and capacity to do this regularly, on a quarterly basis. In addition, it should be able to convene on an ad hoc basis in order to respond quickly to signs of any emerging difficulty. The Bank of England already provides a quarterly review of QE on its website, but the Governor should be expected to report on any aspect of QE at the command of the Select Committee. This would help to bring the facts into the public domain and to keep the Bank on its toes. It is, for instance, surprising that the Bank is paying above market prices for the gilts it purchases, thereby incurring a loss for the public finances. Furthermore, by creating an orderly political process around QE, a Select Committee would be likely to ensure that this emergency policy is not inadvertently extended for 21 years, as happened in the past. 14 FURTHER READING Norman J. Silberling, ?Financial and Monetary Policy of Great Britain During the Napoleonic Wars?,. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol 38, No 3, May 1924. Sir John Chapman, The Bank of England, 2 Vols, Cambridge University Press, 1844 W Marston Acres, The Bank of England from Within, Cambridge University Press, 1931. Peter L Bernstein, The Power of Gold: the history of an obsession, John Wiley & Sons, 2000. E M Forster, Marianne Thornton: A Domestic Biography 1797-1887. ?Quantitative Easing?, Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, 2009 Vol 2. Bank of England, Asset Purchase Facility, Quarterly Bulletin. E H Stuart Jones, The Last Invasion of Britain, Cardiff University Press, 1950. The Report of the Bullion Committee, ed. E. Butler, Adam Smith Institute, 1984. RECENT PUBLICATIONS The hidden debt bombshell by Brooks Newmark MP ?Government debt nearly three times higher than official figure? ? The Times What women want? and how they can get it by Cristina Odone ?Making it easier for women to do part-time work even in demanding professional jobs is not just good for them: it is also vital to society. The alternative is the suffocating intrusion of the state in our lives, subverting the role of the family, and costing an additional fortune to the taxpayer? ? The Daily Telegraph Too big to live: why we must stamp our State Monopoly Capitalism by Niall Ferguson ?In an important new CPS pamphlet, Ferguson warns of the danger of leaving the banking cartels in tact? ? Iain Macwhirter, The Glasgow Herald Don?t let the crisis go to waste: A simple and affordable way of increasing retirement income by Michael Johnson ?The Government is leaving itself open to accusations of a future misselling scandal if it allows Personal Accounts to go ahead in their current form, according to an influential think tank? ? IFA online School quangos: a blueprint for abolition and reform by Tom Burkard and Sam Talbot Rice ?A compelling manifesto? ? The Spectator Benefit Simplification: how and why it must be done by David Martin ?Labour?s ?186 billion benefit madness? ? front page headline, The Daily Express Re-empower the Bank of England by Sir Martin Jacomb ?The former Bank director argues the Tories are pulling their punches: the FSA should be transformed into a mere subsidiary of the Bank of England? ? Lombard, The Financial Times The Myth of Inflation Targeting: the worst policy mistake of our generation by Maurice Saatchi ?Blame this crisis on the myth of inflation? ? headline in The Times The Stock Market under Labour: the legacy of Gordon Brown by John Littlewood ?Labour?s claim to be the best party for the City was called into question yesterday as research revealed that the FTSE 100 has underperformed every main stock market except Japan?s since it came to power in 1997? ? The Times What killed Capitalism? The crisis: what caused it and how to respond by Andrew Lilico ?A powerfully argued paper? ? Bill Jamieson, The Scotsman The 2009 Lexicon: a guide to contemporary Newspeak ?The much-praised 2009 Lexicon from the Centre for Policy Studies contains some hithertooverlooked gems of interest to business readers? ? The Mail on Sunday 57 TUFTON STREET, LONDON SW1P 3QL TEL:+44(0) 20 7222 4488 FAX:+44(0) 20 7222 4388 WWW.CPS.ORG.UK -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Wed Feb 24 10:08:06 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:08:06 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Capping Emissions.. Message-ID: <473189.93031.qm@web27407.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Might be of interest. ? http://triplecrisis.com/carbon-caps-who-gets-the-cash/ ? ? R.Searle -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From 121Rhahl at kilowattcards.com Sun Feb 21 16:34:14 2010 From: 121Rhahl at kilowattcards.com (Robert Hahl) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:34:14 -0700 Subject: [GJM] Discussion Digest, Vol 77, Issue 63 Message-ID: <34a35212$70872592$3c032fae$@com> Rodney, Most work today is not done by labor or by capital, but instead by energy. Generally someone needs to flip a switch on, and turn it off when the job is done, and fix whatever breaks, but many other people in my opinion are just commuting to work and trying to look busy. That is why it is so easy for the corporations to cut millions of jobs during recessions. Those people weren't really doing anything important anyway, and nobody needs to do the jobs after they have been sacked. I agree that ownership of capital needs to be widely distributed in society, to better maintain a balance of power and justice. That was my original reason for setting up Kilowatt Cards, so people could own a stable asset that is smaller than a house. Robert W. Hahl, J.D., Ph.D. Chairman Kilowatt-Hour Card Corp. 121 S. Lee St. Falls Church, VA 22046 US +1 7039817447 Call (mobile) 121rhahl at kilowattcards.com ---------------------------------------- From: discussion-request at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2010 8:27 AM To: discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Subject: Discussion Digest, Vol 77, Issue 63 Send Discussion mailing list submissions to discussion at globaljusticemovement.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemo vement.net or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to discussion-request at globaljusticemovement.net You can reach the person managing the list at discussion-owner at globaljusticemovement.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Discussion digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Why was the Industrial Revolution British? (Rodney Shakespeare) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:26:13 -0000 From: "Rodney Shakespeare" To: <121rhahl at kilowattcards.com>, "Discussion Forum for Global Justice" Subject: Re: [GJM] Why was the Industrial Revolution British? Message-ID: <015501cab2f9$70f22a40$4001a8c0 at your447023ae6b> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Bob, 1. As regards the causes of the Industrial Revolution in 18C Britain rather than elsewhere, there are a number of factors. Two which have always interested me are the moist atmosphere in the Pennine hills/mountains of Lancashire (so that the threads of cotton do not keep breaking) and the fast-running streams coming down the hillsides (which provided the early power). Another factor was the relative laxity of social pressure and law in Lancashire (in contrast to, say, London). 2. Binary economics analyses the Industrial Revolution and fundamentally challenges the conventional interpretation. Conventional economics sees the huge increase in overall output and output per head as a function of human productivity. (i.e. the result of an increase of human skills). In contrast, binary economics sees an increase in human productiveness and a much greater increase in capital productiveness . (of the Industrial Revolution machinery). It follows that, if productive capacity is to be spread throughout the population the ownership of productive capital must be spread -- see the page on Productiveness at www.binaryeconomics.net 3. But, whatever the causes of the Industrial Revolution, the key point is that productive capital must become widely distributed and that labour alone cannot be sufficient to ensure that everybody has a proper income (even if they have a job). Rodney Shakespeare. ----- Original Message ----- From: Robert Hahl To: discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 12:08 PM Subject: [GJM] Why was the Industrial Revolution British? http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3570 Why was the Industrial Revolution British? Robert C. Allen 15 May 2009 *Print* *Email* *Comment* *Republish * * It is still not clear among economic historians why the Industrial Revolution actually took place in 18th century Britain. This column explains that it is the British Empire's success in international trade that created Britain's high wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the spring board for the Industrial Revolution. * Why did the Industrial Revolution take place in eighteenth century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? Answers to this question have ranged from religion and culture to politics and constitutions. In a just published book, *The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective*, I argue that the explanation of the Industrial Revolution was fundamentally economic. The Industrial Revolution was Britain's creative response to the challenges and opportunities created by the global economy that emerged after 1500. This was a two step process. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries a European-wide market emerged. England took a commanding position in this new order as her wool textile industry out competed the established producers in Italy and the Low Countries. England extended her lead in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by creating an intercontinental trading network including the Americas and India. Intercontinental trade expansion depended on the acquisition of colonies, mercantilist trade promotion, and naval power. The upshot of Britain's success in the global economy was the expansion of rural manufacturing industries and rapid urbanisation. East Anglia was the centre of the woollen cloth industry, and its products were exported through London where a quarter of the jobs depended on the port. As a result, the population of London exploded from 50,000 in 1500 to 200,000 in 1600 and half a million in 1700. In the eighteenth century, the expansion of trade with the American colonies and India doubled London's population again and led to even more rapid growth in provincial and Scottish cities. This expansion depended on vigorous imperialism, which expanded British possessions abroad, the Royal Navy, which defeated competing naval and mercantile powers, and the Navigation Acts, which excluded foreigners from the colonial trades. The British Empire was designed to stimulate the British economy-and it did. The growth of British commerce had three important consequences. First, the growth of London created a shortage of wood fuel that was only relieved by the exploitation of coal. Figure 1 shows the real price per million BTUs of energy in London from wood and coal in this period. In the fifteenth century, the two fuels sold at the same price per million BTU's which meant that the market for coal was limited given its polluting character. As London grew after 1500, the price of wood fuels rose and by the end of the sixteenth century, charcoal and firewood were twice the price of coal per unit of energy. With that premium, consumers began to substitute coal for wood. Instead of a wood burning hearth in the middle of a large central room, houses were built with narrow fireplaces and chimneys to burn coal. The coal burning house was invented. It then paid to mine coal in Northumberland and ship it down the coast to London. The coal trade began. On the coal fields (in Newcastle, for instance), Britain had the cheapest energy in the world. Energy was more expensive on the European continent and particularly expensive in China (Figure 2). *Figure 1. * *Figure 2.* ** Second, the growth of cities and manufacturing increased the demand for labour with the result that British wages and living standards were the highest in the world. Figure 3 shows the wages of labours in leading cities in Europe and Asia from 1375 to 1875. The wages have been deflated by a consumer price index so that they show the purchasing power across space as well as over time. A value of one means that a labourer employed full time, full year could earn just enough to keep his family at a subsistence standard of living of 1940 calories per adult male equivalent per day. The budget used to define the consumer price index is set so that most of the spending is on food and most of that is on the cheapest carbohydrate available (oatmeal in northwestern Europe, polenta in Florence, sorghum in Beijing, millet chapatis in Delhi). Only tiny quantities of meat, oil, cloth, fuel, and housing are included in the budget. After the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, the standard of living of workers everywhere was high; they typically earned three or four times subsistence. In the ensuing centuries, population growth in Europe and Asia led to falling real wages, so that most workers ended up in the eighteenth century earning just enough to purchase the subsistence standard of living. The only countries to avoid that fate were Britain and the Low Countries. Their populations, in fact, grew more rapidly than those elsewhere, but this effect was offset by the booms in their economies due to international trade. Workers in London and Amsterdam did not, however, buy four times as much oatmeal as they needed for subsistence. Instead they upgraded their diets to beef, beer, and bread, while their counterparts in much of Europe and Asia subsisted on quasi-vegetarian diets of boiled grains with a few peas or lentils. Workers in northwestern Europe also had surplus income to buy exotic imports like tea and sugar as well as domestic manufactures like books, pictures, watches, and better clothes. *Figure 3. * Third, the growth of cities and the high wage economy stimulated agriculture. The strong demand for food and particularly meat, butter, and cheese led to the conversion of arable to pasture, convertible husbandry, and the production of fodder crops (beans, clover, turnips), most of which raised soil nitrogen levels and pushed up the yields of wheat and barley. The urban demand for labour led to the amalgamation of small holdings into large farms, which employed fewer people per acre, a development also entailed by the conversion of ploughed land to grass. Agriculture was revolutionised because cities expanded, rather than the reverse as historians have often maintained. Success in international trade created Britain's high wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the spring board for the Industrial Revolution. High wages and cheap energy created a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for labour. These incentives operated in many industries. Pottery, for instance, was manufactured in both England and China. The design of the kilns differed greatly, however. English kilns were cheap to build but very fuel inefficient; much of the energy from the burning fuel was lost through the vent hole on the top (Figure 4). The typical Chinese kiln, on the other hand, was more expensive to construct and, indeed, required more labour to operate. Figure 5 shows how heat was drawn into the chamber on the left and then forced out a hole at floor level into a second chamber. The process continued through many chambers until the air, by then denuded of most of its heat, finally exited up a chimney. In England, it was not worth spending a lot of money to build a thermally efficient kiln since energy was so cheap. In China, however, where energy was expensive, it was cost effective to build thermally efficient kilns. The technologies that were used reflected the relative prices of capital, labour, and energy. Since it was costly to invent technology, invention also responded to the same incentives. *Figure 4. English kiln* *Figure 5. Chinese kiln* The famous inventions of the Industrial Revolution were responses to the high wages and cheap energy of the British economy. These inventions also substituted capital and energy for labour. The steam engine increased the use of capital and coal to raise output per worker. The cotton mill used machines to raise labour productivity in spinning and weaving. New technologies of iron making substituted cheap coal for expensive charcoal and mechanised production to increase output per worker. These technologies eventually revolutionised the world, but at the outset they were barely profitable in Britain, and their commercial success depended on increasing the use of inputs that were relatively cheap in Britain. In other countries, where wages were lower and energy more expensive, it did not pay to use technology that reduced employment and increased the consumption of fuel. The French government was very active in trying to promote advanced British technology in the eighteenth century, but its efforts failed since the British techniques were not cost effective at French prices. James Hargreaves perfected the spinning jenny, the first machine that successfully spun cotton, in the late 1760s. In 1771, John Holker, an English Jacobite who held the post of Inspector General of Foreign Manufactures, spirited a jenny into France. Demonstration models were made, but the jenny was only installed in large, state supported workshops. By the late 1780s, over 20,000 jennies were used in England and only 900 in France. Likewise, the French government sponsored the construction of an English style iron works (including four coke blast furnaces) in Burgundy in the 1780s. The raw materials were adequate, the enterprise was well capitalised, and they hired outstanding and experienced English engineers to oversee the project. Yet it was a commercial flop because coal was too expensive in France. Since the technologies of the Industrial Revolution were only profitable to adopt in Britain, that was also the only country where it paid to invent them. The ideas embodied in the breakthrough technologies were simple; the difficult problem was the engineering challenge of making them work. Responding to that challenged required research and development, which emerged as an important business practice in the eighteenth century. It was accompanied by the appearance of venture capitalists to finance the R&D and a reliance on patents to recoup the benefits of successful development. The Industrial Revolution was invented in Britain in the eighteenth century because that was where it paid to invent it. The success of R&D programs in eighteenth century Britain depended on another characteristic of the high wage economy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growth of a manufacturing, commercial economy increased the demand for literacy, numeracy and trade skills. These were acquired through privately purchased education and apprenticeships. The high wage economy not only created a demand for these skills, but also gave parents the income to purchase them. As a result, the British population was highly skilled (by international standards), and those skills were necessary for the high tech revolution to unfold. The Industrial Revolution was confined to Britain for many years, because the technological breakthroughs were tailored to British conditions and could not be profitably deployed elsewhere. However, British engineers strove to improve efficiency and reduced the use of inputs that were cheap in Britain as well as those that were expensive. The consumption of coal in steam engines, for instance, was cut from 45 pounds per horse power-hour in the early eighteenth to only 2 pounds in the mid-nineteenth. The genius of British engineering undermined the country's technological lead by creating 'appropriate technology' for the world at large. By the middle of the nineteenth century, advanced technology could be profitably used in countries like France with expensive energy and India with cheap labour. Once that happened, the Industrial Revolution went world wide. *This article may be reproduced with appropriate attribution. See Copyright (below).* ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemo vement.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemo vement.net End of Discussion Digest, Vol 77, Issue 63 ****************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From 121Rhahl at kilowattcards.com Sun Feb 21 07:16:29 2010 From: 121Rhahl at kilowattcards.com (Robert Hahl) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 07:16:29 -0700 Subject: [GJM] Tea Party history: it was anti big-business Message-ID: <69b69604$50ea39ff$1c275677$@com> http://www.opendemocracy.net/openeconomy/jim-sleeper/tea-party-history-it-wa s-anti-big-business Tea Party history: it was anti big-business Jim Sleeper, 18 February 2010 ..the original Tea Party was a rebellion not just against a tax but against government favoritism for a global corporation it considered too big to fail. ...Parliament granted the [East India Company] an exclusive license to sell tea; removed all duties; forfeited an annual payment the company had made to the government; and advanced a large loan. Sound familiar? In 1773, though, all these favors actually lowered the price of tea, underselling as well as excluding Dutch tea smugglers and American tea merchants. No wonder that "Poor Lord North [King George III's prime minister] thought he was doing the colonists a favor" by saving the company from bankruptcy and giving it a monopoly in America, as Wood explains. A modest tea tax remained, offending colonists' stand against taxation without representation. But Wood -- crediting Benjamin Woods Labaree, the authority on the Boston Tea Party -- notes that "Giving the monopoly was probably more important in arousing the anger of many small New England merchants than the tea tax." ... ...had I been given the podium at Nashville instead of Sarah Palin, could I have admonished today's Tea Partiers to dump some of the medicines that are being sold by Big Pharma under the big Bush Administration prescription drug benefit plan, which bars its providers from buying cheaper generic drugs in Canada.... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 21 16:34:25 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:34:25 -0800 Subject: [GJM] The Urge to Secede: A Rebellion in Progress - Trading Post Paul Message-ID: <005a01cab34e$a27ca860$e775f920$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS As states such as California are faced with bankruptcy and unable to create a balanced budget, the issue of secession may become a greater possibility in the minds of many as people try to determine whether monies being directed toward endless war could better be used to create a solvent and sustainable society. Especially when the Federal Government is unable or unwilling to aid the states in their time of crisis, but yet is fully willing to support these wars. This does not mean that I am advocating secession, only looking at what the future could bring in these times of unprecedented challenges for the human family. Thanks to Trading Post Paul for this article. m r The Urge To Secede: A Rebellion In Progress By Greg Guma 20 February, 2010 http://www.countercurrents.org/guma200210.htm At least 16 secession organizations are currently organizing throughout the United States and almost a dozen states have active movements. Even more state legislatures are debating laws that could "nullify" federal actions in areas from gun control and health care reform to marijuana possession and overseas troop deployments. In Alaska, the secessionist Independence Party has been influencing politics for years (Sarah Palin's husband was a member and she publicly endorsed the party while governor), even though the State Supreme Court held in 2006 that secession is illegal. Hawaii's sovereignty movement has won some victories, and Georgia's State Senate passed a resolution in 2009 endorsing the right of states to nullify federal laws. If Congress restricts gun rights, that resolution added, the federal government will cease to exist. Well, at least in their minds. In April 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry threatened secession at a Tea Party protest. Afterward, a Rasmussen poll of Texans found that almost one third think the state has the right to secede - although, at this point, only 18 percent would back the move. Long before the Tea Party movement, a 2006 "national" secessionist convention in Vermont attracted indigenous groups, greens and Christian conservatives, libertarians and socialists, as well as the Second Maine Militia, Christian Exodus, the League of the South, and representatives of groups in Alaska, New Hampshire, Hawaii and Texas. The idea of building a left-right coalition against the forces of centralized power and wealth can be seductive. In Vermont this was briefly attempted before in the late 1970s, with the two ends of the political spectrum finding common ground through the embrace of decentralism. Both factions preferred small scale energy production to mega-plants, widespread ownership of land and business, and removal of "government barriers." Things got sticky, however, when the discussion shifted to welfare, environmental regulation, affirmative action, and abortion - none of them trivial topics. The rub is that the same arguments for decentralization and sovereignty that sound progressive in some cases can be used in support of isolationism, unfettered capitalism and discrimination. In 2003, former Duke University professor Thomas Naylor founded the Second Vermont Republic, a secession movement that has since launched a newspaper, attracted national media attention, and begun to promote candidates and publish transitional plans. The aim is nevertheless to dissolve the United States and, in particular, return Vermont "to its status as an independent republic." Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 21 22:30:24 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:30:24 -0800 Subject: [GJM] UNPREPARED AND UNPLUGGED: JOE STACK AND LIKELY COMING ATTRACTIONS, By Carolyn Baker Message-ID: <008801cab380$5c1eab20$145c0160$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS May we know that ?this too shall pass.? Change comes on the edge of chaos. May we not become the chaos. May we let go of the anger. May we remain cool and collected in the face of it all. May we be the action, not the reaction. May we be prepared. May we be the change we want to see in our lives. May love prevail and may we calmly walk the path of peace with dignity and in humility together as One. M R UNPREPARED AND UNPLUGGED: JOE STACK AND LIKELY COMING ATTRACTIONS, By Carolyn Baker http://carolynbaker.net/site/ PDF Print E-mail Sunday, 21 February 2010 It may be a time of crisis, but it doesn't have to be a time of catastrophe. It's in times of crisis that human beings are often most creative and ingenious and that they pull together most effectively to solve their problems. Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Upside of Down Most of us have heard it by now-software engineer torches his own house then crashes his private plane into an IRS office in Austin, Texas on February 18, 2010. Most descriptions of the event were careful not to call the event an act of domestic terrorism, but rather asked: Was Joe Stack a terrorist or a lone nut? And most mainstream media reports pointed out that Stack was not a Tea-Partier, but some progressive media accused him of behaving like one. Wrong questions, wrong answers. Once again, mainstream media reveals it pathetic depth-perception deficit. As Rich Benjamin of Alternet notes, Joe Stack's "suicide screed chafes and exposes a raw wound this country does not know what to do with." Bingo. In the same week as Stack's rampage, an Ohio man so enraged about his home being foreclosed upon, even though he owes far less on it than it's worth, bulldozed the house so that the bank would not be able to repossess it. Not unlike Stack, Terry Hoskins was trying to cope with business debts as well as a lawsuit, and vehemently demonstrated his rage toward banks for all the world to see. It doesn't take Patrick Jane, " The Mentalist" or Allison DuBois, " The Medium", to grasp that these eruptions of vitriolic rage are most likely, previews of massive civil unrest worldwide, as individuals and families awaken to the current ghastly global transfer of wealth, so brilliantly exposed in David DeGraw's " The Economic Elite Have Engineered An Extraordinary Coup"-a wealth transfer of mindboggling proportions that has left the middle class impoverished and writhing in despair. But this particular side of the Toxic Triangle-economic meltdown, along with the other two sides, climate chaos, and planetary energy depletion, signals that the human species has entered, not a long and painful recession, but nothing less than a tipping point in its own evolutionary odyssey. And now, millions of human beings who for at least a decade have been unwilling to look deeply at how their world works, find themselves depressed, enraged, paralyzed, and terrified at best and suicidal and homicidal at worst. Since before the turn of the 20thcentury, many courageous researchers who were willing to look deeper gave us extraordinary "maps" of who was running the world and what the consequences of that reality would be-individuals like Mike Ruppert, Richard Heinberg, Dmitry Orlov, Peter Dale Scott, Colin Campbell, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Cynthia McKinney, Sibel Edmonds, and many more. They produced volumes of research related to the Triple Crisis/Toxic Triangle which for the most part, fell on deaf ears. The corporate capitalist system had forced on American families a lifestyle that left them too busy and too strapped with debt-and of course, too hypnotically entranced with the proverbial "American dream", to read the signals that were becoming more ominous by the day. Besides, in the pubescent ecstasy of the earning/spending/debt party, who wants to be annoyed with downers like becoming an adult and comprehending the facts and their consequences? And so, those who were too busy, ambitious, hard-working, conscientious, dedicated, and of course, let us not forget, patriotic, have within the past two years been blindsided by that which they refused to acknowledge--and worse, they who have called the mapmakers and their supporters, such as myself, "whack jobs, wing nuts, conspiracy theorists, fearmongers, and pessimists" now find themselves bewildered, flabbergasted, dumbfounded, and horrified. Tragically, it's the result of being uninformed and unprepared, and when the excrement hits the circular air mechanism, it results for the unprepared in becoming unplugged-like Joe Stack and Terry Hoskins. But Terry and Joe are only two cases in point. Apparently, the United States government (not Patrick Jane or Allison DuBois) is anticipating many more such incidents. In December, 2008, the Phoenix Business Journal reported in a story entitled " Arizona Police Say They Are Prepared As War College Warns Military Must Prep For Unrest; IMF Warns of Economic Riots" that "a new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks." Concurrently, Military.Com cited another part of the report which stated that "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities ... to defend basic domestic order and human security, likewise in the case of ?unforeseen economic collapse', ?pervasive public health emergencies,' and ?catastrophic natural and human disasters,' among other possible crises." Fortunately, many individuals and families have awoken to the reality that what our species is confronting is nothing less than the total collapse of industrial civilization and the end of the world as we have known it. They are coming to understand that the collapse is a process, not an event, and that some aspects of it will be slow and grinding, while other aspects will be sudden, catastrophic, and traumatic. And very importantly, they are becoming prepared. But how does one "prepare", and what is preparation anyway? In my experience, there are three aspects. The first concerns individual and family self-sufficiency which relates to things like learning to grow one's own food, learning to store and preserve food, understanding and utilizing permaculture design principles in all aspects of life; deeply evaluating one's living situation and assessing where the most sustainable living venue might be; completely extricating oneself from the debt/credit system; learning natural, holistic healing techniques and wild, edible plant foraging skills. These are only a few of the most basic forms of logistical preparation. And please note, this is not about becoming a camo-clad survivalist with years of food and water stored underground and protected by an arsenal of weapons. In fact, the reality of our predicament is that the lone survivalist/" apocalypse man" is precariously at risk because survival demands cooperation and coordination. Therefore, the second aspect of preparation relates to neighborhood and community cooperation, and I believe that the Transition Handbook and Transition movement worldwide offer the most practical, sensible, and feasible model for creating local resilience and self-sufficiency. Those who are skeptical of community preparation often argue that a burgeoning police state will not allow such communities to exist let alone thrive. What they tend to overlook are the realities of energy depletion and economic unraveling which are likely to seriously curtail the functioning of all levels of law enforcement worldwide. Finally, but in my opinion, most fundamental, is emotional and spiritual preparation for the unprecedented changes which have already begun and which will continue and intensify for many decades to come. It is perhaps the best hedge against becoming "unplugged" in the face of mindboggling chaos and transition. For this reason I published in 2009 Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse--a poetic manual of emotional and spiritual preparation for navigating the daunting challenges of our uncertain future. Although I do not condone Joe Stack's violent attack on the Austin IRS office, I find that his articulate suicide letter contains many grains of truth, as well as a tragic expos? of his lack of comprehension of the larger transition that inundated his life with an overwhelming number of smaller ones. Myriad forms of preparation are no guarantee of survival or well being in the face of the end of the world as we have known it, but they may allow us unimaginable opportunities for personal and community transformation. In addition to the Transition Handbook, I strongly recommend the Post-Peak Livingwebsite and its online "Uncrash Course", as well as my upcoming course in April, 2010 on "Navigating The Coming Chaos". For further information on the latter course, please contact me at Carolyn at carolynbaker.net No one needs to be either unprepared or unplugged. But the time to address both issues is now. Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 394 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 426 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 424 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Sun Feb 21 22:55:42 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:55:42 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: News from The International Academy of Holodynamics Message-ID: <009f01cab383$db526be0$91f743a0$@net> I am forwarding for your information The International Academy of Holodynamics Latest News From: The International Academy of Holodynamics [mailto:victorvernon at holodynamics.ccsend.com] On Behalf Of The International Academy of Holodynamics Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 9:21 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: News from The International Academy of Holodynamics You're receiving this email because of your relationship with Vernon Woolf and The International Academy of Holodynamics. Please confirm your continued interest in receiving email from us. You may unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive our emails. logo The International Academy of Holodynamics Latest News Quotable Vern: In order to be free to choose to experience life to its fullest potential, you must overcome the things that limit you. Since your limitations are mostly within your state of consciousness, this work is about transforming consciousness and taking action in new, more effective ways. Holodynamics is about the science of consciousness and how to apply this science in your life. In This Issue Quotable Vern Principle of the Month Workshop Schedule Alumni -Social Networks Virtual Holon Call Monthly Coaching Program Pay It Forward Principle of the Month: Transformation Not Eradication! How many times have you heard someone say they wanted to get rid of a personality trait they didn't like about themselves (or others!)? Perhaps you've even wanted to remove some of your own seemingly unsightly attributes. As you'll read in today's main article, energy doesn't 'go away,' but it does transform. Personal blocks and limitations are easily transformed using Holodynamics. Once your immature holodynes meet the mature versions of themselves the sky's the limit. Isn't that good news!!! Workshop Schedule Mar. 13 - 21, 2010 Workshop -Oak Creek, Arizona (near Sedona) July 24 - Aug 1, 2010 Workshop Sedona Arizona Oct 16 - Oct. 24, 2010 Workshop Sedona, Arizona Nov 26 - Nov 27, 2010 Course V Calgary, Canada Register online online at www.holodynamics.com or call for details 928 634-3333 Stay Connected! Would you like to stay connected and share information with other Holodynamics Alumni? Online social media communities make it simple... You can keep in touch, learn about upcoming events and make new conscious friends. It's EASY! Just click on the provided links to LINKEDIN and/or Facebook and follow the directions below. If you're not a LinkedIn or Facebook member create a new profile then log in to your account. For LINKEDIN.COM 1. Go to the upper right hand corner, click on the drop down menu and select search groups. 2. Enter Alumni International Academy of Holodynamics and select 'join group.' For FACEBOOK.COM 1. Enter "Holodynamics" in the Search box in the upper right hand corner of the Facebook page. 2. All Holodynamic pages and groups will appear. 3. Select the pages and groups you want to join by clicking the respective links displayed to the right of each page or group. ? Become a fan. ? Request to join group. Privacy Disclosure: The International Academy of Holodynamics is committed to protecting your privacy and does not share your information. Participation in Holodynamic social networking sites is voluntary. When participating in online Social Networking communities be aware that you are responsible to control and to manage your privacy settings. Holodynamic groups in LinkedIn, Plaxo and Facebook are hosted in public virtual environments offering privacy protections that differ for each site. Please contact resources at the respective social networking sites for advice on how to manage access to your profile and to protect your personal information when joining groups. Virtual Holon Calls Every Monday Want to tell your friends about Holodynamics but not quite sure how to explain it? Invite them to our weekly virtual Holon Call. Everyone is welcome!! There are NO pre-requisites and NO cost to attend. The calls are informational, fun, and informative. You may be a part of a live tracking session or ask questions of others who are learning to apply and incorporate Holodynamics. 5:30 PST 6:30 PM (Arizona -7.00 GMT) 8:30 PM EST The call will last an hour. Dial in number 712-432-0075 Access code 142260 To listen to last weeks call the playback number is 712-432-1085 access code 142260 Be sure to phone in a few minutes early. Monthly Coaching Program We have two monthly coaching calls each month, in order to join these calls you must be a member of the coaching program. To sign up for the Coaching program go to the coaching page on our website and sign up. If you are already a Subscriber you can go to your subscriber page and add monthly coaching to your options. Cost for the Coaching Program is $19.95 per month. Coaching members may join one or both calls. Our next calls will be Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 6:00 PST 7:00 Arizona (-7 GMT) 9:00 EST and/or Wednesday February 24 at 12:30 PST 1:30 Arizona (-7 GMT) 3:30 EST 8:30 PM UK These calls are generally held on the last Tuesday and Wednesday of each month Each month we address specific target subjects and issues around developing your desired results, you will not only expedite your personal unfolding, but will also contribute to unfolding at every level (relationships, organizations, etc.) and through our hyperspacial connection help transform the collective. Quick Links... Our Website Products Services More About Us HolodynamicsForABetterWorld.com IAONS.org Coaching Program Dear Mary , Recently we were asked the question "What happens to the holodynes some people "clip out" and how does this differ from "energy/tensions" released through "Radical Release" processes?" It's a great question. Who would really know the answer? I trust you have already asked your FPS. Still, in case you want to discuss this with others, here are some interesting facts that will throw additional light on the subject. As you know, there are enfolded dimensions involved in the transformation of holodynes. One of the advantages of this age of science and information is we know that "nothing can be destroyed, it can only be changed in form." This is a holographic universe where everything is made of information being projected from hyperspace. Holodynes are no exception. Thus, those who claim to be able to "resolve the issues" related to holodynes must first at least understand: What are holodynes? Where do they come from? Why are they here? What purpose do they hold? Only then can we begin to answer the question: What can we do about them? What are holodynes? They are self-organizing information systems with the power to cause. Where do they come from? There are four known sources of holodynes: inheritance, modeling, hyperspace, and self-creation. Why are they here? We planned it that way. Each holodyne has a job to do and a potential lesson to teach. What purpose do they have? They teach. Like all life forms, they are driven by life potential. Every problem is caused by its solution. Every negative holodyne holds a potential solution for those who have the holodyne to harvest. Negative holodynes are a hidden treasure chest. Once you have answered these questions to your own satisfaction (and we have written books about this to assist you), you can then explore, what are these "energy/tensions" that are being "released" through "Radical Release" processes? So let's take a look. Ancient traditions of many cultures have, over the centuries, developed methodologies for handling immature (downdraft) holodynes. Many attempt to "get rid of them" by burning them, cursing them, isolating them, banning them, labeling them as "evil", casting them out, etc. In each case the method of operation is based on a framework of opposition. People believe that "going to war" against holodynes will resolve the issues, but, as any conscious being knows, war does not solve problems; negotiated self and collective interest resolves issues. The "proof of the pudding" over the centuries is that, no matter what one's belief system, the holodynes they have sought to remove have remained active among the people of each of those cultures. All major world religions and all their cultural beliefs/processes have not been able to "get rid of" their downdraft holodynes by using an oppositional model. What usually happens is people "numb" their own state of consciousness toward the holodynes and thus allow the holodynes to run rampant throughout multiple dimensions of reality - individually and collectively. The deeper question becomes how does "clipping" differ from any of these other oppositional approaches? Upon what premises is the "Radical Release" program based and what evidence, other than personal report, does the approach have to justify its claims? What results are evident from their work? Has any real difference been demonstrated and, if so, what is that difference? The proof is in the results. What results, predictably, might come from their approach? First, the concept of "energy/tensions" comes from a "wave" perspective embedded in many of our ancient belief systems (Hindu, Buddha, Christianity, Muslim, etc.) and this approach has been amplified by quantum physics frameworks and applied in current cultures to a wide range of religious and therapeutic techniques. Hundreds of books have been written about this. You may be interested to take a look at a more detailed comparison of schools of thought in my book The Dance of Life which includes a chart pointing out the limitations and advantages of various frameworks and how they address (or not) the known mechanisms of consciousness. You will note that not one of them includes even half of the known mechanisms of consciousness. The point being, while wave dynamics broadens our predictability power (over more linear models) wave models are not designed to embrace the entire field of consciousness. Those who want to "take care of" downdraft holodynes must understand the whole dynamic. Another way of saying this is that it takes a multidimensional framework to understand holodynes because holodynes are multidimensional. They are like little kids growing up. They have an implicate order of growth. "Clipping them"? For example, there are three processes evident in Nature by which information systems self-organize: Linear (logic, sequential, responsive, rational); wave (energy in motion, emotion, endless - like waves in the ocean); and conscious presence (creative intelligence, being). Holodynes exhibit all three. Thus, those who "believe" in "energy/tensions" and "release" processes are able to create "waves" in the "field" of consciousness and these waves may seem to "sweep away" some holodynes. Nice job. Just sweep everything under the rug, so to speak. Even my grandmother knew better. For centuries people have been claiming that they can "cure" the problem of physical, personal, emotional, spiritual and social problems. We have been making progress and now, in our current stream of knowledge, we understand that holodynes (self-organizing information systems) are causal. We also know they have an enfolded order of progressive change. They can transform themselves when they are within a field of information exchange (negotiation). Inner tension is typical of any conflict because the field of consciousness emerges within fields of tension (intention). Creating a linear measurement of tension allows the linear processor to feel comfortable. Clipping the apparent cause of the tension, increases the warm and fuzzy feelings that something has been done that will make a difference. The drug store also contains warm and fuzzy processes but the entire population might get sicker and sicker each year. It's not about being warm and fuzzy. Holodynes can directly affect the endorphins that produce warm and fuzzy feelings. They also get angry when they are treated with limited linear/emotional processing. Just like you and I do. And they can come back with a vengeance - not just to you and I - but to our kids and from one system to another. The information field in which holodynes exist is holographic. It's also quantum. You drop an asteroid in the middle of the ocean and the tsunami will travel around the globe. Playing in this field without knowing what is what can have deep and real consequences. People wonder why wars have been fought, plagues have traversed the planet, man's inhumanity to man is still going on and, while attempts to "clip" it may be well intended, my experience shows we must be real and deal effectively in multiple dimensions. That's why we teach what we teach. Pay it Forward Options Are you excited about this work? Do you want to help us get the word out and grow our community of people dedicated to uplifting the consciousness of the planet? Good news!!! We need assistance have have several options for you to pay it forward. (Remember that great movie?!) We are looking for help with the following: Wikipedia expert to develop an article and handle updates. Creating and managing a page on Plaxo Blog master to develop Holodynamic Hotline Blog Virtual data input using Sugar CRM Managing Face Book Managing Twitter and/or Linked in Holon Group data manager All of the above can be done virtually, If you have expertise, time and the desire to be part of the team, please contact MaryAnne for more details. Special Thank you's to the following holodynamicts who are paying it forward and helping the Academy grow. Amy Glen for taking on the job of newsletter editor. Alberta Fredrickson for documenting the process for Certifications Heather Davis working on the final revision of the book Dance of Life. Carlo Ami for working on the final revision of Manual I. Remember, holodynes are information systems that take on a life of their own. This is why, at times, your thoughts and feelings take control of your body and, if you allow them to, they can take over your relationships and your life. But they don't have to. If you have friends who may be interested in learning about Holodynes and transforming their relationship to anything or everything including life, loved ones, money, you name it, feel free to forward them this email! For more information about all of our programs, visit our website . With love, Vern and the Holodynamic Team Join Our Mailing List Forward email Safe Unsubscribe This email was sent to maryrose333 at att.net by info at holodynamics.com. Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe ? | Privacy Policy . Email Marketing by The International Academy of Holodynamics | 989 South Main St | Suite A-183 | Cottonwood | AZ | 86326 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 24 13:07:50 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:07:50 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Essene Kabbalah Shabbat Ceremony - Dr. Gabriel Cousens - San Diego Message-ID: <012a01cab58d$425fef00$c71fcd00$@net> For anyone in the San Diego area. Upcoming event information: Friday Night Ceremony - Dr. Gabriel Cousens - Reversing Diabetes & Spiritual Nutrition WorldBeat Center Date: 26 February 2010, Friday 06:00 PM 11 Friday: February 26, 2010 Essene Kabbalah Shabbat Ceremony Sunset - 11:00pm Rabbi Dr. Gabriel Cousens will lead us in an Essene Kabbalah Shabbat Ceremony. This is a beautiful Essene tradition which begins every Friday evening at sunset and lasts until sundown the following Saturday. The ceremony includes spiritual teachings that have a background influenced by yoga and the Kabbalah to reflect love, happiness and joy. No matter what your basis for belief, the experience of being led by this acclaimed spiritual leader through such a powerful celebration of life, will no doubt be an evening to remember and cherish. Saturday: February 27, 2010 Special Presentation by Dr. Gabriel Cousens "Small Daily Changes - Massive Global Impact" and "Reversing Diabetes" 6:00 - 10:00pm This is an incredible opportunity to hear Dr. Gabriel Cousens speak on vital global issues that live deep within his heart. He has dedicated his life to researching every avenue of the human condition, and will offer a unique blend of science and spirit for education on how you can be a part of a global solution. This talk will present a global understanding of the symptoms of the Culture of Death, known as global warming and the pandemic of diabetes. The fact that scientifically we have the answers to stop global warming and Type 2 diabetes, but are generally choosing not to follow them, has to do with the difficulty humanity faces in moving into a new frame of reference of how to live in harmony and love with ourselves and the planet. A comprehensive introduction to Energy Cuisine will begin the evening. Sunday February 28, 2010 Culture of Life Immersion 9:00 am - 5:00pm A full day with Dr. Gabriel Cousens. Be inspired by the Culture of Life and immerse yourself in the practices which awaken love and inspiration in you. Experience a life-transforming lecture from Dr. Cousens, be immersed in the spiritual energy of two meditation sessions with Gabriel, practice heart-opening yoga, and enjoy the opportunity to have a culture of life "Energy Cuisine" lunch. Included will be a class on Sprouting your own seeds into completely nourishing, high energy food rich with life enhancing minerals and enzymes. Learn an easy practical ways to grow your own healthy food! This is truly a day you wont want to miss. More information and online registration: Friday Night Ceremony - Dr. Gabriel Cousens - Reversing Diabetes & Spiritual Nutrition Blessings, WorldBeat Cultural Center Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 24 13:29:52 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:29:52 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: US Gov. Archives FBI Chief on UFOs, Congressional Committee on JFK Conspiracy, More News Message-ID: <014001cab590$5bd9d100$138d7300$@net> From: PEERS: WantToKnow.info Email List [mailto:emaillist at peerservice.org] Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 9:00 AM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: US Gov. Archives FBI Chief on UFOs, Congressional Committee on JFK Conspiracy, More News To subscribe to or unsubscribe from this list (one email every few days) or to reply to this message, see end of email This message is available online at http://www.WantToKnow.info/10/100222_fbi_chief_ufo_jfkennedy_conspiracy_government_archives Bookmark and Share Dear friends, Below are key excerpts of important news articles and highly revealing documents from US government archives. One astonishing document on the FBI website reveals that former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover wanted a downed UFO at Roswell. Another from the US government archives website states that the 1979 Congressional committee on assassinations concluded, "John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the government or media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails to function, click here . The most important sentences are highlighted for those with limited time. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word , we can and will build a brighter future . With best wishes, Tod Fletcher and Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team Special note: For intriguing information on how the CIA in the early 1950s may have caused an entire town of 500 in France to go crazy with LSD aerosols, click here . And for some wild and crazy fun with secret agents, watch the awesome animated six-minute video at this link. _____ Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives July 1979, United States National Archives http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/summary.html Findings of the Select Committee on Assassinations in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Tex., November 22, 1963. Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy. The [original] investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive. The Department of Justice failed to exercise initiative in supervising and directing the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the assassination. The Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. The Central Intelligence Agency was deficient in its collection and sharing of information both prior to and subsequent to the assassination. The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. Note: This same US Congressional report, on the subject of the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, states that "The committee believes, on the basis of the circumstantial evidence available to it, that there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King as a result of a conspiracy." Why hasn't this information been widely reported and become public knowledge? For a possible answer, click here . _____ Flying Disks July 10, 1947, FBI Website, Freedom of Information Act Section http://foia.fbi.gov/ufo/ufo1.pdf At request of Brigadier General George F. Schulgen, Chief of the Requirements Intelligence Branch of Army Air Corps Intelligence, Special Agent [deleted] discussed the above captioned matter with him on July 9, 1947. General Schulgen indicated to [deleted] that the Air Corps has taken the attitude that every effort must be undertaken in order to run down and ascertain whether or not the flying disks are a fact and, if so, to learn all about them. He advised that to complete the picture he desired the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in locating and questioning the individuals who first sighted the so-called flying disks in order to ascertain whether or not they are sincere in their statements that they saw these disks. [Deleted] indicated that it was his attitude that the flying disks are not the result of any Army or Navy experiments. He stated that he was of the opinion that the Bureau, if at all possible, should accede to General Schulgen's request. [FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's handwritten response:] I would do it but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance in the Sa. case the army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory investigation. Note: The excerpt above is from pages 44 and 45 of the rich collection of declassified FBI documents on UFOs at the link above. If the link fails, click here . For lots more solid evidence of a major UFO cover-up, see our UFO Information Center at this link . Why hasn't this been widely reported and become public knowledge? For a possible answer, click here . _____ Former NY police commissioner sentenced to prison February 18, 2010, MSNBC/Reuters http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35463787/ns/politics Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, once selected to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was sentenced ... to four years in prison for tax evasion and lying to White House officials. Kerik, 54, who as head of the city's police worked closely with former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks, pleaded guilty to the federal charges in November. A former police detective, and once Giuliani's driver, Kerik headed the New York City jail system before taking charge of the police department in 2000. His career began to unravel during background checks when President George W. Bush nominated him in 2004 to become Secretary of Homeland Security. Kerik withdrew, but his legal troubles later embarrassed Giuliani in his unsuccessful bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. Along with pleading guilty to lying and evading taxes, Kerik admitted receiving apartment renovations from a construction firm suspected of organized crime ties and helping the company win city contracts. The four-year sentence imposed ... exceeded the sentencing guidelines of less than three years, as laid out in Kerik's plea deal, but fell far short of the maximum possible term of 61 years. Note: The NY City chief of police at the time of 9/11 is now in jail. The former head of the NASDAQ stock exchange, Bernie Madoff, is now in jail. Do you think there is corruption at the highest levels of government? How many more have engaged in gross corruption and gotten away with it? To see how deep it goes, click here. _____ Greece to Make All Large Cash Transactions Illegal February 16, 2010, Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/The-Daily-Reckoning/2010/0216/Greece-to-Make-All-Large... Embroiled in its debt crisis and looking for any avenue to bolster tax receipts [Greece] has done the unthinkable ? it has made [cash, in euros] illegal for transactions over 1,500 euros. Of course, larger credit- or debit-based electronic transactions over 1,500 will still be denominated in euros. However, electronic transactions clearly require infrastructure and limit personal freedom. From Reuters: ?From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards.? It seems wrong for the Greek state to dictate how cash euros can be used. In fact, it?s surprising that the EU-endorsed plan would allow Greece to control euro usage at that level. Despite the fact that the reform bill is a piece of an approved EU plan to help improve Greek tax revenue and reduce deficit, it seems to go too far in curtailing personal liberty. How much is a government willing to punish its own citizens for using ?too much? of their own legal tender in an otherwise legal transaction? Note: What gives any government the right to limit cash transactions? And why is the EU approving this unusual measure? Could this be part of a hidden agenda to push the public towards a cashless society? _____ Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe?s Crisis February 14, 2010, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts. As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street?s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels. As in the American subprime crisis and the implosion of the American International Group, financial derivatives played a role in the run-up of Greek debt. Instruments developed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and a wide range of other banks enabled politicians to mask additional borrowing in Greece, Italy and possibly elsewhere. In dozens of deals across the Continent, banks provided cash upfront in return for government payments in the future, with those liabilities then left off the books. Greece, for example, traded away the rights to airport fees and lottery proceeds in years to come. Critics say that such deals, because they are not recorded as loans, mislead investors and regulators about the depth of a country?s liabilities. Note: For a treasure trove of investigations from reliable sources into the many tricks by which Wall Street firms enriched themselves at the expense of others, click here. _____ Swine flu was as elusive as WMD. The real threat is mad scientist syndrome January 14, 2010, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/14/swine-flu-elusive-as-wmd Remember the warnings of 65,000 dead? Health chiefs should admit they were wrong ? yet again ? about a global pandemic. Let me recap. Six months ago [the] BBC was intoning nightly statistics on what "could" happen as "the deadly virus" took hold. The happy-go-lucky virologist, John Oxford, said half the population could be infected, and that his lowest estimate was 6,000 dead. The chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, bandied about any figure that came into his head, settling on "65,000 could die", peaking at 350 corpses a day. The media went berserk. The World Health Organisation declared a "six-level alert" so as to "prepare the world for an imminent attack". If anyone dared question this drivel, they were dismissed by Donaldson as "extremists". When people started reporting swine flu to be even milder than ordinary flu, he accused them of complacency and told them to "wait for next winter". He was already buying 32m masks and spending more than ?1bn on Tamiflu and vaccines. It was pure, systematic government-induced panic ? in which I accept that the media played its joyful part. Note: For lots more on the gross profiteering and fear mongering of swine flu scare, click here. _____ F.B.I., Laying Out Evidence, Closes Anthrax Case February 20, 2010, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/us/20anthrax.html More than eight years after anthrax-laced letters killed five people and terrorized the country, the F.B.I. [has] closed its investigation, adding eerie new details to its case that the 2001 attacks were carried out by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army biodefense expert who killed himself in 2008. A 92-page report, which concludes what by many measures is the largest investigation in F.B.I. history, laid out the evidence against Dr. Ivins. The report disclosed for the first time the F.B.I.?s theory that Dr. Ivins embedded in the notes mailed with the anthrax a complex coded message, based on DNA biochemistry. Whether the voluminous documentation will convince skeptics about Dr. Ivins?s guilt was uncertain. Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and a physicist who has sharply criticized the bureau?s work, said the case should not have been closed. He said the F.B.I. report laid out ?barely a circumstantial case? that ?would not, I think, stand up in court.? Some of Dr. Ivins?s colleagues at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, including several supervisors who knew him well, publicly rejected the F.B.I.?s conclusion. They said he was eccentric but incapable of such a diabolical act, and they questioned whether he could have produced the deadly powder with the equipment in his lab. Note: The FBI's "closure" of its anthrax investigation won't put an end to the unanswered questions about who the perpetrators of the attacks were. As described in this key Wall Street Journal report , the specific formulation of the anthrax used in the attacks was beyond Ivins' capabilities. _____ Battle Over the Bailout February 14, 2010, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/nyregion/14fed.html Mark Pittman, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News ... filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Reserve Board, seeking the details of its unprecedented efforts to funnel money to the collapsing banks of Wall Street. That was in September 2008. Just more than a year later, Mr. Pittman ... died unexpectedly at age 52. But his cause has persevered. It is now known as Bloomberg L.P. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, an attempt to unlock the vault of the largest Wall Street rescue plan in decades ? or, as the legal briefs put it, to ?break down a wall of secrecy? that the Fed has kept in place for nearly two years in its ?controversial use of public money to prop up financial institutions.? The Federal Reserve has wrapped itself in secrecy since the turn of the 20th century, when a select group of financiers met at the private Jekyll Island Club off the eastern coast of Georgia and, forgoing last names to preserve their anonymity among the staff, drafted legislation to create a central bank. Its secrecy, of course, persists today, with Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, refusing to tell even Congress which banks received government money under the bailout. There is also a heated battle to force the Fed to disclose its role in the controversial attempt to save the insurance giant American International Group. Note: Isn't it interesting that Pittman died at age 52 while trying to expose manipulations of the big bankers? For a one-minute video proving the existence of a secret weapon which can cause an undetectable heart attack, click here . For a concise, excellent background on the hidden role of the Federal Reserve, click here. _____ Despite Budgets, Some Newsrooms Persist in Costly Fight for Records February 15, 2010, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/business/media/15hearst.html Last fall Hearst, the big media company that owns newspapers, magazines and television stations, filed a lawsuit against the Texas governor?s office, seeking access to a clemency report in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 but whose guilt is now in doubt. It is the sort of case ? Mr. Willingham may have been innocent, but there is no way of saving him now ? that one might not expect to be taken up by a news organization amid a wrenching economic downturn that has forced a trimming of journalistic resources across the industry. But [some] big companies, like Hearst and The Associated Press, have been quietly ramping up their legal efforts, by doing more of the work in-house ? and saving costs by not hiring outside lawyers ? and being more aggressive in states where they can recoup legal fees and at the federal level, which also allows plaintiffs in such access cases to sue for legal fees when they win. At Hearst, the company?s top lawyer says it has never had more First Amendment lawsuits in courtrooms around the country than it does now. ?I think we?d be the only media company that would say that we?re at an all-time high with the number of access cases we?re bringing,? said Eve Burton, vice president and general counsel at Hearst. _____ On different wavelengths over EMFs February 15, 2010, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-electromagnetic15-2010feb15,0,3390771.story Three years ago, at the age of 48, Camilla Rees had to leave her apartment in downtown San Francisco. Not because of the rent, she says, but because of the radiation. Her personal radiation meter -- yes, such things exist -- spiked after a lawyer couple moved in next door. Rees says she quickly lost her ability to think clearly. "I was unfocused, as if I had suddenly come down with ADHD. I would wake up dizzy in the morning. I'd collapse to the floor. I had to leave to escape that nightmare." Rees asked the neighbors if they had installed a new Wi-Fi router, and sure enough they had, on the wall near Rees' bed. Since then, Rees, a former investment banker, has been on a crusade against low-level electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, of all types, including the microwave radiation that flows from cellphones and cellphone towers. She co-wrote the 2009 book Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless Revolution , one of many recent books to warn against the dangers of EMFs, and founded the website electromagnetichealth.org. Note: For many key reports from major media sources on health issues, click here . _____ More Americans Considering Community Banks February 17, 2010, NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122945143 Bailouts and bonuses have many Americans frustrated with big banks. Some consumers think these giant institutions have lost touch with customers and basic good business practices. They're so fed up that they're holding these behemoths accountable by moving their money to community banks. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post is spearheading a campaign called Move Your Money , which encourages people to move from the banking giants to smaller community banks. "There's a lot of anger about the way banks have acted," says Huffington. "It's a total lack of empathy and concern." The group's Facebook page has more than 27,000 fans. "I think it's already an enormous success," says Huffington. "The fact that people are considering it; the fact that people are doing it; the fact that people are feeling empowered." Note: Please consider going local and supporting credit unions and community banks. For information on moving your checking and savings accounts from profit oriented banks to membership run credit unions, click here and here . _____ More than 1,000 get mumps in New York, New Jersey since August February 9, 2010, CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/08/mumps.outbreak.northeast/index.html More than 1,000 people in New Jersey and New York, many of them adolescent Orthodox Jews, have been sickened with mumps since August, health authorities said Monday. Almost all of those infected with the virus are of the Orthodox or Hasidic Jewish population, and their average age is 14. The mumps outbreak began at a summer camp for Orthodox Jewish boys in Sullivan County, New York, according to the CDC. Health officials have linked the outbreak to an 11-year-old boy at the camp. He had recently returned from the United Kingdom, where a mumps outbreak had spread to 4,000 people. Rabbi Yehunda Pirutinsky was surprised when his 14-year-old son was diagnosed with mumps a week ago. "He was completely vaccinated," Pirutinsky said. "So it was a surprise to us he came down with mumps." Of the New Jersey cases, 77 percent were vaccinated, Terjesen said. But the vaccine is not 100 percent effective, according to the CDC. At two doses, the vaccine is 76 to 95 percent effective, the CDC says on its Web site. Note: 77 percent of the over 1,000 who came down with mumps had been vaccinated against the disease, yet the CDC claims it is 76 to 95 percent effective. Hmmmm... For many reports from reliable sources that highlight serious problems with vaccines, click here. _____ Why Can't Women Ski Jump? February 11, 2010, Time magazine http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1963484_1963490_1963447,00.html Lindsey Van holds the record ? among both men and women ? for the longest jump off of Whistler, B.C.'s normal ski jump, built for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. The 25-year-old skier trains six days a week, 11 months a year and has been jumping for the past 19 years. But when games kick off on Feb. 12, the 2009 women's ski jumping world champion will be nowhere in sight. That's because women aren't allowed to ski jump in the Olympics. It's not for lack of trying. Women ski jumpers have petitioned to join every Winter Olympics since Nagano in 1998, and each time they have been denied by the International Olympics Committee (IOC). In fact, ski jumping is the only Olympic discipline to remain men-only. The IOC declined interview requests for this article but a spokesperson provided a written statement saying, "Women's Ski Jumping does not reach the necessary technical criteria and as such does not yet warrant a place alongside other Olympic events." Van isn't sure what that means. "I would love to know what the technical merits are," she says. "We have international competitions and our own championships. We meet all the technical requirements." _____ Senator Evan Bayh's departure sparks debate about partisanship in Congress February 17, 2010, Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/16/AR2010021605974.html [Sen. Evan] Bayh dealt a triple blow to his Democratic Party and to President Obama with his announcement ... that he is sick of the partisanship in Washington and will not seek a third term. But it was as much Bayh's stated reasons for leaving as the consequences that stirred controversy. "If in fact he believed that the Senate was broken and dysfunctional, then he had a responsibility to stand and man the pumps rather than run for the lifeboat," said Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University. Baker said Bayh's depiction of Congress overstates the case that lawmakers are dealing with something unprecedented in American politics. "I won't say it's cyclical, but from time to time . . . even the Senate goes berserk," he said. He cited the red-baiting era of the early 1950s, saying, "The McCarthy period was a terrible time, in which reputations were ruined, senators attacked each other and questioned each other's motives." Bayh has $13 million in his campaign account and, despite a determined effort by the GOP to mount a serious challenge to his reelection prospects, was leading in early polls. His decision could be taken by other Democrats as one more piece of evidence that the energy so far this year is on the right. Note: If the people of the U.S. stopped falling for the polarization agendas of the power elite and fighting against each other, maybe the elected representatives would start working together for the good of all. _____ Millionaire gives away fortune that made him miserable February 8, 2010, The Telegraph (One of the UK's leading newspapers) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/7190750/Millionaire-gives-away-fortune... Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder is giving away every penny of his ?3 million fortune after realising his riches were making him unhappy. Mr Rabeder, 47, a businessman from Telfs is in the process of selling his luxury 3,455 sq ft villa with lake, sauna and spectacular mountain views over the Alps, valued at ?1.4 million. Also for sale is his beautiful old stone farmhouse in Provence with its 17 hectares overlooking the arri?re-pays. Mr Rabeder has also sold the interior furnishings and accessories business ? from vases to artificial flowers ? that made his fortune. His entire proceeds are going to charities he set up in Central and Latin America, but he will not even take a salary from these. "More and more I heard the words: 'Stop what you are doing now ? all this luxury and consumerism ? and start your real life'," he said. "I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need. I have the feeling that there are lot of people doing the same thing." All the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans to Latin America and builds development aid strategies to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile. Since selling his belongings, Mr Rabeder said he felt "free, the opposite of heavy". _____ Key Articles From Years Past _____ U.S. sought attack on al-Qaida May 16, 2002, MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4587368/ns/us_news-security President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days before Sept. 11 but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. and foreign sources told NBC News. The document, a formal National Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a ?game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth,? one of the sources told NBC News? Jim Miklaszewski. In many respects, the directive ... outlined essentially the same war plan that the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon put into action after the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials did not believe that Bush had had the opportunity to closely review the document in the two days between its submission and the Sept. 11 attacks. But it had been submitted to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, and the officials said Bush knew about it and had been expected to sign it. The couching of the plans as a formal security directive is significant, Miklaszewski reported, because it indicates that the United States intended a full-scale assault on al-Qaida even if the Sept. 11 attacks had not occurred. Note: Why was this kept secret? Why is it still being kept secret? _____ Bookmark and Share Final Note: WantToKnow.info believes it is important to balance disturbing cover-up information with inspirational writings which call us to be all that we can be and to work together for positive change. Please visit our Inspiration Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/inspirational for an abundance of uplifting material. See our archive of revealing news articles at www.WantToKnow.info/indexnewsarticles Your tax-deductible donations, however large or small, help greatly to support this important work. To make a donation by credit card, check, or money order: www.WantToKnow.info/donationswtk Explore the mind and heart expanding websites managed by the nonprofit PEERS network: www.peerservice.org - PEERS websites: Spreading inspiration, education, & empowerment www.momentoflove.org - Every person in the world has a heart www.personalgrowthcourses.net - Dynamic online courses powerfully expand your horizons www.WantToKnow.info - Reliable, verifiable information on major cover-ups www.weboflove.org - Strengthening the Web of Love that interconnects us all To respond to this message, visit www.WantToKnow.info/contactus.php To subscribe to or unsubscribe from the WantToKnow.info list (one email every few days): www.WantToKnow.info/subscribe _____ Change email address / Leave mailing list Powered by YourMailingListProvider -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 24 13:42:19 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:42:19 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] Part V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy Message-ID: <014501cab592$13fc6080$3bf52180$@net> -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 12:02 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Part V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy Part V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy - The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the USA February 23rd, 2010 http://ampedstatus.com/part-v-overcoming-the-divide-and-conquer-strategy-the -economic-elite-vs-the-people-of-the-usa "The conflicting propaganda of opposing parties is essentially what leads to political abstention. But this is not the abstention of the free spirit which asserts itself; it is the result of resignation, the external symptom of a series of inhibitions. Such a man has not decided to abstain; under diverse pressures, subjected to shocks and distortions, he can no longer (even if he wanted to) perform a political act. What is even more serious is that this inhibition not only is political, but also progressively takes over the whole of his being and leads to a general attitude of surrender." - Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes Part V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy -- Economic Elite Vs. The People The primary reason why the Economic Elite have gained such dominance is their commitment to psychological operations that divide-and-conquer the US public. They use their overwhelming influence over mainstream media outlets and political candidates in very clever ways to divide us. It is known among political scientists that powerful forces always seek to gain control of pre-existing social and political institutions so they can usurp their powers. The Economic Elite gained control of both the Democratic and Republican political parties because they knew that hardworking Americans loyally followed these parties, and we believed these parties were looking out for our best interests. We have, for the most part, been lifelong Republicans or lifelong Democrats, but until we see that our favored party has been seized by power and greed addicted interests, we will all continue to lose. These are extremely hard truths to face, but until we face them, we will continue our decline. With half the US population loyal to Democrats and the other half loyal to Republicans, gaining control of both these parties meant total control for them. The past decade is testament to their total control of both parties. In manufactured public opinion, Obama represented a far left swing in US politics, and Bush represented a far right swing, and these two supposed polar opposites also had a Congress overwhelmingly run by members of their own party. Did we get drastically different policies? In what matters most, in both cases, the results were the same: more money and power for the Economic Elite and the continued decline of the US middle class. This fact is now undeniable. Yes, there are definite differences in their rhetoric and on some social issues, but this is the key to the psychological operations, to the divide-and-conquer strategy that they use so effectively. To distract and divide us, they use rhetoric on social issues like religion, gay marriage, abortion, etc., all serious and significant issues that we bitterly disagree on, but in the overall picture, these issues are secondary to the larger, more fundamental political and economic issues that lead to our wealth being stolen from us, and ultimately, our lives being increasingly dominated by a small few. Bush appealed to conservative Republicans and then ran up the deficit to record levels. Obama appealed to liberal Democrats, but increased war spending and support for Wall Street billionaires. In both cases, the candidates severely divided the US middle class, but in the policy decisions that mattered most, they both sided with the economic top one percent at the expense of hardworking Americans. Just look at the last few election cycles. In 2006 and 2008 US citizens rose up in record-breaking numbers to kick out the Republicans in power, whom they felt had betrayed them. Now, with the Democrats in power, the consensus seems to be that in the 2010 mid-term elections we will vote for Republicans and kick out the Democrats who have failed to deliver on the much needed and promised changes. Do you not see the ridiculous nature of this divide-and-conquer strategy? This is a vicious cycle that will continue to lead to our destruction. Psychological Operations 101: Obama Vs. Fox News Part V: Overcoming the Divide and Conquer Strategy -- Economic Elite Vs. The PeopleFor those of us who are strong enough to see beyond our propaganda-induced preconceptions and prejudices, the insidious nature of the Economic Elite's divide-and-conquer strategy is on full display in the feud between Obama and Fox News. About half of the country loves Obama and hates Fox News, and the other half loves Fox News but hates Obama. They both use very effective propaganda to seduce their followers. However, as hard as it is for people who love one of them to admit, they both serve the same masters. Once again, let's look at Goldman Sachs. They financed Obama's campaign and he has rewarded them with policies that have led to them making record-breaking profits, instead of investigating them for the many illegal activities they participated in and continue to take part in. On the other side of this psychological operation, you have Fox News. When was the last time you saw Fox News doing an investigation into the illegal practices of Goldman Sachs? Even the Obama-appointed Tim Geithner, the Economic Elite's main man on the economy, escapes the significant focus of Fox News' powerful attack force. Looking at the Business Roundtable, a significant majority of Obama's campaign funding came from Roundtable members and, as mentioned earlier, he frequently meets with Roundtable members. On the other hand, Fox News is owned by Roundtable member Rupert Murdoch, and Fox relies heavily on advertising money from Roundtable members. Rupert Murdoch even supported Obama over McCain. As someone who monitors Fox News, I can't recall the last time I heard Fox reporting on the activities of the Business Roundtable, not that any mainstream "news" companies do. The list of similarities between the two, when it comes to exposing and holding the Economic Elite accountable, is extensive. So here you have an excellent divide-and-conquer psychological operation. Fox News declares Obama the enemy, and Obama declares Fox the enemy, yet the Economic Elite remain in the shadows, behind the scenes, untouched and continuing their plunder. Just think of all the misplaced outraged spent on these two puppets. Sure, people have many reasons to like and dislike both, but imagine if all the diehard Obama-haters focused their rage on the people who put Obama in power, and if the diehard Fox-haters stopped criticizing everything Fox says and focused on the Economic Elite who control the media environment in which Fox News operates. If the Fox-haters and the Obama-haters united and focused their combined outrage on the common forces behind the both of them, we would all be much better off. The most significant bias in the mainstream media is not the liberal or conservative views propagated to divide, distract, confuse and create apathy among the populace; the ultimate bias is in what is missing from the coverage. The investigative reporting on the most powerful forces within our society is left out of the discussion. McClatchy, one of the few real journalism news organizations, has repeatedly reported on the illegal activities of Goldman Sachs and the crime syndicate they operate in. Yet, an overwhelming majority of mainstream news outlets ignore these reports and nothing is done to hold Goldman Sachs accountable. In fact, two of the leading figures in the outright theft of our money have recently been lauded in their propaganda press. When you see Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke become the Person of the Year in Time Magazine and Goldman Sachs CEO Llyod Blankfein become the Financial Times Man of the Year, you begin to see where the real media bias lies. The main bias is in favor of the thieves who stole our country and economy, and own the mainstream media companies. The omni-present mainstream media is the greatest weapon of oppression humanity has ever known. Although the Internet has had an impact, television news is still by far the most influential news medium. Despite all the new information platforms, this year we have set a new record by watching an average of four hours and 49 minutes of TV per day. We have been subjected to heavy doses of propaganda on a daily basis, for hours a day, every day of our lives. The mainstream media creates what is known in mass psychology as the "spectrum of thinkable thought." By constantly discussing and debating surface issues, they limit the range of debate. Having the Republican vs. Democrat paradigm leads us to never debating the underlying Economic Elite who control both of the parties, not to mention their ownership of the media platform on which this debate is taking shape. The more important underlying issues are never discussed, and therefore never enter public consciousness. Buy the Book: The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of AmericaThe censorship that is most prevalent today is the most dangerous form. Not the censorship of explicit words, sex, or violence, but the censorship of any thoughts outside of elite corporate ideology. Any debate that leads to critical thought on prevailing elite economic dominance is not allowed to enter into the mass media or mainstream public consciousness. From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 24 13:44:05 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:44:05 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Science for Life - Gregg Braden then much more Message-ID: <014601cab592$52165b50$f64311f0$@net> From: Spiritcrossing [mailto:info at spiritcrossing.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 12:27 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Science for Life - Gregg Braden then much more Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. newsletter header + title Hello Friends, Thanks for making "Science for Life" a part of your world. Gregg Braden will be joining us this Wednesday to talk about "Fractal Time". This book has just been released in paperback, and you can get it at a 32% discount through this link . No doubt this will be a wonderful hour, but I wanted to share also the amazing list of guests just ahead. March 3rd - Executive Director of The Monroe Institute, Paul Rademacher March 10th - Martin Romero, Non-Judgment, made real, personal and compelling! March 17th - David Paul Doyle - Stories of inspiration from every day people. March 24th - Dr. Eydi Bauer - The epidemic of Gluten Intolerance. March 31st - Bruce Lipton - Our role in Evolution, at a critical time. It is such a privledge to bring you the wisdom of our time with a take away message week after week. The time we are living is magical simply because we are awakening to our connectedness and our positive impact when we act together. 9:00 AM Pacific, Noon Eastern, or 24/7 On Demand www.ScienceforLife.net Love and light, separator Design:Onegraphic. This message was sent from Spiritcrossing to maryrose333 at att.net. It was sent from: Spirit 2000, SpiritCrossing P.O. Box 11736 , Murfreesboro, TN 37129-0035. You can modify/update your subscription via the link below. Email Marketing by iContact - Try It Free! To be removed click here -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 24 13:45:45 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:45:45 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Join Elisabet Sahtouris and Connie Barlow this week Message-ID: <014b01cab592$860ad530$92207f90$@net> From: ie-newslist at aweber.com [mailto:ie-newslist at aweber.com] On Behalf Of Integral Enlightenment Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 1:49 PM To: MaryRose Subject: Join Elisabet Sahtouris and Connie Barlow this week Having trouble viewing this email? Click here to view it online. Join Us This Week for two events: Connie Barlow and Elisabet Sahtouris Event Information and Access Codes Below Dear Fellow Evolutionaries, Craig What does it mean to shift our context to include the 14 billion years of evolution that led up to this moment? What are the greatest lessons we can learn from the evolutionary history of our Cosmos? This week, I'm delighted to announce that I'll be joined by two dynamic evolutionaries uniquely suited to help us answer these questions. First, this Thursday night, we'll speak with evolutionary thinker and science writer Connie Barlow about the profound perspective shift that occurs when we begin to look at our life--and all of Life--through "Deep-Time Eyes." Then, in a special Sunday event, we'll meet with evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris to explore the important lessons we can all learn from a careful study of Earth's evolutionary history. I hope you'll be able to join us for both of these conversations. You can find links to full event details and access codes for both of these events below. Thanks for all of your emails of appreciation for last Thursday's dialogue with Integral Life Practice author Terry Patten. The evolutionary juices were flowing as we explored how we can infuse our lives with passion and purpose by tapping into the transformative energy of evolution. If you missed that event, as always you can download the audio at our audio archives page. http://EvolutionarySpirituality.com/audios And if you haven't yet checked out our free Evolutionary Caf? live discussion forums, I hope you'll dive in with us this week. For those of you who are interested in meeting other evolutionaries, join us each week immediately following the teleseminar for this facilitated conference call discussion. Our conference call technology allows us to break you up into small groups to explore the topics discussed on the teleseminar call. If you want to participate, you'll need to create a personal PIN code. You can find full instructions for how to participate in this week's Evolutionary Caf?s in the Participate box below. Thanks again for your participation in our series. I look forward to seeing you on the calls! Warm regards, Craig Hamilton Founder, Integral Enlightenment Join Us This Week for Two Events! Connie Barlow "Seeing The World Through Deep-Time Eyes" with Connie Barlow Thursday, February 25, 5:30pm PST Evolutionary forms of spirituality and engagement call for a unique kind of perception grounded in 14 billion years of personal history ? that is, experiencing the entire story of the Universe as one?s own. Join us in dialogue with Connie Barlow, evolutionary thinker, science author, and religious naturalist, as she leads us on the ultimate journey of re-discovery and transformation. For full access instructions click here . Elisabet Sahtouris "Lessons from Evolution: Learning to Walk in the Rhythm of Life" with Elisabet Sahtouris Sunday, February 28, 9:00am PST What can we learn from the great story of evolution that might help us to navigate the challenges of our moment in history? Join us as we dive deep into this great evolutionary drama with renowned biologist, futurist, adventurer and author Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris. Discover how embracing the higher vibrations of greater cooperation can increase our odds of not only surviving, but thriving in the face of change. For full access instructions click here . How to Participate Connie Barlow Thursday, February 25, 5:30pm Pacific; 6:30pm Mountain; 7:30pm Central; 8:30pm Eastern. (GMT: February 19th 1:30am GMT) Listen live by phone or online, or download the recording anytime. For full access instructions click here. Elisabet Sahtouris Sunday, February 18, 9:00am Pacific; 10:00am Mountain; 11:00am Central; 12:00pm Eastern. (GMT: February 19th 5:00pm GMT) Listen live by phone or online, or download the recording anytime. For full access instructions click here. After Each Event Join Us for the Evolutionary Caf? Join us for an exciting new opportunity to interact with other evolutionaries immediately following Thursday's teleseminar. Our phone technology allows us to break participants up into small groups where we'll discuss the ideas that emerged in the evening's call. Come and be part of this live evolutionary community discussion with people from all over the world! To participate in the "Evolutionary Caf?," follow the instructions below. Please note: you'll need to register and obtain a PIN using the link below to be able to call in and participate in this part of Thursday's call. At the end of the main call, hang up and call in using the following phone number and your PIN: Dial 530-216-4294 and enter your PIN to join the Evolutionary Caf?. To get your PIN, follow these simple instructions: 1. Click on this link: http://tinyurl.com/yg3bfx8 2. Enter your name and email address 3. Click on "Register" 4. You will be taken to a page with the call time and date, the phone number, and your own Personal Identification Number (PIN). This PIN is the number you will use for all the Evolutionary Caf? calls. You will also receive a registration confirmation email from Maestro containing the same information. We suggest you save this email somewhere you can find it for future reference. An Academy for Evolutionaries Discover what it means to evolve beyond ego and live an awakened, evolutionary life. To learn more and download a free introductory audio, visit: http://AcademyForEvolutionaries.com Gaia Community: Awaken With Us Thanks to our partners at Gaia Community , an online sanctuary of nearly 300,000 seekers, artists, and visionaries committed to inspiring and empowering each other to live lives of purpose and authenticity, and at Gaia Soulmates , a fledgling dating site for singles seeking a partner who shares their values of spiritual awareness and personal inquiry. http://www.gaia.com Bay Area Integral If you're inspired by the Integral or Evolutionary vision, and live in the San Francisco Bay Area or anywhere in Northern California, get connected to Bay Area Integral . Bay Area Integral offers spiritual community for integral and evolutionary spiritual practitioners through a series of ongoing events including a speaker series featuring today's leading Integral luminaries. Learn more and sign up for a local events newsletter at: http://BayAreaIntegral.com Women on the Edge of Evolution: A Free Online Teleseminar Series Join 21 of the world's leading female thinkers, scientists, spiritual luminaries and agents of cultural change for an unprecedented conversation about women's role in shaping the future. Over 45,000 women are already participating in this dynamic online community. Register today at: http://WomenOnTheEdgeOfEvolution.com . To Listen to Audios from Prior Events go to: http://EvolutionarySpirituality.com/audios Did a friend forward this email to you? Sign up for free access to future events at: http://evolutionaryspirituality.com/ Facebook Join us on Facebook Sponsors Join us on Twitter Event Partners Integral Enlightenment GAIA Enlighten Next Sponsors The Shift Feminine Power Global Mindshift Incubator iEvolve Integrative Spirituality Next Step Awaken 9377 Skyline Blvd, Oakland, CA 94611 To unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit: http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?jIxMDBys7LQsbOysHBwszLRGtGzMbCyc7Ow= -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 24 13:47:50 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:47:50 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [FixGov] NPR's "Fresh Air" yesterday and today Message-ID: <015001cab592$d5e2be60$81a83b20$@net> From: FixGov at yahoogroups.com [mailto:FixGov at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick Kiss?ll Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 5:04 PM To: Fix Government Yahoo Group Subject: [FixGov] NPR's "Fresh Air" yesterday and today National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" has run a couple of especially good episodes this week. Yesterday (Monday) , "Connecting the Dots Between PhRMA and Congress", and today, "CPAC, the Tea Party, and the Remaking of the Right". You can listen to them on-line at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] __._,_.___ Reply to sender | Reply to group Messages in this topic () Recent Activity: ? New Members 2 Visit Your Group Start a New Topic Yahoo! Groups Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest ? Unsubscribe ? Terms of Use . Error! Filename not specified. __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From doctorforu123 at yahoo.com Tue Feb 23 17:52:11 2010 From: doctorforu123 at yahoo.com (javed jamil) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:52:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [GJM] I am not a terrorist, but you are a Tyrant, Mr. President Message-ID: <160192.90866.qm@web51008.mail.re2.yahoo.com> I am not a terrorist, but you are a Tyrant, Mr. President ? My Name Is Khanis yet another apology ? ? It is unfortunate that Muslims continue to be apologetic and defensive in their discourses. One mistake of 9/11 and every Muslim ? be it a Maulana, a professor, a film star or a commoner ? is saying, ?I am not a Terrorist?. And that mistake of 9/11 has never proved to be in truth a mistake of Muslims, with massive doubts expressed by a number of analysts. America has committed thousands of 9/11s on humanity and a number of them on Muslims, and no American is expected to say ?I am not a Tyrant?. At least 100 times more Muslims have been killed by America and its allies than the Americans allegedly killed by ?terrorists? bearing Muslim names. Everyday hundreds of civilians are being killed by Allies? forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. But no Christian priests are expected to condemn every one of these killings; no American comes forward to say, ?My name is James. I am an American but I am not a killer? Why even 9 years after 9/11, with more than millions of Muslims brutally bombed into nonexistence by American killers, Rizwan Khan is taking all the pains to travel to meet President of America in order to tell him that ?My Name is Khan, and I am not a Terrorist?. He should have gone to tell him, ?I am not a Terrorist, Mr President, but you are a Tyrant, a Killer of millions of innocents? ? Dr Javed Jamil -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pippa at pippa-bartolotti.co.uk Mon Feb 22 15:06:52 2010 From: pippa at pippa-bartolotti.co.uk (pippa bartolotti) Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:06:52 -0000 Subject: [GJM] An Absolutely Must Read! FW: The Transition Towns Movement In-Reply-To: <002101cab02a$0cd32680$26797380$@net> References: <002101cab02a$0cd32680$26797380$@net> Message-ID: <007e01cab40b$569ed450$03dc7cf0$@co.uk> A vital piece of work. Thank you Mary Pippa -----Original Message----- From: discussion-bounces at globaljusticemovement.net [mailto:discussion-bounces at globaljusticemovement.net] On Behalf Of mary rose Sent: 17 February 2010 23:35 To: FixGov at yahoogroups. com; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net Subject: [GJM] An Absolutely Must Read! FW: The Transition Towns Movement Thanks to Trading Post Paul for getting this message to us. I have long been familiar with Ted Trainer's work and feel his voice is an authentic one. As I have mentioned before, the motto for Future Dawning is "Living simply so that others may simply live." The transformation/transition we must make cannot be about maintaining the status quo and that is what i so frequently see when I am reading what it is we must do. I would very much like to read a comment on this from Thomas Greco. However, what I do feel is that the Transition Movement is very necessary as a way to get us organized. Let's not pay too much attention to what the manual says -- in hands-on learning experiences, one makes adjustments as one begins to get a feel for "what works" and "what doesn't" as the pieces come together. Again, the video "The Power of Community" sets a good model for us as the people of Cuba have already "been there done that". Do a search for it as there are several websites featuring it - select the best one for you. The full video is about 45 minutes in length. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 1:37 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] The Transition Towns Movement (too idealistic? or the only hope for survival?) "Governments, economists, educational institutions, the media and public will not even think about any challenge to wealth, property or getting as rich as possible. This issue does not appear to be on the TransitionTowns agenda. The goal seems to be to make the town safe from the coming storm but to go on living in it in typical rich world affluent ways, when those ways can?t continue without an unsustainable and unjust global economy." The Transition Towns Movement: Its Huge Significance and a Friendly Criticism by Ted Trainer 16 February 2010 http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id =605&Itemid=1 Editor's note: "Transition Towns" is one of the best ideas in decades, and is being put into practice widely. Author Ted Trainer has a respected track record among energy realists and devotees of sustainability. He wishes to help along a good movement. Culture Change also attempts to support the cause, mainly via activism that has articulated a similar vision vis-?-vis Transition Towns since the early 1990s. If there is a difference in culture change as we see it, compared to the Transition Towns message, it is probably in our petroleum-industry-analysis-based discussions of collapse and overpopulation. Transition Towns dispenses with that negative or scary focus, reflecting a difference in philosophy and tactics regarding what the public can stand to hear and be attracted to. It could be that "transformation" is a more accurate word for an historic, wrenching process than "transition," although we all look forward to positive changes that have been incubating since the back-to-the-land and environmental movement took off 40 years ago. Both Rob Hopkins, originator of Transition Towns, and I foresee with hope the return of sail power for trade and transportation. Perhaps he would agree that re-forming tribes can aid in strengthening community. The world is immensely complicated, and the forces of sweeping change may overall boost transition towns for their positive contribution. Or as Ted Trainer lays out below, a course correction is needed now. His basic message of urgency is this: It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn?t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. You will only escape that fate if you build a radically new economy in your region, and run it to provide for the people who live there. However, an oil crisis can happen overnight and become the most devastating event in history, although it ushers in a new and total cultural transformation. - Jan Lundberg The only way the global sustainability and justice predicament can be solved is via something like the inspiring Transition Towns movement. However unless the movement radically alters its vision and goals I do not think it will make a significant contribution to solving our problems. The Transition Towns movement began only about 2006 and is growing rapidly. It emerged in the UK mainly in response to the realisation that the coming of ?peak oil? is likely to leave towns in a desperate situation, and therefore that it is very important that they strive to develop local economic self-sufficiency. What many within the movement probably don?t know is that for decades some of us in the ?deep green? camp have been arguing that the key element in a sustainable and just world has to be small, highly self sufficient, localised economies under local cooperative control. (See my Abandon Affluence, published in 1985, and The Conserver Society, 1995.) It is therefore immensely encouraging to find that this kind of initiative is not only underway but booming. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that if this planet makes it through the next 50 years to sustainable and just ways it will be via some kind of Transition Towns process. However I also want to argue that if the movement is to have this outcome there are some very important issues it must think carefully about or it could actually come to little or nothing of any social significance. Indeed in my view if it remains on its present path it will not make a significant contribution to the achievement of a sustainable and just world. This will probably strike transitioners as a surprising and offensive comment, but please consider the following case. Everything depends on how one sees the state of the planet, and the solution. In my view most people do not understand the nature and magnitude of the situation, including most green people. Consequently they are working for goals which cannot solve the problems. It is of the utmost importance that good green people and transitioners think carefully about the perspective summarised below. Where we are, and the way out For decades some of us have been arguing that the many alarming global problems now crowding in and threatening to destroy us are so big and serious that they cannot be solved within or by consumer-capitalist society. The way of life we have in rich countries is grossly unsustainable and unjust. There is no possibility of all people on earth ever rising to rich world per capita levels of consumption of energy, minerals, timber, water, food, phosphorous etc. These rates of consumption are generating the numerous alarming global problems now threatening our survival. They are already 5-10 times the rates which would be necessary to provide present rich-world living standards to the 9 billion people expected by 2050. Most people have no idea of the magnitude of the overshoot, of how far we are beyond sustainable levels of resource use and environmental impact. Although present rich world rates of resource use are grossly unsustainable, the supreme goal in consumer-capitalist society is to raise them as fast as possible and without limit. If all expected 9 billion rose to the ?living standards? we in Australia would have by 2080 at present growth rates, then total world economic output would be 60 times as great as it is now! These sorts of multiples totally rule out any hope that technical advance could sustain growth and affluence society. ln addition there is the huge problem of global economic injustice. Our way of life would not be possible if rich countries were not taking far more than their fair share of world resources, via an extremely unjust global economy, and thereby condemning most of the world?s people to deprivation. Given this analysis of our situation it is not possible to solve the problems without transition to a very different kind of society, one not based on globalisation, market forces, the profit motive, centralisation, representative democracy, or competitive, individualistic acquisitiveness. Above all it must be a zero-growth economy, with a far lower GDP than at present, and most difficult of all, it cannot be an affluent society. I refer to this alternative as The Simpler Way. Its core principles must be ? Far simpler material living standards. ? High levels of self-sufficiency within households, national and especially neighbourhoods and towns, with relatively little travel, transport or trade. There must be mostly small, local economies in which most of the things we need are produced by local labour from local resources. ? Basically cooperative and participatory local systems. ? A quite different economic system, one not driven by market forces and profit, and in which there is far less work, production and consumption than at present, and a large cashless sector, including many free goods from local commons. There must be no economic growth at all. There must be mostly small local economies, under our control via participatory systems, and run to meet needs ? not to make profits (although I think we could have markets and many private firms). ? Most problematic, a radically different culture, in which competitive and acquisitive individualism is replaced by frugal, self-sufficient collectivism. Some of the elements within The Simpler Way are:? participatory democracy via town assemblies ? neighbourhood workshops ? many suburban roads dug up and planted with ?edible landscapes? providing free fruit, nuts etc ? being able to get to decentralised workplaces by bicycle or on foot -- voluntary community working bees ? committees - many productive commons in the town (fruit, timber, bamboo, herbs ) ? having to work for money only one or two days a week ? no unemployment ? living among many artists and crafts people ? strong community ? citizen assemblies making many of the important development and administration decisions ? much production via hobbies and crafts, small farms and family enterprises. Modern/high technologies and mass production can be used extensively where appropriate, including IT. The Simpler Way will free many more resources for purposes such as medical research than are devoted to these at present, because most of the present vast quantity of unnecessary production will be phased out. Because we will be highly dependent on our local ecosystems and on our social cohesion, e.g., for most water and food, and for effective committees and working bees (volunteer or entrepreneurial community work), all will have a strong incentive to focus on what is best for the town, rather than on what is best for themselves as competing individuals. Cooperation and conscientiousness will therefore tend to be automatically rewarded, whereas in consumer society competitive individualism is required and rewarded. What we will have done is build a new economy, Economy B, under the old one. Economy B will give us the power to produce the basic goods and services we need not just to survive as the old economy increasingly fails to provide, but to give all a high quality of life. The old economy could collapse and we would still be able to provide for ourselves. Advocates of the Simpler Way believe that its many benefits and sources of satisfaction would provide a much higher quality of life than most people experience in consumer society. It must be emphasised that The Simpler Way is not optional. If our global situation is as outlined above then a sustainable and just society in the coming era of scarcity has to be some kind of Simpler Way. Reform vs radical system replacement. In my view few green people or transitioners recognise the huge distinction here between trying to reform consumer-capitalist society and trying to replace its major structures and systems. The Simpler Way contradicts the core systems of the present society and cannot be built unless we replace them. Consumer-capitalist society cannot be fixed; it cannot be reformed to not create the alarming global problems we face while still being about the pursuit of affluence and growth etc. Consider, ? Therefore a good society cannot be an affluent society, and this contradicts a consumer society. ? An economy that focuses on need, rights, justice, especially with respect to the Third World, and ecological sustainability cannot possibly be driven by market forces. Market forces totally ignore needs, rights, justice etc., because they only allocate scarce things to those who can pay most for them. ? The conditions of severe scarcity we are entering leave no choice but to shift to mostly small, highly self-sufficient local economies run by participatory procedures, which contradicts present centralised and globalised political and economic paradigms. ? The more the market is allowed to determine what happens the more that social cohesion, community, collectivism and solidarity will be driven out. ? The basic values driving a good society cannot be individualistic, competitive acquisitiveness. What do we have to do in order to eventually achieve such huge and radical changes? The answer goes far beyond the things that green/transition people are doing now, such as setting up community gardens, food co-ops, recycling centres, Permaculture groups, skill banks, home-craft courses, commons, volunteering, downshifting, etc. Yes all these are the kinds of institutions and practices we will have in the new sustainable and just world so it is understandable that many people within the Eco-village, Transition Towns and green movements assume that if we just work at establishing more and more of these things then in time this will have created the new society. I think this is a serious mistake. Firstly these things are easily accommodated within consumer-capitalist society without threatening it, as the lifestyle choices and hobby interests of a relatively few people. They will appeal to only that minority potentially interested in composting or organic food or Permaculture etc. Larger numbers will not come to them unless they understand why they should, that is unless they accept the world view summarised above, and therefore see that it is necessary to do these things if we are to save the planet. Just establishing more community gardens and recycling centres does little or nothing to increase that understanding. Secondly, the most crucial institutions for transition are not in the list above, are not being set up, and will not be set up by the thinking motivating the many good green people now establishing the gardens and recycling centres. If the global vision sketched above is valid then we ordinary people in our towns and suburbs eventually have to establish our own local Economy B, take control of it and relegate the market to a very minor role, identify local needs and work out how to meet them, get rid of unemployment, work out how to cut town imports, etc. and grope towards the practices which enable us to collectively self-govern the town. In other words we have to deliberately come together to replace core consumer-capitalist ways in our town. This requires thinking about goals that are at an utterly different level to just initiating some good green practices within present society. It requires coming together to organise collective economic systems and political action. The town must ask itself what are we going to get together to do to solve our problems; what arrangements and institutions do we need to set up to make sure everyone around here is provided for? Such big picture thinking is rarely encountered in current green or transition movements. Hence, ?Just do something ? anything.? Not surprisingly, at present the Transition Towns movement is reformist. It is not in general motivated by the clear and explicit goal of replacing the core institutions of consumer-capitalist society. Its implicit rationale is that it is sufficient to create more community gardens, recycling centres, skill banks, cycle paths, seed sharing, poultry coops, etc. It is not in general motivated by the clear and explicit goal of replacing the core institutions of consumer-capitalist society. (Some people within the movement say or think they are working for change from consumer-capitalist society but my point is that in fact the things they are doing will not have that effect, and will only bring about changes within it.) Thus this rationale assumes that it is in order to do anything green. Just go ahead and set up a community garden here, a nut tree plantation there, and in time it will all add towards the eventual achievement of a satisfactory society. As Alex Steffen has said " just go ahead and do something, anything... All over the world, groups of people with graduate degrees, affluence, decades of work experience, varieties of advanced training and technological capacities beyond the imagining of our great-grandparents are coming together, looking into the face of apocalypse... and deciding to start a seed exchange or a kids clothing swap." (worldchanging.com) However if your goal was to build the kind of society that I?ve argued we must have if we are to solve global problems of sustainability and justice you would very definitely not think it was sufficient or appropriate just to encourage a thousand flowers to bloom. You would think very carefully about what projects were most important to achieve that goal, you would realise that this must involve taking collective control over the local economy, and you would recognise that developing this vision among people in the region is the supremely important task to work on. Thus the insufficiency of resilience. >From the perspective I?ve outlined, making your town more resilient is far from a sufficient goal. That could be little more than building a haven of safety in a world of oil scarcity a haven within a wider society that remains obsessed with growth, markets, exploiting the Third World, and using mobile phones made with Tantalum from the Congo. If you want to protest that you are not just building a haven, that you see yourself as working for the kind of society that would defuse world problems, then again my point is that you won?t achieve that unless your vision and goals shift to way beyond building compost heaps and recycling groups. The lack of guidance A major deficiency in the current Transition Towns movement literature is the lack of information on what to do. The website, the Handbook and especially the 12 Steps document are valuable, but they are predominantly about the procedure for organising the movement and it is remarkably difficult to find clear guidance as to what the sub-goals of the movement are, the actual structures and systems and projects that we should be trying to undertake if our town is to achieve transition or resilience. What we desperately need to know is what things should we start trying to set up, what should we avoid, what should come first. Especially important is that we need to be able to see the causal links, to understand why setting up this venture will have the effect of creating greater town resilience. But unfortunately people coming to the movement eager to get started will find almost no guidance in the current literature as to what to actually try to do, let alone anything like a suggested plan of action with steps and do?s and don?ts and clear explanation of why specific projects will have desirable effects. The advice and suggestions you do find in the literature are almost entirely about how to establish the movement (e.g., ?Awareness raising?, ?Form subgroups?, ?Build a bridge to local government?), as distinct from how to establish things that will actually, obviously make the town more resilient. There is some reference to possibilities, such as set up community supported agriculture schemes, but we are told little more than that we should establish committees to look into what might be done in areas such as energy, food, education and health. The lack is most evident in The Kinsale Energy Descent Plan, which does little more than repeat the process ideas in the 12 steps documents and contains virtually no information or projects to do with energy technology or strategies. It lists some possibilities, such as exploring insulation and the possibility of local energy generation, and reducing the need for transport, but again there is no advice as to what precisely can or might be set up. We need more than this; we need to know how and why a particular project will make the town more resilient, and we need to know what projects we should start with, what the difficulties and costs might be, etc. Just being told ?Create an energy descent plan? (Step 12) doesn?t help much when what we need is to know how we might do that. The authors of these documents seem to be anxious to avoid prescription and dogma, and it is likely that no one can give confident guidance at this early stage, but that does not mean that ideas regarding probably valuable projects should not be offered. Some groups have accumulated experience that now surely indicates more effective directions to take. I worry that the many now rushing into Transition Towns initiatives all around the world will do all sorts of good things, which will not turn out to have made much difference to the crucial issues. At least one group has folded apparently because of confusion over what to do. If people become disenchanted the movement could fizzle and be set back seriously. As I see our situation this movement is our only hope so it is extremely important that it is not allowed to falter. This lack of guidance reflects the reformist nature of the movement, the (implicit) acceptance of the assumption that just adding this and that better practice to this society will eventually fix it sufficiently. The problem of affluence If there is one thing that is responsible for the potentially fatal state of the planet it is the taken for granted, never-thought-about obsession with affluent living standards. Rich world per capita rates of production and consumption are probably ten times higher than the resources of the planet could provide for all. The first principle of a sustainable and just society must be the willingness to live very simply in terms of resource use. This does not imply hardship or deprivation; it is about being content with what is sufficient for a good quality of life. The biggest problem blocking the achievement of a sustainable society is the fact that just about everyone is fiercely determined to have the highest ?living standards? possible and to increase them all the time, without limit. Until this worldview is reversed we cannot possibly begin to make any progress on the global problems it directly causes. The task is astronomically difficult, probably impossible. Governments, economists, educational institutions the media and publics will not even think about any challenge to wealth, property or getting as rich as possible. This issue does not appear to be on the TransitionTowns agenda. The goal seems to be to make the town safe from the coming storm but to go on living in it in typical rich world affluent ways, when those ways can?t continue without an unsustainable and unjust global economy. Again, resilience is not enough. What then should the goals be? My hope of course is to persuade transitioners to adopt a radical global vision which sees the attempt to reform of consumer-capitalist society as a fundamental mistake, and sees the Transition Towns movement as the way to build the kinds of societies that would eliminate the main global problems. Following are the implications I want to suggest for sub-goals. The supreme goal should be building a new local economy, and running it. I don?t think the focal concern of the movement should be energy and its coming scarcity. Yes all that sets the scene and the imperative, but the solution is not primarily to do with energy. It is to do with developing town economic self-sufficiency. The supreme need is for us to build a radically new economy within our town, and then for us to run it to meet our needs. It is not oil that sets your greatest insecurity; it is the global economy. lt doesn?t need your town. It will relocate your jobs where profits are greatest. It can flip into recession overnight and dump you and billions of others into unemployment and poverty. It will only deliver to you whatever benefits trickle down from the ventures which maximise corporate profits. It loots the Third World to stock your supermarket shelves. It has condemned much of your town to idleness, in the form of unemployment and wasted time and resources that could be being devoted to meeting urgent needs there. ln the coming time of scarcity it will not look after you. You will only escape that fate if you build a radically new economy in your region, and run it to provide for the people who live there. All this flatly contradicts the conventional economy. We have to build a local economy, not a national or globalised economy, an economy designed to meet needs, not to maximise profits, an economy under participatory social control and not driven by corporate profit, and one guided by rational planning as distinct from leaving everything to the market. This is the antithesis of capitalism, markets, profit motivation and corporate control. Nothing could be more revolutionary. If we don?t plunge into building such an economy we will probably not survive in the coming age of scarcity. The Transition Towns movement will come to nothing of great significance if it does not set itself to build such economies. Either your town will get control of its own affairs and organise local productive capacity to provide for you, or it will remain within and dependent on the mainstream economy. In other words, the goal here is to build that Economy B, a new local economy enabling the people who live in the town to guarantee the provision of basic necessities by applying their labour, land and skills to local resources all under our control. The old Economy A can then drop dead and we will still be able to provide for ourselves. This kind of vision and goal is not evident in the TT literature and reports I have read. There is no concept of setting out to eventually run the town economy for the benefit of the people via participatory means. The need for coordination, priorities and planning ? by a Community Development Co-op We must somehow set up mechanisms which enable us to work out and operate an overall/integrated plan. It will not be ideal if we proclaim the importance of town self-sufficiency and then all run off as individuals to set up a bakery here and a garden there. It is important that there should be continual discussion about what the town needs to set up to achieve its goals, what should be done first, what is feasible, how we might proceed to get the main things done first, and what are the most important ventures to set up. How should our scarce resources best be deployed (e.g., what are the top priorities for the working bees to do, for our banks to fund )? Of course individual initiatives are to be encouraged but much more important are likely to be bigger projects requiring whole-town effort. This does not imply a vast and detailed plan, nor indeed a confident one, but it is a plea for an attempt to think out goals, priorities and integration. This means that from the early stages we should set up some kind of Community Development Cooperative, a process whereby we can come together often to discuss and think about the town plan and our progress, towards having a coordinated and unified approach that will then help us decide on sub-goals and priorities, and especially on the purposes to which the early working bees will be put. Obviously this would not need to be elaborate or prescriptive and would not mean people would be discouraged from pursuing ventures other than those endorsed by the CDC. Following is an indication of the kind of projects that I think a CDC would try to take up (although not all at a once.) ? Identify the unmet needs of the town, and the unused productive capacities of the town, and bring them together. Set up the many simple cooperatives enabling all the unemployed, homeless, bored, retired, people to get into the community gardens etc. that would enable them to start producing many of the basic things they need. Can we set up co-ops to run a bakery, bike repair shop, home help service, insulating operation, clothes making and repairing operation.... Especially important are the cooperatives to organise leisure resources, the concerts, picnics, dances, festivals? Can we organise a market day? One of the worst contradictions in the present economy is that it dumps many people into unemployment, boredom, homelessness, "retirement," mental illness and depression ? and in the US, watching 4+ hours of TV every day. These are huge productive capacities left idle and wasted. The CDC can pounce on these resources and harness them and enable dumped people to start producing to meet some of their own needs. To do this is to have begun to set up Economy B. We simply record contributions and these entitle people to proportionate shares of the output. (This is to have initiated our own new currency; see below.) This mechanism puts us in a position to eventually get rid of unemployment ? to make sure all who want work, "incomes" and livelihoods can have them (not necessarily in normal, waged jobs). It is absurd and annoying that governments (and the people in your neighbourhood) tolerate people suffering depression and boredom when we could so easily set up the cooperatives that would enable them to produce things they need and enjoy with purpose and solidarity. ? Help existing small firms to move to activities the town needs, setting up little firms and farms and markets. Establish a town bank to finance these ventures, making sure no one goes bankrupt and no one is left without a livelihood. ? Organise Business Incubators. Voluntary panels of experts and advisers on gardening, small business, arts etc., assure we can get new ventures up and running well. ? Organise the working bees to plant and maintain the community orchards and other commons, build the premises for the bee keeper...and organise the committees to run the concerts and look after old people... ? Research what the town is importing as well as the scope for local firms or new co-ops to start substituting local products. ? Decide what things will emphatically not be left for market forces to determine ? such as unemployment, what firms we will have, whether fast-food outlets will be patronised if they set up. We will not let market forces deprive anyone of a livelihood; if we have too many bakeries we will work out how to redirect one of them. The town gets together to decide what it needs, and to establish these things regardless of what market forces and the profit motive would have done. ? Stress the importance of reducing consumption, living more simply, making, growing, repairing old things The less we consume in the town the less we must produce or import. Remember, the world can't consume at anything like the rate rich countries average. As well as explaining the importance of reducing consumption the CDC must stress alternative satisfactions and develop these (e.g., the concerts, festivals, crafts). It can also develop recipes for cheap but nutritious meals, teaching craft and gardening skills, preserving etc. The household economy should be upheld as the centre of our lives and the main source of life?s satisfaction, more important than career. ? Work towards the procedures for making good town decisions about these developments, the referenda, consensus processes, and town meetings. ? Throughout all these activities recognise that our primary concern is to raise consciousness regarding the nature, functioning and unacceptability of consumer-capitalist society and the existence of better ways. Conclusion The Transition Towns movement is characterised by a remarkable level of enthusiasm and energy. This seems to reflect a long pent up disenchantment with consumer-capitalist society and a desire for something better. There is a powerful case that the only way out of the alarming global predicament we are in has to be via a Transition Towns movement of some kind. To our great good fortune one has burst on the scene. But I worry that it could very easily fail to make a significant difference. My argument has been that it will fail if it turns out to have been merely a reformist project, because reforms can?t solve the problems. It is very important that people working for the movement should think carefully about what the global situation is and how it can be solved. I have sketched a perspective on these questions which indicates that the movement is not going to make a significant contribution to the transition to a sustainable and just world unless the underlying vision and goals alter significantly. -------------------------- Appendix: The introduction of local currencies Although the introduction of our own local currency is very important, there is much confusion about local currencies. Often the proposed schemes would not have desirable effects. There is a tendency to proceed as if just creating a local currency would do wonders, without any thinking through of how it is supposed to work. lt will not have desirable effects unless it is carefully designed to do so. I have serious concerns about the currency schemes being adopted by the Transition Towns movement and I do not think the initiatives I am aware of are going to make significant contributions to the achievement of town resilience. It is not evident that they are based on a rationale that makes sense nor enable one to see why they will have desirable effects. It is most important that we are able to see precisely what general effect the form of currency we have opted for is going to have; we must be able to explain why we are implementing it in view of the beneficial effects it designed to have. As I see it, the main purpose in introducing a currency is to contribute to getting the unused productive capacity of the town into action, i.e., stimulating/enabling increase in output to meet needs. (Another purpose is to avoid the interest charges when normal money is borrowed, but this can?t be done unless the new money is to be used to pay for inputs available in the town; it can?t pay for imported cement for instance.) Following is the strategy that I think is most valuable. Consider again what happens in the above scenario, when our CDC sets up a community garden and invites people to come and work in it. When time contributions are recorded with the intention of sharing produce later in proportion to contributions, these slips of paper function like an IOU or ?promissory note? (although that?s not what they are). They can be used to ?buy? garden produce when it becomes available. They are a form of money which enables everyone to keep track of how much work, producing and providing they have done and how great a claim they have on what?s been produced. The extremely important point about the design and use of this currency is that it helps in getting those idle people into producing to meet some of their own needs. Obviously the introduction of the currency was not the most important element in the process; organising the ?firm? was the key factor. It may be obvious the way the currency works, and you can see what its desirable effects are to be. But just introducing a currency of some kind does not necessarily have any desirable effect, and it is crucial to do it in a way that you know will have definite and valuable effects. At a later stage we can use our currency to start trading with firms in the old economy. We can find restaurants for instance willing to sell us meals which we can pay for with our money. They will accept payment in our money if they can then spend that money buying vegetables and labour from us in Economy B. But note that the normal shops in the town cannot accept our money and we in Economy B cannot buy from them, unless there is something we can sell to them. They can?t sell things to us, accepting our money, unless they can use that money. Nothing significant can be achieved unless people acquire the capacity to produce and sell things that others want. So the crucial task here for the Community Development co-op is to look for things we in Economy B might sell to the normal firms in the town. Councils can facilitate this process, for example by accepting our new money in part payment of their rates ? but again only if there is something they can spend the money on, that is, goods and services they need that we in Economy B can provide. Therefore the CDC must look for these possibilities. Sometimes it makes sense for a council to issue a currency to enable use of local resources, especially labour, to build an infrastructure without having to borrow and pay interest to external banks. This can only be done for those inputs that are available locally. If for instance the cement for the swimming pool has to be imported then it will have to be paid for in national currency, but it would be a mistake to borrow normal money to pay the workers if they are available in the town. They can be paid in specially printed new money with which they are able to pay (part of) their rates. Note, however, that the council then has the problem of what to do with these payments. If it doesn't use them the council has actually paid for the pool via reduced normal money rate income, and will have to reduce services to the town accordingly. Better to keep the money perpetually in use within a new Economy B, so those workers and the council can go on providing things to each other. Now consider some ways of introducing a new currency that will not have desirable effects. What would happen if the council or a charity just gave a lot of new money to poor people, and got some shops to agree to accept it as payment for goods they sell? The recipients would soon spend it and be without jobs and poor again. The shops would hold lots of new money but not be able to spend it buying anything they need. (They could use it to buy from each other, but would have no need to do this, because they were already able to buy the few things they needed from each other using normal money.) Again if things are not to gum up, it must be possible for the shopkeepers in the old economy to use their new money purchasing something from those poor people, and that?s not possible unless they can produce things within a new Economy B. Sometimes the arrangement is for people to buy new notes using normal money. This is just substituting, and achieves nothing for the town economy. What?s the point of people who would have used dollars now buying using ?eco?s? they have bought? Again there is no effect of bringing unused productive capacity into action. What about the argument that local currencies encourage local purchasing because they can?t be spent outside the town? This reveals confusion. Anyone who understands the importance of buying local will do so as much as they can, regardless of what currency they have. Anyone who doesn?t will buy what?s cheapest, which is typically an imported item. Obviously what matters here is getting people to understand why it?s important to buy local; just issuing a local currency will make no significant difference. Similarly, currencies which depreciate with time miss the point and are unnecessary. Anyone who understands the situation does not need to be penalised for holding new money and not spending it. In any case it?s wrong-headed to set out to encourage spending; people should buy as little as they can, and any economy in which you feel an obligation to spend to make work for someone else is not an acceptable economy. In a sensible economy there is only enough work, producing and spending and use of money as is necessary to ensure all have sufficiency for a good quality of life. * * * * * Ted Trainer wrote the above article on Dec. 3, 2009, and recently asked Culture Change to post it. He is a Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Social Work, University of New South Wales. His main interests have been global problems, sustainability issues, radical critiques of the economy, alternative social forms and the transition to them. He has written numerous books and articles on these topics, including The Conserver Society: Alternatives for Sustainability, London, Zed, 1995; Saving the Environment: What It Will Take, Sydney, University of N.S.W Press, 1998, and Renewable Energy Cannot Sustain A Consumer Society, Springer, 2007. He is also developing Pigface Point, an alternative lifestyle educational site near Sydney, and a website for use by critical global educators, ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/. It contains the website where his material is available for use. He can be contacted via email at F.Trainer at unsw.edu.auThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or via standard mail at Social Work, University of NSW, Kensington 2052, Australia. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemo vement.net From tschaff at gmail.com Tue Feb 23 10:33:27 2010 From: tschaff at gmail.com (Jeffrey Reisberg) Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:33:27 -0600 Subject: [GJM] Mosler, Wray, Mitchell, and Neo-Chartalism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2D48BE6B-E8C9-443D-B865-78DBF434EDD8@gmail.com> Hi justice seekers, I've been a long time lurker of GJM since this group's founding. These guys (Mosler, Wray et al) , have spent a tremendous amount of time understanding how the current monetary system operates, and then figuring out how to make it work for the cause of Global Justice. You can't accomplish the former without first achieving the latter. Their credentials as academics is superb, but in the world of economics that doesn't mean much. Perhaps it would mean more that they were one of the few who predicted timely and characterized the global financial crisis before it occurred using models. They knew ahead of time that Quantitate Easing wouldn't cause bank lending to increase. That inflation in the current environment is near zero, deflation is the major concern. More recently they are proving themselves highly insightful by explaining why the euro's structure will cause a self imposed meltdown years before the PIIGS were making headlines. As Mitch says that stupid Keansian Warren Mosler, ran one of the most successful hedge funds ever to exist. So before anyone laughs at them and calls them stupid, they should hear out what they have to say. They demonstrate a deep understanding of both Neo-Classical theory as well as Austrian and they argue very convincingly and thoroughly why they are wrong. They are not idiots. (Full disclosure: I consider them personal friends). They propose to get rid of involuntary unemployment. Stabilize prices. Set a fair rate of interest. Redesign the financial system so that it doesn't have such huge government regulation requirements. Restore banks to the public purpose. Restore government to the public purpose. This is by means not a full list of their goals, but they are all motivated to see global justice. One said to me yesterday, what they propose is completely politically impossible in the current environment, but it's a good thing that politically impossible didn't stop the civil rights movement. For those who are interested I highly recommend the Fiscal sustainability 101 series http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=2905, and Deficit Spending 101 http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=332 Lastly read The Sector Balance Model of Aggregate Demand http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2009/07/sector-financial-balances-model-of_26.html All of their analysis is stock-flow consistent, which I can't say for most economic models I've come across in my academic economics training. They all accurately represent current operational realities. So far they are the most brilliant economists I've ever come across. --Jeffa From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 25 02:48:30 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:48:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Banking on Heaven ...economics as confessional Message-ID: <606502.39380.qm@web27402.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Banking on Heaven: economics as confessional ?Jamie Morgan ?I should like,? said young Jolyon, ?to lecture on it: ?Properties and quality of a Forsyte. This little animal, disturbed by the ridicule of his own sort, is unaffected in his motions by the laughter of strange creatures (you or I). Hereditarily disposed to myopia, he recognises only the persons and habitats of his own species, amongst which he passes an existence of competitive tranquillity.?? John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga. The recent comment in the Sunday Times (8/11/09) by the Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, that banks serve a ?social purpose? and do ?God?s work,? was a controversial one. Reference to the Almighty in business and banking often leads to satirical exegesis. Many might respond that the liturgy of banks is public worship of quite another kind than might be ascribed to a divine being. Others might suggest that?God?s work has been done if indeed we are approaching the end of times spoken of in Revelations. Perhaps the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are upon us. Perhaps for pestilence, war, famine and death one might substitute sub-prime, securities, shorting and bonuses. Yet if an end of times was upon us, some might consider bankers to be saints in the guise of sinners. Perhaps they have made the ultimate sacrifice by relinquishing their own place in any putative future paradise. If one takes the viewpoint that the banking system has impoverished us then they have nobly contributed to Mark 14:7. ?The poor will always be with us.? They have ensured that some will then be in a position to demonstrate their goodness on behalf of the poor at $10,000 a plate charity functions. Moreover, every time a banker accepts a bonus s/he makes the ultimate sacrifice in the name of Mathew 19:24. ?It is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.? The eschatologically minded might ask you to think carefully about this next time you are struggling to pay your mortgage. Spare a thought for that holy banker who has selflessly taken the sin of your wealth upon themselves in order to guarantee you your place in heaven. For the theologist these things are contradictions regarding free will and God?s will. Someone?s ?evil? actions seem necessary to creating the conditions of the ?good? for others. Here theology becomes theosophy: has doing ?good? prevented one from being good? This is a circle squared by Aristotelian thinkers like Aquinas in terms of the transformation of conditions. In De Malo Aquinas argues that malum culpae or ?evil of fault? is a condition created by the gap between what one is in terms of a distorted world and what one could be or should be. This may seem like a rather abstruse point to be exploring in an economics blog. But consider what Aquinas is hinting at: to resolve fundamental problems (systems, responsibility, ethical dilemmas, the real existence of adverse outcomes?) go back beyond taking the original conditions as given.?? ??? An absence of this kind of thinking is one of the fundamental failings of economics. In confessional vein I suppose I must call myself an economist. In so far as it might be relevant, I am also an atheist. Let?s call me an EA. Like anyone who has studied, taught, or written from the point of view of economics of the kind we call the mainstream I have experienced the seduction of its construction of puzzles. They are conducive to obsessive problem solving. They have enticing qualities. Like Euclid?s Elements they invite one to accept a number of propositions and then express them in ways that produce definitive answers. I say ?express? because the nature of the process is not really to explore: the curiosity and self-critique that one acquires as an economist exhibits severe topographical limits. I say ?definitive answers? not because economics rejects multiplicity. It does not, it allows for narrow multiplicity (the multiplicity of the mundane and often the inane). I say ?definitive answers? because the acceptable range of answers within problems posed are defining and thus excluding: they are part of boundary operations. Economics has boundaries and beyond them there is merely rumour, cartographic sigils, and perhaps a word of warning: the modern mainstream economics translation of Cave! Hic dragones is Beware! This is not tractable. Euclid?s Elements, of course, has one great advantage over much of modern economics. You can actually construct a building using Euclidean principles and it would not fall down. If you built an economy that attempted to be genuinely faithful to mainstream economics it would fail. As recent experience shows, if one seeks even to legitimate and ?liberate? a market economy in ways faithful to mainstream economics one invites failure. A perfect circle may not exist outside of the imagination, some propositions, such as the parallel postulate, may be philosophically vexatious, but the relation between reality and rendition in Euclid is in the end rather different than that between a market economy and mainstream economics. ???????????? Let?s go back to my first paragraph. What would a mainstream EA make of it? The usual place to start would be with the problem of the agent. What is the banker?s dilemma? Mathew 19:24 would appear to bar the banker from paradise. A mainstream approach would be to fixate on Mathew 19:24 in a literalist fashion. Not a biblical literalism, an autistic economic literalism. Let?s call this approach an autochthonous singularity: a focus on a problem as self-seeding, in situ, or self-contained. This is an approach that functions as though the economist brings nothing but analytical clarity to the problem, an analytical clarity abetted (rather than compromised) by the rigour of tools that can express that clarity. The mainstream EA approach would then be to state that the problem is simply that needles are not big enough: we need needles fit for purpose! An EA might then argue that a parsimonious solution would be for the wealthy banker to assess his exogenous preference set and solve the problem in an optimal way by expressing a demand for larger needles. At the same time and in conformity with Say?s Law a vibrant market producing and retailing needles would arise. A whole series of consequences would then follow in a mainstream EA world. Competition would be based on a monetarisation of divine incentive: the precise value that markets can place on needles of ever larger size would be a proxy for the value of a soul. Ultimate success would be the purchase and consumption of needles sufficiently large that even the most corpulent banker could step through without any need to risk sciatic trauma. Markets would equilibrate such that all those who could afford needles of various sizes and valued them in a corresponding way in terms of their given preference orderings could purchase them. This holy rolling market would foster new shifts in the allocation of resources calibrated through price signalling.?? The world?s resources would thus be ?efficiently? allocated rather than ?wasted?. Pareto optimality would follow and human welfare concerns would thus be satisfied. The role of the economist would be to prove this. The role of the economist would be to ensure that policy was aware of the significance of these proofs. We, meanwhile, would live in a world of bigger and smaller needles that economists could also argue proved to us we also lived in the best of all possible worlds precisely because a model and a method told us that this was the case. Some of us, we would be told, would get into heaven because we were poor, the few, apparently, would get into heaven because they were rich. The system itself would distribute poverty and wealth based on how well we had pursued our ends (or chased our tails) when competitively driven to do so. This would be free choice exercised in the name of free markets and in which we all got what we deserved as our formal freedoms were practically pursued (but in which practical freedoms were never genuinely created). Each step in the process could be modelled and assigned definable outcomes ? even the future. Note this is an efficient and rational solution where the terms of the debate have been warped by the very concepts of numerical efficiency and rationality that constrain the process of thought. Taking a problem as an autochthonous singularity based on an economic literalism is a method so focused, so withdrawn to a single point, that it sheds no light on the original terms of the problem. No light can escape it because it is a singularity. It is a way of thinking about ends without asking about ends. It ignores ultimate concerns and fundamental critical analysis of that which gives sense to the original problems as posed by a subject matter. Of course, anyone paying careful attention to the argument would note that I have posed this as how a mainstream EA might think. ?A? stands for atheist and one might counter that this status entails (forces) a rejection of the terms of debate because why pursue a rational strategy towards ends that in terms of one?s own beliefs are perverse? The simple answer here is that a mainstream EA would be one of the few to whom Pascal?s wager genuinely applied. Pascal?s wager is: if God exists then the failure to conform to what is necessary in order to appease God has consequences that God?s non-existence does not: ergo believe in God. The usual counter to this position is that one cannot rationally believe in God based on the risk that arises from the failure to do so: one is merely simulating belief through exterior actions (one cannot force oneself to believe). But the whole basis of mainstream economics is about how one calculates activity and outcomes and is thus always the simulation of belief in what one is doing. It lacks any genuine understanding or theorisation of a self with depth that is not a contradiction. It is individualism as exteriority. It creates a form of the behaviourist problem of validation and understanding of self through intermediation: you?re alright how am I? As such an EA proposing and indeed enthusiastically engaging in a needle market system would be a formal contradiction that was forever practically deferred by the shallowness of the concept of the human and the obsessive focus on the minutiae of problem solving. This is a problem solving whose inertia prevents one pushing out beyond cartographic limits into lands previously labelled Cave! Hic dragones. Mainstream economists are living contradictions and an EA in this context would simply be a particular form of that. ????????????????? This brings me back to the significance of thinking about Aquinas. Mainstream economics is demoralising. It is demoralising in the usual way we interpret the word, since its very existence is a signal of the failure of better arguments to catch on (of thought to exceed knowledge in pursuit of new and better knowledge). But it is also specifically de-moralising: its method and meanings tells a story that simply marginalises morality as beyond its scope. Moral engagement, rather than moralising per se, or moral determinism that is not up for debate, should be a constitutive part of the process of critical construction of economic theories. Furthermore, we should always be prepared to go back beyond the original conditions as given. Consider the following quote from Lloyd Blankfein on banker?s pay: ?I don?t want people in this firm to think that they have accomplished as much for themselves as they can and go on vacation. As the guardian of the interests of the shareholders and, by the way, for the purposes of society, I?d like them to continue to do what they are doing. I don?t want to put a cap on their ambition. It?s hard for me to argue for a cap on their compensation.? Now this is a perfectly consistent and in its? own terms reasonable statement. It exists within a common contemporary logic that oxygenates financial system discourse. The logic is that incentive based pay, expressed in either partnership profit allocations or bonuses, motivate the individual agent to produce commensurately larger levels of returns for other ?stakeholders?. For shareholders this is profits and thus dividends (and equity appreciation). For the population at large this is capital allocation for productive investment that motors the business cycle (creating jobs etc.) and capital allocation for financial investment that creates returns seen in pension funds etc and seen in financial innovations that expand credit creation and underpin the availability of mortgages etc. The logic follows from the work of Michael Jensen and others on the ?agency problem? in economics. For Jensen optimal growth is produced through ?incentive realignment?. Put another way, pay key decision makers more and do so in accordance with scales, returns and profits and everyone gains. There are many ways to critically approach this logic. A consequentialist might look at the terms of the justification and the actual outcomes and simply make the obvious substantive point that the alignment undermines itself since not only is it possible for the system to create gains to the key decision makers that are not reflected in overall gains to others, but the very mechanics of the focus of the system cause the interests of the two to periodically deviate. Here one might make the point that incentive realignment is about incremental gains and the push for incremental gains in a competitive system (competitive between decision makers and between the organizations in which they operate) incrementally destabilises the system. Incrementalism is actually an incentive to pervert incentives and to subvert brakes on the perversion of incentives: the system has an accelerator but no effective breaking mechanisms because financial innovation is regulatory subversion and expanding returns means confounding control. Approaching the problem in this way invites one to think about how one can introduce effective breaks and what it would mean to genuinely align interests. For example, one might think about changing the nature of time horizons from the short to the long through restructuring pay incentives. This is one of the major ways reform is currently being thought about in the banking system. One might, however, want to take the next step back and ask what are we interested in incentives for? We are interested in incentives to produce a virtuous circle of growth that feeds across all areas of the economy. This is the context of justification for pay inequality and the huge income disparities created by providing bankers, traders etc. with contracts that allow them as individuals to receive significant proportions of collective wealth. The idea is that they are pivotal in creating it.??? Let?s assume for the moment that they are potentially pivotal in creating it. The lever of the argument still remains ?incentive?. Aligning incentives can be looked at in many different ways. For the majority, the flexibilities of modern labour markets expressed in mainstream economics have been founded on job insecurity. They have been founded more on stick than carrot. One might make the argument that what bankers, asset traders etc. lack is genuine job insecurity. By this I don?t simply mean that they cannot be fired. I mean that once they are in the league that earns US$1m bonuses they need not genuinely fear being fired. For the majority work is about livelihood, but for these financial workers it is about ego, status, and ordinal rank amongst a wealthy coterie (one might say they are ordained when inducted into the top flight of finance). If one goes back beyond the original conditions as given to reconsider the problem one might make a case for creating genuine job insecurity for the upper echelons of the financial system. Genuine job insecurity would create a quite different approach in considering Lloyd Blankfein?s statement that ?It?s hard for me to argue for a cap on their compensation.? ?Compensation? is a curious term. It creates connotations of what has been foregone during the arduous and supposedly less preferable period of work. Yet since 5 years in the top echelons of finance will earn a person of ordinary consumption ambition more than they could reasonably spend it would follow from the connotations of compensation that a banker should retire quickly. That s/he does not is a signal that the work is not about ordinary consumption ambition and that the work is actually preferable to alternatives, in which case, according to the logic of compensation, perhaps these financial workers should be paying us for the privilege of managing our money? This seems absurd and perhaps trivial but it is a serious point: the terms of the debate need to be questioned. Financial workers lack job insecurity and they value their work as more than pay, but obviously and paradoxically that is because of what the pay signals to others. The pay is not compensation per se it is symbolisation. Blankfein?s statement would, however, be quite a different one if he tried to defend multi-million dollar remuneration with the statement: It?s hard for me to argue for a cap on their symbolisation. The absurdity would then be reversed and attributed to the financial system not to the critic. ?? Consider also that the notion of incentive realignment can be viewed as not one of scale but rather of ratios. A financial worker who received a bonus that was some miniscule fraction of trading volumes, revenues, returns or some other indicator is still one that is incentivised. A financial worker might consider the sums derisory. But that is because of their expectations of wealth and the relative returns to others in the financial world. Outside the financial world, economics argues for the management of expectations to create stability: monetarists opted for crushing hikes in interest rates in the early 1980s in order to ?squeeze inflationary expectations? out of the system. It is curious that this logic does not apply to the financial world. One could argue for squeezing unreasonable expectations of large remuneration levels out of the finance system. This would actually also address the second issue of ?relative returns? since the change would need to be systemic. The real arguments for maintaining pay levels are simple inertia and the counter that if we paid less key workers would go elsewhere where pay is more. Note that neither of the most powerful arguments for financial worker pay are about incentive at all, they are about failing to fundamentally confront systemic circumstances at the level of the system. As such, they are in the language of mainstream economics, about failures to confront the frictions in a given labour market. It is a curious tension that financial labour markets are part of a finance system that has been justified by mainstream tenets at the same time as being a prime example of, in terms of the language of this way of theorising, a ?distorted? labour market. If you are feeling that the points above seem somehow to be missing the point because the real world is a place of difference, compromise and pragmatism, a place where any policy intervention must confront power, then I offer you two final considerations. One of the things that needs to be done is to show precisely the absurdities of theory, such as economics, in its relation to reality. Moreover, we need to think more about the historical mutability of reality: this is also a forward looking imaginary process. A situation where the upper echelons of the financial system earned basic pay of US$100,000 per year and bonuses based on much smaller ratios than is currently the case is not inconceivable. Prior to the transformations of the 1980s the remuneration differentials in most economies were far smaller than they are now. The new situation came from somewhere and can thus be removed because it is contingent rather than necessary. One needs to ask the fundamental questions: is the differential (and scale) good and is the differential (and scale) desirable? I leave these questions with you. What I would say is that the upper echelons of financial work can be well paid and reasonably incentivised rather than astronomically paid and incentivised in an incendiary way. Financial workers would then have to think about how to work a full and long life in the same way as the majority. They might then have genuine job insecurity. Their relation between livelihood and symbolisation would have more in common with the rest of us. This would be social incentive realignment: a move towards conformity in community. It would contribute to a system without levels of income differential that were both economically and socially destabilising (one of the main causes of the financial crisis through the seduction of debt creation). I?m not suggesting that job insecurity or simple incentive ratios are necessary or sufficient. To a degree they are small within system solutions that begin the process of transforming aspects of it. One might want to think on a grander scale. Job insecurity and smaller incentive ratios are simply proposals that illustrate the importance of thinking differently. As I?ve tried to say in a rather roundabout way this is something economists in particular don?t do enough of. An EA, rather like a member of AA, needs a place to begin, a process of (12) steps to set off in a new direction. Post-Autistic/Real World?Economics, of course, has been a prime site for the beginning of such a journey. Categories: crisis, economics profession, financial markets Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment Trackback No comments yet. No trackbacks yet. Name (required) E-mail (will not be published) (required) Website Click here to cancel reply. Subscribe to comments feed Notify me of follow-up comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. MGJS.loadCommentShortcut(); Shale gas ? article yanked and editor?fired Oil?prices RSS feed Google Youdao Xian Guo Zhua Xia My Yahoo! newsgator Bloglines iNezha Email Subscription Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Revere Award in Economics Nominations for the Revere Award in Economics About About this blog Subscribe for free to the real-world economics review Go here: http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Sub=332386 Recent Comments KK on Greenspan, Friedman and Summers win Dynamite Prize in?Economics Badtux on Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics Badtux on Greenspan, Friedman and Summers win Dynamite Prize in?Economics Dave on Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics lordonlow on Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics Sam Sun on Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics Alan Harvey on Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics Jeffery Smith on Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics Robert on Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics Roy Langston on Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics Pages 10 Most Popular?Posts About Comments on issue no. 51 ? Dec.?1 Inequality as policy: The United States Since?1979 Global commons and common?sense Managerialism and the Demise of the Big?Three The demise of?neoliberalism? Money manager capitalism and the global financial?crisis IMF?s policies during the world?recession A man for this season??Keynes Economic theory and the?crisis Dynamite Prize results press?release New Formal Models or New?Methods? Nominations for the Revere Award in?Economics Vote for the Dynamite Prize in?Economics Vote here for the Dynamite Prize in?Economics Short List?Dossiers Alan?Greenspan Andre?Zylberberg Art?Laffer Assar?Lindbeck Ben?Bernanke Blythe?Masters Domingo?Cavallo Edward?Prescott Eugene?Fama Finn E.?Kydland Fischer?Black George?Stigler Larry?Summers Michael?Jensen Milton?Friedman Myron?Scholes Paul?Samuelson Pierre?Cahuc Richard?Portes Robert?Lucas Thomas?Sargent Timothy?Geithner Amazon links to recent books by this blog's authors David Ruccio, ?Economic Representations: Academic and Everyday? Dean Baker, "Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy" Edward Fullbrook (editor), "Ontology and Economics: Tony Lawson and His Critics" Edward Fullbrook (editor), "Pluralist Economics" Frank Ackerman, "Can We Afford the Future?: The Economics of a Warming World" Frank Rotering, "Needs and Limits: A New Economics for Sustainable Well-being" Grazia Ietto-Gillies, "Transnational Corporations And International Production" Jamie Morgan, "PRIVATE EQUITY FINANCE: Rise and Repercussions" Kevin Gallagher, "The Enclave Economy" Mark Weisbrot, "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" Paul Davidson, "The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Economic Prosperity" Paul Ormerod, "Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics" Peter Earl, "Information, Opportunism and Economic Coordination" Steve Keen, "Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences" Authors Edward Fullbrook pesod frankackerman paul davidson iettogg paul ormerod Kevin P. Gallagher dormanp deanbaker1 Mark Weisbrot Steve Keen David Ruccio Peter Earl Peter Earl jamieamorgan Lewis L. Smith pardoguerra staveren bruceedmonds frankrotering Editor donaldgillies Family Links David Ruccio?s Blog Dean Baker Op-Eds and Columns Global Development and Environmental Institute Mark Weisdbrot Op-Eds and Columns real-world economics review Steve Keen?s Debtwatch Triple Crisis Walking Against Australia's Property Mania Tags Bolivia cap and trade carbon trading censorship climate change crisis dominant paradigm ecological economics economic growth economic models economics journals economics of climate change economics profession Ecuador Elinor Ostrom emerging markets emissions environment environmental issues fee and dividend financial markets financial system global banking global warming Great Depression hours of work IMF institutional economists jobs Latin America macroeconomics mainstream multidisciplinary natural resources Obama oil Oliver Williamson rational agents regulation stimulus students trade unemployment women in economics World Bank Search for: Top Posts and Pages- last 48 hours Greenspan, Friedman and Summers win Dynamite Prize in Economics Dynamite Prize results press release Nominations for the Revere Award in Economics Regarding nominations for the Revere Prize and media response to the Dynamite Prize Vote here for the Dynamite Prize in Economics Contact pae_news at btinternet.com Archives February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 Recent Posts Regarding nominations for the Revere Prize and media response to the Dynamite?Prize New Blog on ?Triple Crises? in Finance, Development, and?Environment Greenspan, Friedman and Summers win Dynamite Prize in?Economics Do we put a price on Nature, including the ecosystem, or?not? Launching?www.keenwalk.com.au 5,000 voters and 14,000 votes for the Dynamite Prize in first two?weeks Social Complexity of Informal Value?Exchange Miscellaneous?#2 On the ?Nobel Prize in Economics? and the monopoly of neoclassical theory at university departments of?economics The Angry Bear is?saddened Top WordPress Copyright ? 2009-2010 Real-World Economics Review Blog Blog at WordPress.com. Theme by NeoEase. Valid XHTML 1.1 and CSS 3. var skimlinks_pub_id = "725X1342"; var skimlinks_sitename = "rwer.wordpress.com"; var skimlinks_domain = "go2.wordpress.com"; skimlinks(); _qoptions = { labels:"adt.0,language.en,posttag.crisis,posttag.economics-profession,posttag.financial-markets" };_qacct="p-18-mFEk4J448M";quantserve(); st_go({'blog':'10060093','v':'wpcom','user_id':'0','post':'208','subd':'rwer'}); ex_go({'crypt':'RDZ8LFkxbXFpUUhpYm5dQSx+QkxOP3hERUtUeUtbR1dPR0JtNDAlSlpwPThYUz0mY2E3X1E4QWI0eGJ3VWloalFQbT9bX0IwZWdTfkxQZklNOE96JXowWDBodS9EJlcxPS9DX0NafjRbVVEmd2tiNE9oaDdNdDldS2NFM1dyRixzQU1VbTgmTXNId0xDNHd6LzFBampHWEsuSElNYywtbzkvSiZsblZlSTA/fFlCcXkzW2ZPVmMsJTdSek1fLk9WTWkmNXRwTGxldWY0NXpTOTd6d1lYP2J+azFIKzB6MkIlVnlC'}); addLoadEvent(function(){linktracker_init('10060093',208);}); -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 25 04:05:04 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:05:04 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Wind power centre to create jobs Message-ID: <805275.88132.qm@web27408.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Breaking News Wind power centre to create jobs 28 mins ago Buzz Up! Print Story Hundreds of new jobs are to be created under a ?100 million investment in a new wind turbine research centre, it was announced. Skip related content Related content Bin retirement law, charities urge Tories vow to sweep away social work bureaucracy 'Benefits a lifestyle choice' for single mums Related Hot Topic: Employment Have your say: Employment Mitsubishi said it was looking at a number of sites in north east England to carry out research into building the world's biggest turbine blades. The Government is supporting the development with grants of up to ?30 million. Up to 200 skilled jobs will be created over the next few years but business secretary Lord Mandelson said the move could lead to the creation of up to 1,500 jobs in the future. Lord Mandelson and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband signed a memorandum of understanding with Mitsubishi executives at the Business Secretary's London offices to mark the investment. Mitsubishi chief executive Akio Fukui said the firm was looking at a number of locations in the North East where a factory will be built for the research to be carried out. A prototype turbine will be built within three years and the first full-scale production will start after four years. The turbines will be for offshore wind farms and will be offered for sale in overseas markets such as Germany, the United States and China as well as the UK. Lord Mandelson said the announcement was a "real opportunity" for the UK to become a world leader, adding: "No country makes offshore wind turbines of the size we are talking about today on a commercial scale. Twenty years ago the UK was a leading centre for onshore wind technology, but we failed to capitalise on that by not providing the right climate for growth. "We are determined not to let that happen again. We are creating the largest market in the world for offshore wind and we intend to build and support the industry." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 25 04:24:38 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:24:38 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Mosler Economic Policy Center Message-ID: <796562.77635.qm@web27406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? ???????? Maybe of interest. It seems that Mosler is doing a Soros by creating a center for alternative economic thinking! ? ? http://www.mecpoc.org/ ? ? Robert Searle. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com Thu Feb 25 05:42:31 2010 From: rodney.shakespeare1 at btopenworld.com (Rodney Shakespeare) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:42:31 -0000 Subject: [GJM] Mosler, Wray, Mitchell, and Neo-Chartalism References: <2D48BE6B-E8C9-443D-B865-78DBF434EDD8@gmail.com> Message-ID: <007501cab618$228c97b0$4001a8c0@your447023ae6b> Hi long time lurker Jeffa, I do not know all that much much about Mosler and Wray but understand them to be Keynesians. A number of people/groups forecast the crisis (and it is a basic part of binary economics that the system is fundamentally flawed, completely out of kilter, is inherently inflationary and at some point is bound to crash). But congratulations to Mosley and Wray for being accurate forecasters and for seeing that quantative easing would not increase bank lending but NB the PIIGS problem is largely the fault of too much Keynesian spending. Accurate analysis and critique in themselves are far from enough because what matters is the solution. Thus the Austrian school has, to a great but still far from complete extent, an accurate analysis of what is wrong but its solution is Back To The Past of nineteenth century economics. As regards Keynesians, they:- a) want increased borrowing, at interest, which only compounds debt and debt (in various forms) is a main cause of the present crisis b) do not understand that a key cause of present imbalance is that ordinary people do not own productive capital (the Keynesians do everything in terms of employment when it should be employment AND capital ownership c) do not understand that an interest-free loan supply for fornms of productive capacity and its spreading can come from the national bank (administered by the commercial banks) and that the creation of new money by the banks can and should be curbed (let them lend their own money and, with permission, that of depositors). So Mosler and Wray are certainly not idiots and they are well-motivated but their solution needs improvement. Rodney Shakespeare. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeffrey Reisberg" To: Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 5:33 PM Subject: [GJM] Mosler, Wray, Mitchell, and Neo-Chartalism > Hi justice seekers, > > I've been a long time lurker of GJM since this group's founding. These guys (Mosler, Wray et al) , have spent a tremendous amount of time understanding how the current monetary system operates, and then figuring out how to make it work for the cause of Global Justice. You can't accomplish the former without first achieving the latter. Their credentials as academics is superb, but in the world of economics that doesn't mean much. Perhaps it would mean more that they were one of the few who predicted timely and characterized the global financial crisis before it occurred using models. They knew ahead of time that Quantitate Easing wouldn't cause bank lending to increase. That inflation in the current environment is near zero, deflation is the major concern. More recently they are proving themselves highly insightful by explaining why the euro's structure will cause a self imposed meltdown years before the PIIGS were making headlines. As Mitch says that stupid Keansian Warren Mosler, ran one of the most successful hedge funds ever to exist. So before anyone laughs at them and calls them stupid, they should hear out what they have to say. They demonstrate a deep understanding of both Neo-Classical theory as well as Austrian and they argue very convincingly and thoroughly why they are wrong. They are not idiots. (Full disclosure: I consider them personal friends). > > They propose to get rid of involuntary unemployment. Stabilize prices. Set a fair rate of interest. Redesign the financial system so that it doesn't have such huge government regulation requirements. Restore banks to the public purpose. Restore government to the public purpose. This is by means not a full list of their goals, but they are all motivated to see global justice. One said to me yesterday, what they propose is completely politically impossible in the current environment, but it's a good thing that politically impossible didn't stop the civil rights movement. > > > For those who are interested I highly recommend the Fiscal sustainability 101 series http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=2905, and Deficit Spending 101 http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=332 Lastly read The Sector Balance Model of Aggregate Demand http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2009/07/sector-financial-balances-model-of_26.html > > All of their analysis is stock-flow consistent, which I can't say for most economic models I've come across in my academic economics training. They all accurately represent current operational realities. So far they are the most brilliant economists I've ever come across. > > --Jeffa > _______________________________________________ > Discussion mailing list > Discussion at globaljusticemovement.net > http://globaljusticemovement.net/mailman/listinfo/discussion_globaljusticemovement.net > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Thu Feb 25 08:28:38 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:28:38 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] GJM] Mosler, Wray, Mitchell, and Neo-Chartalism Message-ID: <387947.71963.qm@web27407.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Jeffa, et al.. ? ????????? Mosler, Wray, and Mitchell may have excellent academic credentials but that itself as you realize does not mean much.. ? ..?What is needed is a total upgrading of economics into something more advanced than what exists today. The technology is there, and there is no reason why a new techno-paradigm cannot emerge in which both the rich, and the poor can benefit. Here, I refer to my project in development which has been through a few changes... ? http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics ? ? ??? Imagination is more important than knowledge. ? ????????????????????????? Einstein. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 26 03:27:13 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:27:13 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Budget Reconcilitation, and the Health Care Reform. Message-ID: <787913.85070.qm@web27406.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ? Dear All, ? ?????????? President Obama had a "summit" with Republicans about Health Care Reform. However, this lead nowhere. Apparently, something called a budget reconcilitation may be the way to somehow force??through the Health Care Reform with a majority vote. The link may give us some idea of how this works.. ? ? http://www.rules.house.gov/archives/bud_rec_proc.htm ? R.Searle. ? ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 26 03:31:10 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:31:10 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] The Clean Air Act. Message-ID: <976344.24870.qm@web27403.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Attack on the Clean Air Act The Murkowski Resolution Download: Petition Opposing Murkowski Amendment The Clean Air Act, originally passed in 1973 and amended in 1990, was designed to protect our public health and environment and has successfully done so for nearly 40 years. This hallmark legislation is currently under attack from a resolution introduced by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and supported by 38 co-sponsors. The Clean Air Act allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions of pollutants that "endanger public health and welfare." In 2007, the Supreme Court affirmed EPA's authority to regulate global warming gases (also known as greenhouse gases) as a pollutant if the Agency determined, after thorough scientific investigation, that these gases endanger public health. EPA scientific staff conducted this investigation under the Bush administration, but the White House prevented the Agency from issuing a finding. Under the Obama Administration, after evaluating the latest climate science, the EPA finally released the "endangerment finding" in December 2009, highlighting the public health implications of unabated global warming emissions. These include: longer heat waves that harm the sick, poor, and elderly; extreme weather events that can lead to death and injuries; and increases in ground-level ozone linked to respiratory illnesses like asthma. Now, rather than allowing the EPA to take the next step in regulating this pollution, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) along with 38 co-sponsors, introduced a resolution on January 21 to reject this science-based endangerment finding and prevent the EPA from protecting the public's health by curbing global warming. The binding resolution will likely be put to a vote sometime this spring. See Senator Murkowski's floor speech about the resolution in the Related Resources list on the right hand side of this page. Blocking EPA action on global warming may obstruct critical federal standards for vehicles and major emitters. Specifically, the resolution could prevent the EPA from finalizing new standards for vehicles that would curb tailpipe emissions, save consumers money at the gas pump, and cut America's oil dependence. Likewise, it would prevent the agency from requiring that new coal-fired power plants and other large emitters use modern technology to reduce their global warming pollution. The Clean Air Act is a law with a nearly 40-year track record of cutting dangerous pollution to protect human health and the environment and to spur innovation. This legislation has prevented more than 400,000 premature deaths and hundreds of millions of cases of respiratory and cardiovascular disease. Instead of standing in the way of progress, Congress should move quickly to enact the comprehensive climate and energy legislation the country needs to build a clean energy economy, create jobs, protect the environment, and ensure a healthy future for our families. Last Revised: 02/12/10 Global Warming HomeNews Center Policy Center Protect Science and the Clean Air Act Urge your senators to support the Clean Air Act by blocking an attempt to keep the EPA from reining in global warming pollution.Get Involved? Donate Renew your membership Make a donation Become a member of UCS Join our monthly giving program Give a gift membership More Ways to Give? function submitForm() { pageTracker._link("http://ucs.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=sign_up&txtEmailAddress=" + document.getElementById("txtEmailAddress").value);} Get Email Updates Related Articles in Global Warming Murkowski/Moran Resolutions Murkowski Move an Assault on Science, Science Group Says EPA Endangerment Finding is Welcome News to Copenhagen Delegates Other Related Articles Clean Buses for California California Diesel Risk Reduction Plan Clean Trucks California Campaign California's Heavy-Duty Trucks and Global Warming Cars, Trucks, & Air Pollution Multiple Air Pollutants Information Suppressed Related News Green Groups Issue Recommendations to President-Elect EPA Moves Closer to Regulating Large Global Warming Polluters New Disinformation Ads Argue for More Carbon Dioxide Related Resources Senator Murkowski's speech to attack the Clean Air Act Full text of the Murkowski Resolution if (typeof CONVIO=="undefined" || ! CONVIO) { var CONVIO = {}; } if (! CONVIO.page) { CONVIO.page = {}; } CONVIO.page.folderID = '11803075'; CONVIO.page.hostID = '10937100'; CONVIO.page.adminURL = 'https://cmsadmin30.convio.net'; CONVIO.page.navFolderID = '11803059'; CONVIO.page.navFolderTitle = 'Global Warming'; CONVIO.page.draftID = '113639876'; CONVIO.page.hasForm = false; CONVIO.page.typeID = '11675297'; CONVIO.page.typeLabel = 'Enhanced Webpage'; CONVIO.page.hasEditorStep = true; if (! CONVIO.user) { CONVIO.user = {}; } CONVIO.user.isAnonymous = true; ?2010 Union of Concerned Scientists Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Site Map | RSS | Jobs Union of Concerned Scientists National Headquarters 2 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA 02238-9105 ? #cv-poweredBy { text-align: center; } #cv-poweredBy a { color: #ccc; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 9px; text-decoration: none; } -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Fri Feb 26 06:05:31 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:05:31 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Friedmans K-Percent Rule..... Message-ID: <827692.713.qm@web27405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> ?Dear All, ? ????????????The following idea reminds me of TFE, and the importance of computer technology for a future economic shystem.... ? ? ? Friedman originally proposed a fixed monetary rule, called Friedman's k-percent rule, where the money supply would be calculated by known macroeconomic and financial factors, targeting a specific level or range of inflation. Under this rule, there would be no leeway for the central reserve bank as money supply increases could be determined "by a computer", and business could anticipate all monetary policy decisions.[2][3] ? ? Ref Wikipedia Monetarism.... -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Feb 27 02:40:44 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (robert searle) Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:40:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [GJM] Fw: [Arthakranti] The Multiplication of Money - John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter Message-ID: <766646.97406.qm@web27408.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> --- On Sat, 27/2/10, Narendra Khot wrote: From: Narendra Khot Subject: [Arthakranti] The Multiplication of Money - John Mauldin's Weekly E-Letter To: nvkhot at gmail.com Date: Saturday, 27 February, 2010, 6:57 ? ? The Multiplication of Money by John Mauldin February 26, 2010 ? In this issue: Where Is All that Greek Gold? The Greeks Write Back The Euro and a Conspiracy of Hedge Funds So Where's the Inflation? No Help for Homebuilders ? The economy grew in the fourth quarter by 5.9%, the most in years. The adjusted monetary base is exploding. Bank reserves are literally through the roof. The Fed is flooding money into the system in an effort to get banks to lend. An historically normal response by banks (to increase lending) would have been massively inflationary, causing the Fed to stomp on the brakes. Despite raising the almost meaningless discount rate (as who uses it?), this week Ben Bernanke assured Congress of an easy monetary policy, with rates remaining low for a long time. Many ask, how can this not be inflationary? Where Is All that Greek Gold? Last week I mentioned the (what seemed to me and much of the world) odd incident of Greek politicians talking about the need for Germany to pay its debts to Greece. I got this response from a Greek reader. Comments afterword. "Dear Mr. Mauldin, I am an avid reader and I just wanted to correct you about a comment in one of your articles, "The Pain in Spain", specifically: 'Somehow they forgot about the German government paying 115 million deutschmarks in 1960 -- not a small sum back then.' This repayment of 1960 is undeniable. but the total amount owed was $10 billion ($3.5 billion for the return of the gold stolen and the repayment of the war loans Greece was forced into giving Germany, and $7 billion in war reparations awarded to Greece in 1946). As the DM/$ parity was then four for one, this means they gave Greece $29 million out of the $10 billion owed. Germany also proclaims that they have given Greece over the years, in one form or another, ?16.5 billion. But the fact of the matter is that despite these alleged payments, the issue of the war loans and gold is still not settled. Greece has never stopped asking for the money to be paid back ... it is estimated that this sum owed now totals $70 billion [I assume the Greeks want interest ? JM]. So even taking into account the ?16.5 billion, more than $50 billion is still owed. Helmut Kohl refused to even discuss the repayment, presenting as an excuse that this amount was owed by the whole of Germany and until Germany is unified the issue could not be discussed. Guess what, Germany is unified.... Best Regards, Anthony Kioussopoulos P.S. Do not take my e-mail as a refusal to acknowledge the fault of successive Greek governments in creating this mess; just take it as a correction for a specific issue." +++++ The point here is not that Anthony is 100% right, though his statements have the ring of authenticity. The point is that the Greeks believe it. And thus my lack of surprise last week when I noted that leading Greek politicians of both the conservative and liberal parties were talking the same line. This is an issue that runs across the Greek political spectrum. And that makes the situation all the more intractable, as emotional responses are not the stuff of rational debates. (I should note that if the US demanded payment from Europe of all the money we loaned them after the war, at full interest, our national balance would be a lot better. But I doubt that ever gets brought up, nor should it at a remove of 65 years.) This week saw riots and a national strike as Greek unions demonstrated against budget cuts. Yet polls seem to indicate a majority of Greeks recognize the need for rather serious austerity measures. As I have documented, they really have no good choices, only very bad and disastrous choices. The austerity measures that will be forced on them by market realities if they default will be far worse than those they can self-impose over time. In fact, yesterday EU inspectors visiting Athens told authorities they see a deeper than expected recession. Two very condensed reports from European media: 1. After the German magazine Focus ran an issue with a Photoshopped picture of Venus de Milo giving the middle finger to "Greek con artists" (referring to the fraud the Greeks perpetrated when they joined the EU by hiding debt), street protests demanding the boycott of German goods were organized in Athens and endorsed by the Greek administration. There was also name calling by the Greek administration, blaming Germany for all of Greece's economic and financial problems because the Nazis stole all of Greece's gold in World War II. In general, the Greek public believes that all this is just excuse-making on the part of the Government, but a boycott is loudly supported by members of all the public workers' unions. (Reuters report) ? The situation is exacerbated by news today that Greece needs to refinance $27bn of bonds in March, vs. the statements JUST TWO DAYS AGO that only half that amount was coming due, and then not until April and May. 2. Financial Times Deutschland reported the results of a poll of German banks that was conducted yesterday. No German bank polled said it would make any further investments in Greek sovereign debt. The following banks and building societies are at risk of collapse due to excessive Greek bond holdings: Hypo Real Estate ($13 billion exposure), Commerzbank ($7 billion exposure, and the bank was bailed out last year by the German government), LBBW ($4 billion), Bayern Landesbank ($2.2 billion). It should be pointed out that Greece is a small country, with 11 million people and a GDP of $313 billion that is running a trade deficit of $11bn. Banking experts generally stated that any private purchases of Greek bonds are now completely out of the question. Any future aid will have to be government to government, and that will exclude Germany, as Angela Merkel stated earlier in the week. Within the eurozone, there are no other countries outside of Germany that have, or can raise, any capital to invest in Greece.? (Hat tip to Steve Stough for the above points.) For what it's worth, I do not see Germany bailing out Greece in the current climate. If Germany were to force Greece to undertake the severe measures they would be required to take for a bailout, the streets of Greece would be full of demonstrators denouncing Germany. I just don't see it happening. If not Germany, who? France? Spain? Italy? They all have their own very real problems. Everyone else is too small. The US will not. Neither will China. My guess is that at the end of the day (which will come soon) the IMF is going to have to step in. It will be a blow to European pride, but what else is there? The Euro and a Conspiracy of Hedge Funds The lead story in this morning's Wall Street Journal is that hedge funds are holding "idea meetings" and deciding that shorting the euro is a good bet. Der Spiegel called them "secret meetings," as if somehow a cabal of hedge funds is conspiring to push the euro down.? A few points for the writers of Der Spiegel: There is no secret about the problems with the euro. Let's see, when the head of Germany's leading debt-management agency warned this week that the euro would collapse if any member defaulted on its debt, was he part of a secret conspiracy? If he is right, do you want to bet that Greece will behave, and go long the euro? The currency market is a $2 trillion dollar a DAY market. That's over $50 trillion a month. Even with 20:1 leverage, $50 billion in hedge funds shorting the euro is a drop in the bucket, and I seriously doubt anywhere close to that much is at risk. George Soros won his bet against the pound sterling because the pound was fundamentally flawed and overvalued, and he put his money where his mouth was. If a hedge fund is betting against the euro, someone has to be on the other side of that trade. Are those guys (on the other side) conspiring in secret to drive the euro up and the dollar down? Are they in "secret" meetings to take advantage of the poor, dumb, misinformed hedge funds? Who are they? The world needs to know who is conspiring against the dollar and other currencies! Whatever. One side will be wrong. Fundamentals will out. I get invited to "idea dinners" from time to time. They are indeed private, but they don't rise to the level of "secret." I do very little trading, but these meetings help to hone my ideas, and I hope that helps make this letter a better source for you. The Journal wrote that these hedge-fund managers expect the euro to go to parity with the dollar, as if that is some novel idea. I made that prediction in 2002 when the euro was at $.88, suggesting that it would rise to $1.50 and then fall back to parity by the middle of the next decade. Maybe it will get there a little faster than I thought. Stay tuned, and I do NOT suggest making 20:1 bets on currency moves. A lot of those hedge funds will lose a lot of money if the market moves against them. So Where's the Inflation? Now for a series of graphs. First, let's look at the Adjusted Monetary Base (or M0). This is the one monetary aggregate that the Federal Reserve actually controls. Notice that it exploded in the middle of 2008, as the Fed started quantitative easing and pushed rates to zero. They were desperate to try and thaw out the credit markets that had frozen. That in turn caused M1 to increase. But the broader measure on money that is M2 rose into 2009 and has then gone sideways. Normally the stimulus of such raw money growth in M0 would have M2 exploding upward, as you get a money multiplier effect. We all know that a US bank can lend out about nine times the deposits it has on hand. When the Fed puts money into the system, it can be multiplied rather quickly if banks choose to lend. This is called the money multiplier. "Restated, increases in central bank money may not result in commercial bank money because the money is not required to be lent out ? it may instead result in a growth of unlent reserves (excess reserves). This situation is referred to as 'pushing on a string': withdrawal of central bank money compels commercial banks to curtail lending (one can pull money via this mechanism), but input of central bank money does not compel commercial banks to lend (one cannot push via this mechanism)." (Wikipedia) This described growth in excess reserves has indeed occurred in the financial crisis of 2007?2010, with US bank excess reserves growing over 500-fold, from under $2 billion in August 2008 to over $1,000 billion recently. Look at the chart below. This is what has all the gold bugs salivating. Where else has this happened without hyperinflation? Now let's turn to our old friend Paul Samuelson and his textbook that we all read in Econ 101 to learn about the money multiplier: "By increasing the volume of their government securities and loans and by lowering Member Bank legal reserve requirements, the Reserve Banks can encourage an increase in the supply of money and bank deposits. They can encourage but, without taking drastic action, they cannot compel. For in the middle of a deep depression just when we want Reserve policy to be most effective, the Member Banks are likely to be timid about buying new investments or making loans. If the Reserve authorities buy government bonds in the open market and thereby swell bank reserves, the banks will not put these funds to work but will simply hold reserves. Result: no 5 for 1, 'no nothing,' simply a substitution on the bank's balance sheet of idle cash for old government bonds." ?(Samuelson 1948, pp. 353?354) And that is what has happened. And all those mortgage bonds and other assets the Federal Reserve has purchased? They have been put right back into the Fed by the banks. There has been no money multiplier. In fact, the money multiplier, as measured by the ratio of MO to M1 growth is at its lowest level ever. Look at the graph below: What this graph shows, astonishingly, is that a dollar added to the monetary base now has a NEGATIVE multiplier effect. Without showing yet another chart, bank lending has fallen percentagewise the most in 67 years. The actual amount of bank loans is falling each and every quarter, with no signs of a bottom. Consumers are reducing their debt and leverage. Bank loans are being written off at staggering rates. Over 700 banks (I think that is the figure I saw) are officially on watch by the FDIC, with more banks being closed each week. There is at least $300-400 billion in losses on commercial real estate waiting to be written down. Housing foreclosures are rising and hundreds of billions have yet to be written off. As more families fall into unemployment or underemployment, there will be more writedowns. Is it any wonder that banks are having to shore up their balance sheets and make fewer loans? With capacity utilization just off all-time lows, why should we expect businesses to borrow to increase capacity? Inventory levels are much lower than two years ago. Businesses no longer need to finance as much inventory. They simply need less. Dennis Gartman writes: "Effectively the Fed had become a cash machine rather than a monetary expansion machine. At the end of last year, the multiplier had actually fallen to less than 1.0 and the trend remains downward. If anyone had told us five years ago that the money multiplier would be down to 1.0 we would have laughed. The laugh, however, would have been upon us, for it is there and it is still falling. Hard it shall be to sponsor strong economic growth when no one really wants to take a loan or when few banks want to make a loan. The "game" of banking has been turned upon its head, and the strength of the economy suffers while inflationary pressures (at least for now) remain virtually non-existent." Next week (or within a few weeks) we will review the velocity of money, as the normal, accustomed relationships about money supply and inflation are proving to be wrong. We live in extraordinary times. We are coming to the End Game of the debt supercycle that has lasted for 70 years. Everything is changing in front of our eyes. It compels us to understand the basics of how economies function, and what is both different and not different about the times we are in. No Help for Homebuilders Before we close, this note from Mark Hanson about the home-building market: "In January, builders sold a whopping 1000 houses per day nationally. During the same month, Foreclosures rang up at 4300 and Notice-of-Defaults at 5100 per day nationally. What a mess. I really thought earlier in the year with massive mortgage rate and tax stimuli -- and the purposeful lack of distressed inventory due to HAMP and other mortgage mod and foreclosure prevention initiatives -- that builders had a shot at some volume. "But their window of opportunity has now passed. With HAFA coming on line and foreclosures, short sales and deeds-in-lieu about to dump significantly more distressed inventory on the market throughout 2010, the odds that of any meaningful pickup in builder output or sales is significantly decreasing daily." ? .? __._,_.___ Reply to sender | Reply to group Messages in this topic (1) Recent Activity: Visit Your Group Start a new topic Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest ? Unsubscribe ? Terms of Use . __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk Sat Feb 27 03:17:29 2010 From: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk (Robert Searle) Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:17:29 GMT Subject: [GJM] BBC E-mail: Cheques to be phased out in 2018 Message-ID: <20100227_101729_094475.dharao4@yahoo.co.uk> Robert Searle saw this story on the BBC News website and thought you should see it. ** Cheques to be phased out in 2018 ** Cheques will be phased out by October 2018, but only if adequate alternatives are found, the Payments Council says. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/business/8414341.stm > ** BBC Daily E-mail ** Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all in one daily e-mail < http://www.bbc.co.uk/email > ** Disclaimer ** The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have?been verified. If you do not wish to receive such e-mails in the future or want to know more about the BBC's Email a Friend service, please read our frequently asked questions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/4162471.stm From maryrose333 at att.net Wed Feb 24 19:52:54 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:52:54 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: Form Meets Function in Gardening Message-ID: <000001cab5c5$df791680$9e6b4380$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS There are ways to avoid getting hysterical and flying one?s airplane into a building and committing suicide due to market conditions, or doing something equally drastic even if it was something that was ?done to you.? IMHO this action was the result of someone letting their money own them instead of the other way around. One of the ways is to create food sovereignty through gardening and ensuring your food supply regardless of what happens. I have previously recommended the book: ?Shovel It? by Dr. Eva Shaw as not only as a way to raise food but as ?nature?s health plan? as well. In this book, Dr. Shaw combines cutting ?edge medical research and gardening secrets. Did you know that gardening can avert a heart attack, lower blood pressure, and cut bad cholesterol. It can also help you heal, strengthen bones, deal with chronic fatigue syndrome, reduce anti-depressants and painkillers and cope with stress. It also keeps you ?grounded.? Through gardening, you can find peace, health and happiness right in your own back yard, says Dr. Shaw who is an award-winning writer, university professor, speaker and expert on recovery after life-changing ordeals, as well as being a gardener. Your garden can be a place for meditation, and provide a space for connecting with all that is natural ? the Earth that is our life support system. And while gardening aids in restoring one?s body to wellness, there are also side benefits in the form of colorful organic fruits and vegetables full of vitamins and minerals, herbs for flavoring and natural remedies. Then there are nut trees and berry bushes as well as citrus along with heavenly florals. When one is monitoring and controlling repetitive physical tasks, it is also able to connect thoughts from both the right and left sides of the brain which means you are getting a total brain workout. And when we are using both sides of the brain you have more ability to form creative solutions to the challenges everyone faces in everyday life. In a world filled with stress, not thinking for a substantial period of time during a physical workout in one?s garden can be beyond ?fabulous.? The question is: ?Are you willing to let Nature play a major role in helping you move into TOTAL WELLNESS? Eva Shaw calls gardening ?the escape hatch for the pressure cooker life? we frequently lead. And while gardening can do much more for you, let?s leave some of this wisdom for the next time, and take a look at what Gardener?s Supply is offering today to make the most out of a small space just outside your kitchen door. Today they are featuring ?raised beds? and I highly recommend taking a look at these. Not only do raised beds save aching backs, they can also be covered with glass or plastic windows for growing during the cold months. And, they can be filled with a potting mix which will produce more than planting directly in the ground will do. Building a frame over the top of the raised beds then provides space for hanging baskets and the whole thing can be piped for effective watering. Reinhold Ziegler has told me that when using the BioChar coupled with coconut husks, the plants can be watered eight times a day for one minute at each watering. Of course one does not have to purchase the raised beds, they are fairly easy to make if one has the time and the tools. One can also purchase inexpensive cement blocks and place a braced sheet of plywood across two stacks to provide a table for raising the tomato, potato, and pepper baskets up off the ground to a comfortable heighth. I know many places back East are still snow bound but here in sunny California, the daffodils are in bloom along with the cherry trees. So, it?s time to begin thinking about getting out and getting both the bod and the mind in shape through gardening. Beyond gardening, may I suggest getting some healing music and fixing up a sound system so that it can be heard in the garden area. Studies have shown that music enhances the growth of plants. So be prepared to benefit both your body and your plants with music. And don?t forget about art. Be creative in the way you lay your garden out, mixing the colors of the flowers in with the fruits and vegetables. Create winding pathways, and strategically place tables and seating for both dining and relaxing. For evening ambience, solar lights placed in the ground or strung on trees can lengthen the hours of use. If you have a choice between being a coach potato watching sports or gardening ask yourself which is most beneficial. Next time we?ll go into some more of Eva Shaw?s gardening wisdom along with exploring how you can turn your kitchen and bathroom into places that promote TOTAL WELLNESS also. From: Gardeners Supply [mailto:gardeners at e-news.gardeners.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 12:12 PM To: maryrose333 at att.net Subject: Form Meets Function in Our Newest Raised Beds Form Meets Function in Our Newest Raised Beds. Trouble seeing this message? View in a browser. http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/top_nav_spring_gsclogo.gif Gardener's Supply Logo Gardening Yard & Landscaping For the Home Pots & Planters OUTLET Galvanized Raised Bed http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/arrow_white.gif Shop All Raised Beds GUTTER Shop Our Most Popular Departments Seedstarting Kits Composters Compost Pails Rain Barrels Vegetable Supports Garden Carts Seedstarting Kits Composters Compost Pails Rain Barrels Vegetable Supports Garden Carts GUTTER Gardener's OUTLET Find Great Deals on Overstocks! Deals Under $20 Further Reduced Deals Under $20 Further Reduced Shop 58 items, all perfect for shopping on a budget. Shop 33 items, now with even deeper savings. http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_red.gif Save Big on Our Deal of the Week http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_red.gif Shop All Outlet Top-Rated Products Potato Grow Bag Potato Grow Bag $12.95 http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.static/Sites-Gardeners-Site/-/default/img/interface/starratings/rating_9.gif Tomato Towers, Set of 2 Tomato Towers, Set of 2 $36.95 http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.static/Sites-Gardeners-Site/-/default/img/interface/starratings/rating_9.gif Self-Watering Container Mix Self-Watering Container Mix $9.95 http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.static/Sites-Gardeners-Site/-/default/img/interface/starratings/rating_9.gif Nitrile Gloves Nitrile Gloves $6.95 http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.static/Sites-Gardeners-Site/-/default/img/interface/starratings/rating_9.gif Blue Moon Birdfeeder Blue Moon Birdfeeder $19.95 http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.static/Sites-Gardeners-Site/-/default/img/interface/starratings/rating_9.gif Deep-Root Seedstarting System Deep-Root Seedstarting System $29.95 http://www.gardeners.com/on/demandware.static/Sites-Gardeners-Site/-/default/img/interface/starratings/rating_9.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_brown.gif Shop All Top-Rated GUTTER What's New for 2010 Tomato Grow Bag Bountiful Tomato Plants Right on Your Doorstep ? with Grow Bags Tomato Grow Bag 14.95 http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_brown.gif Shop All New Products GUTTER Most-Read Articles http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_mostread.gif Gardening Under Lights http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_mostread.gif Seedstarting Made Easy http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_mostread.gif Who We Are http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_mostread.gif When to Start Your Seeds http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_mostread.gif Container Gardening How-To http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_mostread.gif Growing Herbs http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/bullet_brown.gif Browse More Articles Growing Vegetables? GUTTER GUTTER 10 Least Wanted Garden Pests GUTTER Find Us on Facebook Gardener's Journal - Read Our Blog Request a Catalog http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Other Ways to Shop http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Who We Are http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Customer Service http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Winter Sale http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif New Products http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Exclusive Products http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Green Living http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Gardener's Gift Guides http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Gift Cards http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Our Vermont Stores http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Employee Ownership http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Company History http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Donations: 8% For Gardening http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Meet Our Founder http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Environmental Commitment http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Garden Crusader Awards http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Grow What You Eat http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Order Status http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Our Guarantee http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Secure Shopping http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Redeeming a Promotion http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Delivery Methods & Charges http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Payment Methods http://img01.cprpt.com/img/gs/11154/spacer.gif Our Privacy Policy . Share this email: Facebook Twitter StumbleUpon Digg Delicious Forward Place an Order by Phone: 1-888-833-1412 and mention code RNA7008B. Please add "gardeners at e-news.gardeners.com" to your e-mail address book to ensure our emails reach your inbox (not bulk or junk folders). You are subscribed as: maryrose333 at att.net. Edit Subscription or Unsubscribe . Copyright 2010, America's Gardening Resource, 128 Intervale Road, Burlington, Vermont 05401 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2141 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2186 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 881 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1296 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 960 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1050 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 766 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 58 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2096 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3078 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3219 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3766 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3205 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1216 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 854 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 833 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 61 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1216 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 61 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1304 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1221 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 59 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 34497 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 46135 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1703 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 3846 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 3759 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 535 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 607 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 778 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 582 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 652 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 901 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 961 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 168 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1762 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 2133 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3596 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3131 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3559 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 2898 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 2704 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4198 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 1919 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 3420 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 2370 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 5482 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 167 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 168 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 169 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 168 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 170 bytes Desc: not available URL: From doctorforu123 at yahoo.com Thu Feb 25 07:03:10 2010 From: doctorforu123 at yahoo.com (javed jamil) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:03:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [GJM] Westernism 4: Democracy: A Mirage to Deceive People Message-ID: <636856.96399.qm@web51003.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Westernism: the Ideology of Hegemony By Dr Javed Jamil ? Part 4 ? Democracy: A Mirage to Deceive People ? The idea of democracy was not unknown to the learned. Several political theories had, in the past, been propounded by diverse political pundits. Plato had already suggested the forma?tion of a city-state that envisaged equal rights for the citi?zens. There were also some practical evidences to support that the concept of democracy was not altogether new. One such example was the period of the four "Pious Caliphs" after the departure of Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam. The Caliphs, during their short, but historically and theologically most productive period of Islam, were chosen by the representatives of the people, and after being elected, they would sit in the public mosque for receiving biat, the expression of allegiance by the common people for the new ruler; and it was only after the acceptance by the majority of the people of the capital city and the representatives of the distantly located areas that the Caliph would ascend the throne. The people had the right to take back their allegiance, and the government was run with the guidance of a Consultative Committee, constituted of the most pious, learned and able representatives of the people. The political experts of the West, under the impact of the ongoing industrialisation, again felt the need to initiate a movement for the establishment of democracy which they described as the government of the people, for the people and by the people. The slogan of people?s rule was indeed fascinating. It cannot be said with certainty whether the onset of the movement of democracy had direct involvement or not of the economic fundamentalists. But sooner or later, they were able to fathom the extraordinary potential in the on-rushing political developments for the growth of their ideolo?gy; a system other than the people?s government was now incompre?hensible; for a government that would be periodically changed would be easily manoeuvrable. The political hierarchy would not only be far more accessible than the monarchs; it would also be in no position to ignore the interests of the business-world; for the politicians required free flow of money for electioneering and other political functions.The manufacturers and traders would not mind parting with a small loaf in hope of greater returns. The movement for democracy could not have been successful, if the dons of the world of business had not been kind on it. ??????????????????????????????? The history soon witnessed the birth of different forms of demo?cratic systems. Little wonder that the democracies prospered primarily in those lands where the industrialisation was in full swing. Multiple-party democracy was the obvious choice; for, in party-less democracy, the individual leaders might have ignored the interests of the market as soon as they seized the reins of power. On the other hand, the parties had long term interests, and it was more improbable for the parties to forget the pre-election promises. ??????????????????????????????? Though the avowed goal of democracy has been to fulfil the long cherished aspirations of the people, and to work for their all-round betterment, it has miserably failed in guarding itself against the damaging intrigues of the vested interests, particu?larly the industrialists. The power can be seized only at the Hastings; the big business either fields its own candidates, or more often, it supports a political party that is expected to best serve its interests. Any meaningful electioneering requires not only huge funds, but also other extreme methods including the use of muscle-power, facilitating the entry of criminals. Thus a permanent nexus has developed between politics, organised crime and industry. This is true of almost all the big democracies of the present world. The bracket has extended itself to include the bureaucracy, administration and media. Elections are regularly held and the people can exercise their right to franchise. But the issues on which the elections are contested are usually such as suit the game-plan of the economic fundamentalists. The media creates and uncreates issues, and the masses are beguilingly reconditioned into thinking the way the media thinks. Politics has become highly expensive and hazardous. The word ?moral? has ceased to exist in the political lexicon. Anyone with semblance of con?science does not dare to venture into the political arena that has become a playground for the rich and the criminals.The upright and educated have, in fact, developed repugnance for it. Not only the politicians have harmonious relations with the criminals, the criminals have themselves developed fascination for politics; in the absence of any strict legal criteria for candidates, the undesirable elements gain a sort of legitimacy, once they enter the election fray after joining one of the par?ties that are expected to fare well in elections. It is much more tedious for an intellectual or social activist to convince the party stalwarts of his claim for party ticket; the criminals' wish to become people?s representatives is expressly granted. Once they enter the Parliament or the assemblies, they acquire a distinct halo of respectability and esteem; big functions are organised to shower encomia on them for their ?services? to the nation. After a few years of politicking, they become veterans, and ministerial chairs are, often,?? occupied by them. The ongoing politicisation of criminals breeds criminalisation of politics, and the crimi?nalisation of politics enhances the prospects of the economic fundamentalists. ??????????????????????????????? Had democracy been properly put into practice, it might have been a sacred blessing for the common people. It might have guaranteed them a lion?s share in power, and their rightful needs and aspir?ations might have been truly realised. It still holds true that they can successfully overthrow any government out of power. It is, therefore, mandatory for a party in power to keep the masses in good humour. But, in reality, the remote controls of almost all governments remain in the hands of the big business. In effect, democracy is nothing but corporatocracy: a government by the corporate, of the corporate and for the corporate. Through media that blossom under its auspices it succeeds in enthrall?ing the imaginations of the people. The disinformation campaign in the media is too effective to permit them independent thinking and judgement.? Consequently, the real issues hardly surface into prominence, and the minor, insignificant and frivolous matters are made to appear as big issues that do not haunt but hunt the mind of the common-man. The political bigwigs when they ascend a public rostrum to deliver speeches that usually have plenty of rhetoric cry their hearts out for the poor and the downtrodden. But in the comforts of their ministerial offices, they minister only to their industrialist benefactors, and their beneficences? are gifted back multifold through convenient adjustments in policies and rules and regulations, grants of licences and ministerial orders for their products or services. All through their terms, the problems of the masses never bother them; but as the expiry of their term and the new elections approach, they again revert back to their favourite theme: concern for the poor. A few schemes favouring, though marginally, and often only on the paper, are announced with great media hype. If they return to power, they are back in paradise; if not, still, they have great many privileges to enjoy throughout their lives. And, of course, as opposition, they have now more opportunities to stand on the rostrum, and harangue about the necessity to raise the standards of life of the poor; for that to happen, the best course for the public is to bring them back in the next election. ??????????????????????????????? Thus, in economic fundamentalism can be traced the roots of what can be termed political fundamentalism that seeks to use all possible means -- moral or immoral, to come to or stay in the saddles of power. Communalism that so ferociously struck India in the eighties the and continues to sway the mass hysteria in the twenty first century, is, in fact,? the product of the political and not the religious fundamentalism, which has usually been the victim of opprobrium.If the religion has been misused, it is none of the religion?s fault; the politi?cal fundamentalists have not missed a single opportunity for their elevation in the power-game, and have unabashedly used the religious, linguistic, casteist and other parochial sentiments. Communalism, regionalism, linguism, racism -- all are products of the political fundamentalism, and nationalism is its worst form. Patriotism is a benign and natural love for one?s?? motherland; but, nationalism is based on the concept of?? supremacy of one?s nation over the others, and an attempt to dominate over them. When Nationalism ascends the ladder, it gets transformed into colonial?ism, and gives rise to block politics at he international level. The majority of wars and separatist movements are the outcome of nationalistic fervour, based on one of the sentiments with which the people of a particular area identify them. No wonder that the geographical boundaries and international borders continue to change at regular intervals. The obvious outcome is the periodic emergence of new, sovereign states, though occasionally two or more nations may coalesce to form a bigger nation. ??????????????? The rise of nationalistic and communal movements is not always in favour of the market, because the business may suffer due to continuous turmoil if these movements continue. Actually, it often happens that the interests of different industries mutually clash. The rivalry between these opposing interests has a sig?nificant bearing on the political scenario at the national or international level. While the majority of consumer industries would prefer minimisation of armed conflicts at all levels, the arms industry thrives on international disputes and recurrent terrorism. The manufacturers of arms have, therefore, vested inter?ests in supporting nationalist movements all over the world; in political fundamentalists, they find cordial partners for preservation of their activities. The arms industries are mostly owned by the governments. The sale of costly weapons, open or clandestine, brings huge earnings and the governments, often succeed in averting?? domestic financial crises. Battles here and there, and tensions over border issues, which often escalate to burst into wars, keep the arms flowing without affecting for too long the fortune of other industries. ? Western nations have played the ?democracy? card to tame the hostile countries. If a government is serving the interests of Western powers, it is supported even if it is a dictatorship or monarchy. If a government is not serving their interests, it is hit with the missile of? democracy? if it is not democratic, and if it is democratic, faults are found in its democratic set-up, or overt and covert attempts are made to bring in power the political group or person who is expected to serve their interests well.?? Pakistan, Saudi Arab, Kuwait, all undemocratic countries have been the friends of West; on the other hand, Iran, Hamas government in Palestineand several other democracies have not found favour with West because of their insisting on following their own path. ? ? Next: TAMING THE LAW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 25 12:42:35 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:42:35 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Absolutely Must Read: Post-Peak Economics Message-ID: <006f01cab652$ec4ea130$c4ebe390$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS The Truth Will Set You Free OK Everyone. As the accompanying article, provided courtesy of Trading Post Paul, shows, we-the-people need to begin moving out of the present economy and into one that is based in "re-localization" and "self-reliance." We have come to the end of Big Brother as "keeper," for it has become obvious that the intent of Big Brother (religious organizations/education system/government) is now as "owner" of every thought we have. However, the life force within us will not permit this to happen -- we are meant to be free-thinkers. And, as Jesus said: "The truth will set you free." So, in looking to the question: "where does truth reside?" the obvious answer is it resides in the physical biology of our being and in our spiritual orientation. It is not something "out there" -- it is "in here". It is our inner consciousness -- a consciousness that some call "the Christ Consciousness." It is in the way we think or in the way we have been programmed to think by significant other influences in our lives: parents, religious organizations, educational systems, government, etc. And while these systems as designed by others may have served us in the past, in the complex world in which we now live they are no longer adequate. So it is time for us to reconfigure these systems, both those labeled "personal" and "social" so they working in our behalf and not against us. Healthy systems are those where information flows freely and is unhampered by ideologies that are anchored in the past by such things as "money" which tends to hold one to investment interests made in the past without consideration for future generations. Two books that provide one with a very look at how life unfolds in this respect are award-winning cellular biologist Bruce H. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., book entitled: "The Biology of Belief: The Science of How Thoughts Control Life," and Gregg Braden's "Fractal Time - The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age." Mahatma Gandhi understood very well how thoughts control life as he wrote: Your beliefs become your thoughts Your thoughts become your words Your words become your actions Your actions become your habits Your habits become your values Your values become your destiny So, as we see here we create our own destiny as designed by our belief system. But, what if the belief system we hold is not based in truth but has been influenced by propaganda put out by those who want to control the destiny of the world for their own benefit? Should we then not set out to change it? And, here Braden's book provides some clues. On the back cover it is written: Fact: New discoveries now link human emotion, and our perceptions of peace and fear, to the life-sustaining fields that are influenced by Earth's cycles. Fact: December 21, 2012, signals the end of a long and mysterious cycle of time--a great world age that began 5,125 years ago. (Author's note: A time in which the end of the reverence for the Great Earth Mother as Goddess came about, and the beginning of the dominator paradigm began with the onset of worship of a male dominant God and his son as the only true religion.) Fact: World-age endings in the past have triggered cataclysmic shifts that changed the face of the earth and altered entire civilizations. What is now known is that time is cyclical, but what is important for us to know is that it is the "conditions" that make up the cycles themselves, not the events. And based upon the new knowledge of cycles it is possible for us based on conditions to know when they will come about and thus be prepared to adjust our subtle energy outputs accordingly so that we are doing things that "desensitize" the situation rather than aggravate it. In accordance with this, A Time Code Calculator has been devised and is included as an Appendix in Fractal Time. And as we see from the notes above we are arriving at the end of a cycle and beginning a new one. So, what is important for us to do at this time is to adjust our actions in such a way that we are creating and maintaining "coherent" subtle energy patterns in our personal body that will ripple out and "entangle" with other energy patterns throughout the universe so that coherence is established everywhere. Now what we are talking about here is what Daniel Goleman refers to in his book "Social Intelligence," as exactly that. What we want to do is to call upon what Dr. V. Vernon Woolf (author of "The Dance of Life" - Transform Your World Now") entitles: "your full potential self" to act not only in your own best interests, but in the best interests of ALL concerned. What we want to do is to turn the final decision over to "the Universal Mind," (or what some call God), to make the final decision in the best interests of all concerned. Now what we are learning today is that what we refer to as the Universal Mind (what Ervin Laszlo calls the Akashic Field and others call the Zero Point Field) is configured very much like a quantum mainframe computer. And this massive computer is capable of assessing all of the information available and processing it in such a way as to elicit what is the best course of action to be taken in the best interests of the universe itself so that life may move forward in a progressive manner. And the output can only be as good as the input. So, if we are out- putting information that is negative in terms of coherency patterns which result in chaos, then chaos will reign. However, if we are putting out subtle energy vibrations that bring about a coherence pattern that is how we will progress. And, what I am suggesting here is that the manner in which manage our emotions as a collective consciousness as we move through the "Peak-Oil" period or what is called "Post-Peak Economics" in this article, will determine how we move through and influence the energy fields that create the life-sustaining or death-defining cycles of the future. We can choose to either continue a cycle or change it by changing the pattern or way we think as a collective. Obviously, continuing with a war mentality based in violence and chaos is not the way to go. So, let us make a conscious choice to move forward in health and wellness by choosing to create coherence. And we will be looking at ways to do this, as Co-learners, as we take actions that will move us into TOTAL WELLNESS both at the personal and the social level. More on this later. m r -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:00 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] Post-Peak Economics Post-Peak Economics by Peter Goodchild 23 February 2010 http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id =608&Itemid=1 In pragmatic terms the coming collapse can be equated with the phases of what will happen to money. The first phase will be ?stagflation?: high prices combined with high unemployment. During the second phase, as government starts to fade, currency will collapse: money will have no use as a medium of exchange. Of course, economic trends can always be seen in terms of either materials or money. We can say that the near future will be one of diminishing fossil fuels, and hence a depletion of plastic, asphalt, fertilizer, electricity, and so on. Or we can say that it will be a period of generally rising prices everywhere ? since rising oil prices drag up all other prices. Almost everything in our modern economy is either made from oil or requires oil. As the price of oil begins to skyrocket, therefore, so will the price of everything else. The same happened on a smaller scale during the temporary oil crises of the 1970s and ?80s. This rise was referred to in those days as ?stagflation? ? stagnation of income combined with inflation of prices, something that economists used to say was impossible. As stagflation returns, the hardest hit will be those with debts: car payments, house mortgages, credit cards, student loans. But everyone will find that a dollar just doesn?t stretch. High prices will be combined with low wages. During the first phase of the collapse, then, while money is still real, there will be a financial Reign of Terror, and in fact this era has already begun to some extent, to judge from four related events. In the first place, in 1970 US domestic oil production went into a permanent decline. Secondly, although the peak of global oil production must be dated to the first years of the twenty-first century, production per capita reached its peak much earlier, in 1979 [1].Thirdly, retail gasoline prices in the US, which had been fairly steady for 20 years, suddenly doubled from 2002 to 2008 [3]. And finally, around 2005 the energy required to explore for, drill, and pump a barrel of oil from new wells began to exceed the energy gained from it [6]. Faith in the dollar will finally collapse, and money will be replaced by barter. (No, this is not ?the barter system?; barter is the opposite of ?system.?) From economic hardship of a financial kind we might, of course, pass to economic hardship of a physical kind: hard manual labor and a scarcity of material goods. At that point, in any case, economic trends will be describable only in terms of materials, not money. The second phase can be envisioned by looking at comparable events in the past. One of the best comparisons is with the events that unfolded when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s [9].Within a short time, people simply gave up using money and switched to other items of exchange. One of the most popular items was bottles of homemade vodka. ?Each half liter bottle of vodka was exchanged for ten liters of gasoline, giving vodka far greater effective energy density than rocket fuel.? It seems, in other words, that vodka was valued because it was easy to carry, of great practical value, and rather fixed in exchange value (since, I assume, it?s either real vodka or it isn?t). But there are many cases similar to that of the Soviet Union. One might, for example, consider Argentina in 2001 [4]. Or we might consider the American Civil War ? after that time, Confederate dollars were literally just paper. In other words, at one point the money problem will be everything, and a few decades later, the money problem will be nothing, because there won?t be any. Money is only a symbol, and it is only valuable as long as people are willing to accept that fiction: without government, without a stock market, and without a currency market, such a symbol cannot endure, as George Soros has pointed out [10]. Money itself will be useless and will finally be ignored. Tangible possessions and practical skills will become the real wealth. Having the right friends will also help. It?s important to remember the old clich?s around the general idea that ?money only exists as long as people have trust in it, whereas a currency that becomes suspicious simply dies.? More specifically, money only exists as long as there is a government to produce the money and keep it alive. When a government utterly loses its power over the country, the money simply melts like snowflakes on a hot metal stove. Will life be better or worse in a world without money? That?s hard to say. When I lived for several years in a rural community in central Ontario, Canada, there seemed to be advantages to the rather casual and offhand bartering that went on. If one person left a gift on a neighbor?s porch, and a few days later the neighbor left some other item on the first person?s porch as a gesture of appreciation, it was not even clear if such behavior could be considered barter. In the absence of capitalism, there is room for kindness. There are parallels between the Great Depression of the 1930s and the present oil crash, but there are also important differences. The Great Depression was caused by over-speculation in the stock market, which led to the 1929 panic. The rapid sellout of stocks caused the collapse of many businesses. These businesses then laid off many workers. The workers then had insufficient income to buy whatever was available, even though prices were low. The Great Depression, in other words, had an amazingly artificial cause, although the ensuing suffering was by no means artificial. The oil crash is different. Its cause is not artificial; in fact, its cause has a rather uncertain relationship to the abstractions of economics. And although many people will lose their jobs, there will be no reduction in the prices of goods, at least in what I am referring to as the first phase. The Great Depression was a time of deflation. According to John Kenneth Galbraith, the basic cause was massive over-speculation, a vast bubble that just burst [5]. So businesses shut down, so people lost their jobs, so people had no money, so nothing got bought, so prices fell. The problem today, on the other hand, is that our Commodity Number One, which is petroleum, is running out. That means that virtually all other commodities will run out. There is also a slight difference in the fact that nowadays the Federal Reserve Board can adjust matters to control financial troubles to some extent ? although not enough to prevent the final collapse. The era of the Great Depression, however, closely resembles the coming years in other respects. In particular, the poverty of that earlier time, and many other aspects of daily life, will be repeated in the events of future years. Barry Broadfoot?s Ten Lost Years: 1929-39, is essential reading [2]. In terms of the exigencies of daily life, part of the solution is to give up the use of money well ahead of time, instead of letting the money economy claim more victims. Barter would allow people to provide for their daily needs on a local basis, without the dubious assistance of governments or corporations. Such a way of doing business, unfortunately, is illegal if the participants are not paying sales tax on their transactions. Politicians disparage the age-old practice of barter as ?the underground economy? or ?the gray economy,? but of course their own income is dependent on taxes. The transition would not be simple: there are so many rules, from building codes to insurance regulations to sales- and income-tax laws, that make it difficult to provide oneself with food, clothing and shelter without spending money. Nevertheless, as the economy breaks down, so will the legal structure, and laws will become rather meaningless. All that is certain about barter at the present time is that sales tax is not being paid, and that a crime is therefore being committed. The money economy requires that a large portion of one?s income be paid out in various forms of legalized extortion: taxes, insurance, and banker?s fees, all of which are justified in our minds solely by the fact that they have been imposed for centuries. Also at the moment, taxes alone consume a vast portion of our income, especially if we consider that there are, in a sense, taxes on taxes: I am taxed on what I buy, but the price for that object has been raised to cover the income tax, gasoline tax, and so on, that were paid in the process of making and delivering that object. Only a small piece of paper is required to make a list of all the benefits one receives from these various forms of extortion. There are also plain old bubbles, foolish speculation, that cause some huge rises and falls in the prices of things. The most obvious one is housing. Another may be gold ? although there are at least some plausible arguments for buying gold. Although inflation characterizes the first phase of economic collapse, inflation and deflation are never a case of either-or. The two can happen side by side, and usually have. Certainly today there are some things that are cheap, some things that are expensive. The big inflationary items of today are food, oil, and gold. But they?re not all the same case. Oil prices are rising because we?re running out of oil. Food prices are also rising because we?re running out of oil. In fact, anything is rising if it?s connected to oil. Gold, however, is not connected to oil ? it has meaning only as speculation, albeit that speculation is partly driven by oil fears. Inflation has to some extent been just a bogeyman in previous years, as William Greider points out [7]. It was always the big financiers who did the most complaining about inflation, because they were the ones who had the most to lose ? their financial holdings thereby had less value in a fundamental sense. For the person who had no savings at all but whose wages were rising, inflation was really not a big issue. Nevertheless, in the twenty-first century inflation will matter, and very much so ? until the big finale. The difference between the present and the past, of course, is that high prices are no longer connected to high wages. We must certainly get rid of the old concept of inflationary-deflationary cycles. Toynbee and Spengler spoke of cycles of empires, but when we have all returned to "living in caves" there will be cycles neither of inflation nor of empires. The economic problem of peak oil is occurring when people in many countries have already gone through decades of being battered by other economic problems. One serious issue is globalization: for many years, big companies have been getting their work done by sending it out to whatever countries have the poorest people and the most repressive governments [7]. The result is that people in the more-developed countries lose their jobs. Although the official unemployment levels are low, the figures are misleading; large numbers of the employed are not working at well-paying, permanent, full-time jobs. Closely related to the problem of globalization is that of automation, which increases production but decreases payrolls. Economic disparity is therefore a characteristic of our times. The ?Historical Income Tables? of the US Census Bureau [12] have shown, over many years, the widening gap between the rich and the poor: in particular, while most incomes have either fallen or not changed, the top five percent of families have seen their incomes climbing dramatically. As a result of all these vagaries within the capitalist system, government services are perpetually being cut. The common expression is that ?money is tight these days,? although very few people ask why that is the case. Taxes continue to rise, but the individual receives little in return. But the days of globalization and automation are coming to an end. The connection between oil and money can be complicated, however. In 2008 the price of oil doubled over that of the previous year. In 2007 an international credit collapse began. Nevertheless it was generally suspected that the second was somehow the cause of the first. One thing the two had in common was that the credit collapse, the defaulting sub-prime mortgages, and the regulatory failure could be ascribed to government corruption, which like oil depletion is an aspect of systemic collapse. More specifically, it seems that the extreme volatility of oil prices over the course of several years finally frightened the major investors into cashing out, making money as quickly as possible, even at the risk of committing fraud, before the dangers became any greater [8, 11]. REFERENCES 1. BP Global Statistical Review of World Energy. Annual. http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview 2. Broadfoot, Barry. Ten Lost Years 1929-1939: Memories of Canadians Who Survived the Depression. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997. 3. Energy Information Administration, US Department of Energy. ?Retail Motor Gasoline and On Highway Diesel Fuel Prices, 1949 2008.? http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0524.html 4. Fernando, an Argentine Architect. 29 October 2005. ?Thoughts on Urban Survival (Post-Collapse Life in Argentina).? http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1511641/posts?page=116 5. Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Great Crash 1929. Reprint. Mariner, 2009. 6. Gever, John, et al. Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1991. 7. Greider, William. One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. 8. Lardelli, Michael. ?The Oil-Economy Connection.? Online Opinion. 25 November 2009. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9694&page=0 9. Orlov, Dmitry. ?Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century.? http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dtxqwqr_20dc52sm 10. Soros, George. The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered. New York: Public Affairs, 1998. 11. Therramus. ?Oil Caused Recession, Not Wall Street.? Energy Bulletin, 21 January 2010. http://www.energybulletin.net/5120 12. US Census Bureau. ?Historical Income Tables -- Families.? US Government Printing Office. Annual. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f03ar.html From maryrose333 at att.net Thu Feb 25 13:36:40 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:36:40 -0800 Subject: [GJM] Why be a Buddhist, when you can be the Buddha? Message-ID: <007e01cab65a$723d6ae0$56b840a0$@net> Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS For your consideration. I view myself as being a cell in the Universal Mind and consider it equal to being or having the same experience as any of the others mentioned here. We are all born equal -- it is only to the extent that we allow ourselves to experience our Full Potential Self that makes the difference. How do you feel in this respect? m r ISE Keynote: Lama Surya Das http://integrallife.com/node/67655?utm_source=monthly_mailer &utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=feb_2010 http://integrallife.com/sites/all/themes/zen/zen_classic/images/video_icon.p ng Contributor: Lama Surya Das Why be a Buddhist, when you can be the Buddha? http://s3.amazonaws.com/integral-life-home/ISE_logoBIG.jpgWith this simple question, Lama Surya Das cuts directly to the heart of the integral spiritual impulse, hinting at a secret that lies at the center of all the world's spiritual traditions. It is a secret that has been hiding in plain sight for thousands of years; a secret that you yearn to discover for yourself. You know that the world's religious legacies represent so much more than mere codes of conduct, moral platitudes, or anthologies of myth and superstition. At the core of every major religion we can find a treasure trove of powerful technologies for awakening, transformative practices designed to invoke in us the very same experience of fullness, transcendence, and immeasurable love as the great religious founders themselves were able to have. That's right-you can have the same experience that the Buddha had. You can have the same experience that Jesus Christ had. Or that Muhammad had, or St. Teresa, or Rumi, or any other great mystic in history. All this is abundantly available to you, at this very moment. Why is this important? Simple: it's your birthright. It's why you are here, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous incarnation. This is not an invitation, nor is it an obligation-it's who you already are, right now. All that's left to do is to wake up. But first, you need to know that you can wake up in this lifetime, that enlightenment is a real possibility for you and for your loved ones. Second, you need to give yourself permission to pursue your own enlightenment. You deserve to be awake-because in a certain sense, you already are. This realization forms the bedrock of the 5-year Integral Spiritual Experience event, which is rapidly becoming something like "the United Nations of world spirituality." It is a space where teachers and leaders from any religious tradition can share their own insights, teachings, and practices with a wide community of spiritual seekers and practitioners in a truly "trans-lineage" embrace-recognizing the timeless core shared by all religions, while celebrating the vast differences between them. After all, each religion may represent a different path up the same mountain, but each path continues to offer its own unique vantage of our shared spiritual heritage. We recently held our first annual Integral Spiritual Experience event in Asilomar, CA over the 2009-2010 New Year, and were deeply honored to have Lama Surya Das as one of our featured keynote speakers. An exemplary teacher of Dzogchen Buddhism, Lama Surya delivered his presentation with diamond-tipped clarity, precision, and wit. He suggests a few ways we can carry this realization for ourselves through our day-to-day lives, while reminding us how simple it all really is: the most sublimely ordinary experience you will ever know. Be sure to stay tuned in the coming months for more ISE keynotes (including presentations by Jean Houston, Sally Kempton, and Marc Gafni) as well as some exciting updates around our next Integral Spiritual Experience event: The Future of Love! Your Logo, Inc. FutureDawning.org Mary Rose, www.futuredawning.org CEO and Founder - Agent for social transformation Future Dawning.org dustysummerrose at gmail.com Always have my latest info Want a signature like this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/png Size: 3022 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 33313 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 177 bytes Desc: not available URL: From raggarwala at yahoo.com Fri Feb 26 02:43:38 2010 From: raggarwala at yahoo.com (Rajendra Aggarwala) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:43:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [GJM] I am not a terrorist, but you are a Tyrant, Mr. President In-Reply-To: <160192.90866.qm@web51008.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <160192.90866.qm@web51008.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <787298.6684.qm@web81901.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Dear Dr Javed Jamil, I have not heard ever an apology from muslims who kill and maim innocent women, and children, leave aside men. They kill merely because they are not muslims, because their Islam teaches them that those who do not follow Islam are Infidels, Kafirs and must be converted or killed. Now they even kill muslims who do not believe in their version of Islam, while these muslims are willing to be killed by muslims but do not condemn their killings of the millions of innocents, because they are impotent to kill men or soldiers in real combat. Basically they are shameless cowards. ?Americans have the power to retaliate and so in USA the terrorists are impotent. While a country like India, where muslims have been given equal rights even after dividing the country on religious grounds, these muslims in the name of religion, keep killing innocent women and children every day. Wherever muslims get a bit larger in numbers, the areas lose peace for ever, as the muslim culture and religion does not teach them tolerance of other believers. Pakistan had more than 10% non-muslims in 1947, today they are less than 1%!! Where the rest have gone? these pakistani non-muslims were doing no violence in Pakistan, but still they were either killed, converted, raped, or pushed actross the border. Muslims of Pakistan did NOT even spare muslims and Hindus?of Bangladesh and Mr Bhutto did not give power to Mujibar Rehman even after the electoral victory by Bangladeshis over west pakis. Millions were killed and raped and pushed into India, whence India was forced to retaliate and free Bangladshis? from the yoke of slavery of west paki muslims!! Now just because? a small area of J&K had a majority muslim population, Pakistan tried to force the Maharah to accede J&K to Pakistan; even when the muslim leader Sheikh Abdullah never wanted anything to do with Pakistan. When they did not succeed to coerce the Maharah/Abdullah, they sent raiders across to loot and rape and plunder the muslims of the valley and also occupied the area currently called POK. Under what law or logic?POK is held by Pakistan under her heels or boots? Now the same muslim Pakis killed over 80000 kashmiri muslims of the valley over the last 20 years, and threw out over quarter million Hindus from their homes in the valley after raping and killing thousands using religion as a justification. What is the status of Pakistan to claim the valley? There are 160 million muslims who live in India,?out of which?only 5 million of them are in the valley-then on what justification Pakistan claims the valley? What legal right Pak has over the valley or for that matter over any part of POK under her occupation. What muslim Talibans are doing to kill Sikhs now if they do not pay rupees 3 crores each to them!! Ha Ha Mr/Dr Javed Jamil-do not talk of muslims and christians-they have always fought wars?for?hundreds of?years. Till 700 AD muslims did not even exist. Then started the wars of conquests, conversions, rapes and loots around the world, and today there are over a billion muslims by such methods. Muslims are on the losing side now because they have remained backward, while the christians have progressed technologically and economically. Better teach your muslim brotheren to stop the hatred philosphy and let them learn to live with other religions as equal brothers and sisters. Give your own muslims democratic and human rights in their own muslim majority countries. Give minorities in muslim majority countries the same freedoms and equalities as the muslims claim to enjoy in USA or India. Whichever countries have followed that route they have come out of their shell and made progress and friends breaking the cycle of revenge, an eye for an eye and so on including killing the innocent women and children. Turkey has become progressive by following that route. Even Malaysia has succeeded partially. ?Muslims are suffering as they still live in the dark ages mentally and emotionally. Educate them out that mentality instead of justifying their acts of vengence and suffering. Educated muslims should blame themselves for still remaining prisoners of the violent variety of muslim philosphy in religious teachings and their lives vis-a vis other religions. The problem is that they can't live in peace even with other muslims. Iraq and Iran fought an 8 year war, why? Don't blame others for your own weaknesses and cowardice. Killing innocents is no bravery. That is why Terrorism has become such an ugly word. Don't whine. Do something positive with your education?for your community. Col(ret) Aggarwala University Faculty USA(ret) ? ________________________________ From: javed jamil To: hindjarrah at attbi.com; GurmitSingh at exemail.com.au; eme_corps at yahoogroups.com; adilsar at gmail.com; assadzahid at hotmail.com; Studies at ed.ac.uk; info at pakistanvision.com; ejazraufdr at yahoo.com; wyeknotusa at aol.com; abbasi1 at gmail.com; ashraf at pacongress.com; asifchohan at hotmail.com; ayubazaheer at gmail.com; aazaheer at apollo.net.pk; jfrahman at gmail.com; jahashmi at hotmail.com; mharoon70 at yahoo.com; naveedulislam at gmail.com; zurahman at hotmail.com; ziaurr36 at yahoo.co.uk; MuslimCanadianCongress at yahoogroups.com; PMUNetwork at yahoogroups.com; jazzyflav at yahoo.com; centrum_journal at gmail.com; info at cair.com; indiathinkersner at yahoogroups.com; samia_younis1 at yahoo.com; booksislam at yahoogroups.com; answer at action-mail.org; answer at internationalanswer.org; socal at cair.com; umrah at binsammar.com; dryusufsaleemkhan at yahoo.com; seema_bng at rediffmail.com; farooqi_uk at yahoo.com; sitwat_k at yahoo.com; satyajeet1 at icenet.net; pooja400 at hotmail.com; nparvez at intnet.mu; hmsforjob at hotmail.com; mahmud_amirat at yahoo.co.uk; notointolerance at hotmail.com; khz_786 at yahoo.com; sahmad72 at yahoo.com; tagee420 at yahoo.co.in; kulsumtalha at yahoo.com; husainali_dharamsi at yahoo.co.in; dirilisnesli at hotmail.com; safeeka_sbasheer at hotmail.com; sherwanimk at yahoo.com; hasib_r12 at yahoo.com; iqbalansari2001 at hotmail.com; vtr at ndf.vsnl.net.in; ghulam_muhammed at hotmail.com; mp_waqfboard at rediffmail.com; newsdesk at telegraph.com; ilura at hotmail.com; dga at isesco.org.ma; cabdg at isesco.org.ma; education at isesco.org.ma; sciences at isesco.org.ma; info at newstatesman.co.uk; discussion at globaljusticemovement.net; arfakhanum at gmail.com Sent: Tue, February 23, 2010 4:52:11 PM Subject: [GJM] I am not a terrorist, but you are a Tyrant, Mr. President I am not a terrorist, but you are a Tyrant, Mr. President ? My Name Is Khanis yet another apology ? ? It is unfortunate that Muslims continue to be apologetic and defensive in their discourses. One mistake of 9/11 and every Muslim ? be it a Maulana, a professor, a film star or a commoner ? is saying, ?I am not a Terrorist?. And that mistake of 9/11 has never proved to be in truth a mistake of Muslims, with massive doubts expressed by a number of analysts. America has committed thousands of 9/11s on humanity and a number of them on Muslims, and no American is expected to say ?I am not a Tyrant?. At least 100 times more Muslims have been killed by America and its allies than the Americans allegedly killed by ?terrorists? bearing Muslim names. Everyday hundreds of civilians are being killed by Allies? forces in Afghanistan and Iraq . But no Christian priests are expected to condemn every one of these killings; no American comes forward to say, ?My name is James. I am an American but I am not a killer? Why even 9 years after 9/11, with more than millions of Muslims brutally bombed into nonexistence by American killers, Rizwan Khan is taking all the pains to travel to meet President of America in order to tell him that ?My Name is Khan, and I am not a Terrorist?. He should have gone to tell him, ?I am not a Terrorist, Mr President, but you are a Tyrant, a Killer of millions of innocents? ? Dr Javed Jamil -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tschaff at gmail.com Fri Feb 26 10:39:07 2010 From: tschaff at gmail.com (Jeffrey Reisberg) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:39:07 -0600 Subject: [GJM] Discussion Digest, Vol 77, Issue 77 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Rodney, They are a very unique group of Keansians, actually they call themselves neo-chartalists or practitioners of modern monetary theory (although nothing is theoretical about their understanding), that draw on Minsky, Fisher, Learner, Knapp, and Goodhart to understand the nature of money. 99.9% of those who call them Keansians do not operate under the same insights. They provide the laws of physics for understanding economics. Physics alone is not going to tell you the outcome of a football game, but it can debunk a lot of things that are simply impossible. For example, not every country can have a trade surplus, there must be at least 1 country that has a trade deficit. This isn't a prediction, thought experiment, or outcome of some inapplicable economic model, it's a cold hard fact. Modern Monetary Theory builds itself around operational realities such as that. So far, absolutely no challenger has been able to say where their thinking is wrong. Regarding the problem with the PIIGS, they would say that the problem isn't Keansian spending, but Keansian spending without control on the national level of state-money creation. They've effectively forfeited the ability to utilize their own domestic resources when there isn't enough medium of exchange (money) in circulation. There is a real chance of default, just the US states which don't have control over money creation like illinois or california. Compare that to Japan, which for over a decade and a half has had low interest rates, low taxes, or even the US who's national debt has never been repaid. They would say the limit to government spending is where the economy won't respond to it with increased production but instead inflation. But even that is overly simplistic. The problems are multifaceted. A currency's exchange rate that doesn't fall, means national wages must instead in order to sell exports. It also must fall if savings desires aren't fulfilled by financial wealth from selling exports or government deficits. This causes all sorts of problems. A country where tax evasion is rampant isn't able to control inflation. Cultural attitudes to saving is another important factor. I won't rehash everything they say here, if you're interested it's all on those blogs I linked to last time. To address the lettered objections: a) All money in the capitalist economy is someone sector's deficit. It's the nature of double entry accounting. Private Savings = Government Deficit. This they call the vertical relationship, it's derived from the accounting identity saving - investment = (government spending - taxes) + (exports - imports). They think that government should allow the private sector to de-leverage by running deficits as long as it doesn't cause inflation by pushing the economy past its productive capacity. There is no way for one sector to de-leverage without the deficit spending of another. As for the rate of interest, there isn't universal consent over what it should be. Most would like to see it kept near zero and use taxes to control inflation. The longer term interest rates should be set to a "fair rate" where it is "is equal to the trend rate of growth of labor productivity (see Lavoie and Seccareccia 1996). With such a fair rate of interest, the earnings of one hour of labor, when they are saved, allow its owner to obtain a purchasing power which is equivalent to that obtained with the earnings of one hour of labor in the future." (Godley and Lavoie 2007) b) They see it as who is awarded the benefits from productive capital. My personal take on it is there are lenders, borrowers, and those who are employed by the borrowers. How income is distributed between these conflicting but mutually dependent entities. How much income is generated, and how it is distributed depends on the outcome of the struggle between them, and even within their own group. I think they would say many of the defaults that occurred was a result of borrowers income failing to keep up with debt service requirements. They would say the tax surpluses of the 2000s in the US drained the private sector of financial wealth, making it impossible for them to de-leverage. c) They do understand interest rates are set by the central bank, at least certain interest rates, such as the yield on treasuries and bank reserves. Not directly the interest rate we get from the bank :). The creation of new money by banks should be curbed in some areas, expanded in others. The capitalist system is unique because it gives money creation power to the banks. In exchange for this unique power, they are supposed to assess risk (better than government could), and make loans accordingly. When they fail to do this basic purpose, like inflate a housing bubble to give a very easy example, then they are failing their basic purpose, and new rules must be devised to get incentives inline with what the public good. If you're really interested in hearing another point of view, I suggest you start with those links I sent. I am not as bright as Mosler, Wray, Mitchell regarding economics, but I hopefully represented their views accurately here. As far as I can tell, they are the ONLY guys who "get it". --Jeff On Feb 25, 2010, at 9:28 AM, discussion-request at globaljusticemovement.net wrote: > From: "Rodney Shakespeare" > To: "Discussion Forum for Global Justice" > > Subject: Re: [GJM] Mosler, Wray, Mitchell, and Neo-Chartalism > Message-ID: <007501cab618$228c97b0$4001a8c0 at your447023ae6b> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Hi long time lurker Jeffa, > > I do not know all that much much about Mosler and Wray but understand them to be Keynesians. > > A number of people/groups forecast the crisis (and it is a basic part of binary economics that the system is fundamentally flawed, completely out of kilter, is inherently inflationary and at some point is bound to crash). But congratulations to Mosley and Wray for being accurate forecasters and for seeing that quantative easing would not increase bank lending but NB the PIIGS problem is largely the fault of too much Keynesian spending. > > Accurate analysis and critique in themselves are far from enough because what matters is the solution. Thus the Austrian school has, to a great but still far from complete extent, an accurate analysis of what is wrong but its solution is Back To The Past of nineteenth century economics. > > As regards Keynesians, they:- > > a) want increased borrowing, at interest, which only compounds debt and debt (in various forms) is a main cause of the present crisis > > b) do not understand that a key cause of present imbalance is that ordinary people do not own productive capital (the Keynesians do everything in terms of employment when it should be employment AND capital ownership > > c) do not understand that an interest-free loan supply for fornms of productive capacity and its spreading can come from the national bank (administered by the commercial banks) and that the creation of new money by the banks can and should be curbed (let them lend their own money and, with permission, that of depositors). > > So Mosler and Wray are certainly not idiots and they are well-motivated but their solution needs improvement. > > > Rodney Shakespeare. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From maryrose333 at att.net Fri Feb 26 20:12:41 2010 From: maryrose333 at att.net (mary rose) Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:12:41 -0800 Subject: [GJM] FW: [globalnetnews-summary] The Truth About 9/11 Message-ID: <001601cab75a$f4f1afe0$ded50fa0$@net> For your information and consideration. -----Original Message----- From: globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net [mailto:globalnetnews-summary-owner at lists.riseup.net] On Behalf Of TradingPostPaul Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 8:28 PM To: globalnetnews-summary at lists.riseup.net Subject: [globalnetnews-summary] The Truth About 9/11 (To change your settings or unsubscribe please go to http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/globalnetnews-summary) The Truth About 9/11 By Elizabeth Woodworth 25 February, 2010 http://www.countercurrents.org/woodworth250210.htm Abstract In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account. Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory" ignoring science and common sense. This essay presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies. Eight countries ? Britain , Canada , Denmark , France , the Netherlands , New Zealand , Norway and Russia ? have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11. This more open approach taken in the international media ? I could also have included the Japanese media ? might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks ? a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The evidence now being explored in the international media may pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country's foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge. I. Introduction Until 2009, doubts about the official 9/11 story were briefly entertained by the mainstream media on each anniversary of the event, allowing the independent research community only a fleeting moment once a year to publicly voice its findings. But after crucial scientific evidence emerged in April 2009 to challenge the official story of how the towers fell, a spate of European media reports followed. The news coverage of this evidence seems to have opened the door to more serious reflection on all aspects of the 9/11 issue in the major media. The first paper in my series, "The Media Response to 9/11," dealt with the New Statesman's grudging recognition of Dr. David Ray Griffin, the world's "top truther" (as it dubbed him), placing him number 41 among "The 50 People Who Matter Today."1 Since this admission in September 2009, the issue has gathered increasing momentum. The collective content issuing from this new momentum is presented here in the hope that it will embolden other major media to take up the pivotal controversy concerning 9/11, and pursuing the truth wherever it may lead. Observations on the Analysis While carrying out my analysis, I observed five new features in the media treatment of the 9/11 issue that developed as 2009 progressed. They are listed here, so that readers might look for them in the case studies that follow below: 1. The 9/11 issue is increasingly framed not as conspiracy theories versus hard science, but as a legitimate controversy resting on unanswered questions and a search for truth. 2. News reports and television programs examining these controversies have become longer and more balanced. 3. Major media outlets have begun to present the claims of the truth movement first, followed by counter-arguments from defenders of the official story. 4. Major media outlets have begun to include, and even to introduce, extensive evidence to support the claims of the 9/11 truth community. 5. The media treatments increasingly suggest the possibility of a re-investigation into the events of September 11, 2001 . The first part of this essay deals with the crucial scientific evidence that emerged in early 2009, the significance of this evidence in relation to the official story of 9/11, and the immediate news coverage it received. II. Scientific Paper Finds Nano-thermite Explosives in World Trade Center Dust, April 3, 2009 A peer-reviewed paper published in the Open Chemical Physics Journal on April 3, 2009 ,2 reported that a little known high-tech explosive called nano-thermite was found throughout the World Trade Center dust. These physicists and chemists involved in this study discovered "distinctive red/gray chips in significant numbers"3 in four samples of dust collected from the area. The presence of aluminum and iron oxide in the red material provided one of the signs that it might be nano-thermite, which is a high explosive (whereas ordinary thermite is an incendiary.) Another clue was provided when putting a flame to the chips produced an explosive reaction. On the basis of these and other observations, the team concluded that "the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material."4 The article's first-named author, Dr. Niels Harrit ? a University of Copenhagen chemistry professor who specializes in nano-chemistry5 ?explained on Danish TV2 News: "Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust-powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2500 degrees Centigrade. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron. "So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel. "You cannot fudge this kind of science. We have found it: unreacted thermite."6 What was the significance of this sophisticated material? Reported Evidence that Nano-thermite is a Military Substance In a German interview in May 2009, Dr. Harrit said: "There are no experts on nano-thermite without connections to the military . This stuff has only been prepared under military contracts in the USA and probably in bigger allied countries. This is secret military research It was not prepared in a cave in Afghanistan ."7 Chemist Kevin Ryan, another co-author, had reported in an earlier article that explosive nano-thermite, which may be painted onto surfaces, was developed by US government scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.8 A United States Department of Defense special publication confirms that work on these "energetic materials" has long been "performed in laboratories within all military services."9 According to a June 2009 statement by Britain's prestigious Institute of Nanotechnology,10 the Harrit study "provides indisputable evidence that a highly engineered explosive called nano-thermite was found in the dust of all three buildings that came down on 9/11 2001 in New York city. [sic] This advanced explosive incorporating nanotechnology is only available to sophisticated military labs."11 It thus became known by mid-2009 that explosives of military origin, probably in the United States , had been involved in the World Trade Center collapses. Early Coverage of the Nano-thermite Finding in the European Mainstream Press Although the new scientific evidence against the official story of 9/11 was not reported in the mainstream British or North American media, it did receive attention in continental Europe . The day the article was published, a thorough essay in the Danish journal Videnskab (Science) examined both sides of the controversy about controlled demolition.12 The same issue of Videnskab also carried an interview with Professor Harrit, who answered pointed questions about the peer-review history of the article, and the military nature of nano-thermite.13 The following day, Denmark's politiken.dk reported the scientific nano-thermite paper in an article called (in Danish) "Conspiracy theories about 9/11 get new life."14 Then, the day after Professor Harrit's April 6 interview Danish TV2 News, he was featured on the popular talk show, "Good Morning Denmark", on which he said: "The material we found is super hi-tech frontline military research. It's not a mixture of random chemicals. It's an advanced material which is difficult to get information on. But some conference papers and internal reports have been published There has to be a normal forensic investigation of this attempt. Our research is high-level forensic work. We have provided technical evidence that can be used in the future investigation."15 On April 13, an online Croatian political newspaper posted the Danish TV2 video interview with Harrit along with an article titled "VIDEO: 9/11 No Longer Taboo Topic in Denmark".16 Russia also took notice. On July 9, Laura Emmett, the London correspondent for RT, interviewed Dr. Niels Harrit for over 10 minutes. (RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a globally broadcast English-language channel sponsored by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. It reaches 1.5 million people monthly, including half a million Americans.) Stating that "the evidence for controlled demolition is overwhelming", Harrit reported that the nano-thermite reaction produced pools of molten iron beneath the rubble and inextinguishable fires that lasted for months.17 I turn now to ways that the mainstream news coverage of the case against the official story has changed since the appearance of the nano-thermite paper. III. The Changing Mainstream Media Treatment of 9/11 Evidence from early 2009 to early 2010: 18 Case Studies Two February 2009 news items illustrate the wary mainstream attitude towards conspiracy theorists early in the year. A New York Times article said about actor Daniel Sunjata: The second episode of "Rescue Me's" fifth season, starting in April, may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company Mr. Sunjata's character delivers a two-minute monologue describing a "neoconservative government effort" to control the world's oil, drastically increase military spending and "change the definition of pre-emptive attack." Mr. Sunjata surprised some of the TV reporters when he said that he "absolutely, 100 percent" supports the assertion that "9/11 was an inside job."18 Fox News was somewhat less constrained, saying: An upcoming episode of the drama "Rescue Me" is about 9/11 being an inside job. The actor who spews the theories on camera, Daniel Sunjata, actually believes in it too. Look, the fact is, actors who barf this crap are doing it for their own egos. It makes them feel smart, because for once they're spouting something provocative instead of puerile. Never mind that it's an insidious insult to the victims of 9/11 ? as it is to the rest of us, who may or may not be guilty, according to Sunjata's theory.19 However, things started to change after the appearance of the nano-thermite paper on April 3, as may be seen from the following case studies of media reports, each of which is identified as having corporate, public, or independent ownership. The case studies reveal the evidence which has been introduced into public consciousness during the past year. Case Study 1: The Dutch TV Mock Trial of Osama bin Laden, April 25, 2009 On April 8, 2009, a popular TV program called "Devil's Advocate" held a mock trial of Osama bin Laden with lawyers arguing before a politically balanced civil jury of five people. The case against bin Laden was argued by two real-world opponents: former American correspondent Charles Groenhuijsen, and Dutch-American Glenn Schoen of a US security firm. Real-world lawyer Gerald Spong acted as bin Laden's defense attorney.20 Spong presented new evidence from a videotape of Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies Gernot Rotter, saying that the American translators who transcribed the bin Laden tapes of the November 9, 2001 "confession video" have "clearly added things in many places ? things that are not there even when listening multiple times."21 Spong won. Although the jury found bin Laden to be a terrorist, it said there was no proof that he had ordered the 9/11 attacks. Through this method, this program on AVRO ? the Dutch public broadcasting organization ? presented evidence, not previously seen in the major media, against the likelihood that bin Laden ordered the attacks. On April 15, Fox News reported the Dutch jury findings in a long and unusually balanced article, in which former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was quoted six times, saying that bin Laden's exoneration sent a "disturbing message" to the world and fueled conspiracy theories. Giuliani variously called this message "bizarre," "dangerous," "aberrational," "irrational," and "unfortunate."22 However, referring to Spong as a "well-known yet controversial attorney," Fox mentioned him 10 times, and more substantively, reporting his evidence that the bin Laden videos seemed inauthentic, as well as his point that the FBI has not indicted bin Laden for the attacks. Concluding Comment: (AVRO is publicly owned, but Fox News is corporate.) Neither of these two mainstream treatments of doubts about the official story was broadcast on the customary anniversary date, and both reached millions of people. Case Study 2: Architect Richard Gage in Canada's "Financial Post", April 25, 2009 One of Canada's top four English-language newspapers, the conservative National Post, publishes its business section as the Financial Post. Three weeks after the nano-thermite story broke, Jonathan Kay, a National Post columnist and editor with degrees in both engineering and law, wrote an article about Richard Gage, the "lucid" San Francisco architect who heads up the 1,000-strong "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth."23 Kay, who himself endorses the official story of 9/11, described Gage as a "respectable-looking middle-aged" architect, "complete with suit and tie, and receding hairline," and reported that Gage's organization "scored a booth at the upcoming American Institute of Architects conference from April 30 to May 2." In the midst of references to thermite reactions and iron-oxide-based explosives, Kay wrote of controlled demolitions: "As radical as Gage's theory may sound to readers, it's surprisingly popular. The '9/11 Truth Movement' has millions of adherents across the world. Many believe that the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11 through controlled demolition set in motion by officials within America's own government and military." Gage's presentation was also described as "effective": "In one particularly effective segment, he puts up shots of the localized fires that broke out in the lower floors of WTC Building 7 hours before it collapsed. Seconds later, he shows footage of Beijing's Mandarin Oriental hotel ? which suffered an epic top-to-bottom conflagration in 2009...and remained standing." Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Besides reporting Gage's evidence without any attempted refutation, this corporate-press writer remarked that "no major media outlet has done a truly comprehensive profile or investigation of the Truther movement." He thereby seemed to be suggesting that it is now time to take the 9/11 truth movement seriously. Case Study 3: Norwegian State Radio's Public Debate on 9/11 Truth, May 21, 2009 Professor Harrit, who was lecturing in Norway in late May 2009, was interviewed by public radio program "Here and Now",24 on NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation). Harrit presented the findings of the nano-thermite paper, which were then discussed by three Norwegian scientists who did not support his conclusions. Following the radio program, an extended email debate continued between Dr. Ola Nilsen, who teaches chemistry at the University of Oslo, and Dr. Steven Jones, a co-author of the nano-thermite paper who formerly taught physics at Brigham Young University. This debate, during which Nilsen somewhat modified his original view, was posted to a Norwegian blogsite in English.25 Concluding Comment: (Public). Although NRK in this April program challenged the findings of the Harrit paper, this was to change by late summer, as we shall see below. Case Study 4: Architect Richard Gage on Fox News, May 28, 2009 The hosts of Fox News on KMPH in Fresno, California, began their 7-minute interview by saying, "He's an architect experienced in steel structures. Now Richard Gage is here to show us why he's calling for a more thorough investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings."26 These two anchors actively encouraged Gage's discussion of the ten key features of controlled demolition. He was allowed to explain the free-fall acceleration of WTC 7 (shown on his two video frames as dropping at the same rate as a second building felled by controlled demolition) and the "uncanny" failure of 40,000 tons of structural steel columns that were designed to resist its collapse. Although normal office fires were said to have caused the collapses, he explained, various firefighters had reported large pools of molten iron at ground level. "What produced all that molten iron?" he asked. The answer, he said, was found in the inches of dust covering lower Manhattan. "The by-product of thermite is molten iron and it's dispersed throughout all this dust and there are small chips of unignited thermite as well. This is very high-tech thermite ? nano-thermite. It's not found in a cave in Afghanistan; it's produced in very sophisticated defense department contracting laboratories [its] particles are one-thousand times smaller than a human hair." Asked whether bin Laden might have had access to the buildings, Gage said probably not ? that someone else who had access to nano-thermite, and to the buildings' security systems, would need to be investigated. Someone who had access to the elevator modernization, which was going on nine months earlier and was "immediately adjacent to the core columns and beams in the building." Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This Fox News show began by asking Gage about his credentials, saying "We ask that for clarification so that as we get into this, we want people to make sure that you're not just someone with a wacky idea you come with some science to you." The program ended with a sincere thank-you to Gage for "opening up a lot to think about," and an announcement that there is "a great deal of information" on the KMPH.com website. In short, Gage was treated with the respect due to any serious participant in an important and controversial issue. The next major mainstream event was the Russia Today program of July 9, 2009, which was covered above, so we will move directly to the anniversary period of September 2009, when further evidence of the impact of the nano-thermite discovery became apparent. Case Study 5: The National Geographic Documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy", August 31, 2009 In late August, 2009, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) aired a two-hour documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy," which sought to answer several questions, "What caused the collapse of the Twin Towers? Was it from the fires, or were explosives placed inside the buildings, causing them to implode? Did a missile, rather than a commercial airline jet, strike the Pentagon?"27 This "NatGeo" program purported to explore evidence about controlled demolition presented by the 9/11 truth movment. It interviewed Dylan Avery (the maker of the "Loose Change" films), Richard Gage, David Ray Griffin, and Steven Jones. But in reality this NatGeo program was entirely devoted to debunking their claims by using pseudo-scientific demonstrations to refute claims that none of these men have made. For example, in order to refute the claim that nano-thermite could have brought down the buildings, NatGeo used ordinary thermite (with the narrator explaining that they had no access to nano-thermite). Moreover, instead of using the thermite to make shaped charges, which can cut through steel, the NatGeo experimenter simply placed a bag of thermite next to a steel column and lit it. When the burning thermite (entirely predictably) did not melt the column, the narrator concluded, triumphantly, that science had disproved the claim of the conspiracy theorists. A review in Media Life Magazine, while not fully exposing the phoniness of the program's claim to represent "science," did point out some shortcomings, saying: Some of the issues raised by the truthers, however, aren't addressed, or are addressed in brief asides. This leaves this documentary open to charges of picking and choosing which points to cover. "9/11: Science and Conspiracy" spends too much time discussing the psychology behind conspiracy theories ? which isn't really a hard science.28 A review in the New York Post quoted Sander Hicks, a journalist who is openly a member of the 9/11 truth community, as saying that its representatives on the program "come off as careful and professional, unemotional, but compassionate about the truth," and that the program, in spite of its faults, shows "that the topic is still relevant and that the case isn't closed."29 Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This program by National Geographic provides a good reminder of how the 9/11 truth issue has generally been handled by the corporately-controlled media. But it also demonstrates the fact that the controversy is very much alive in the major media. Case Study 6: Germany's Weekly TV Guide, "TV H?ren und Sehen," August 31, 2009 "TV H?ren und Sehen", with a paid circulation of nearly a million copies, is owned by the Bauer Media Group, which publishes 308 magazines in 14 countries. The TV magazine features interviews and articles by prominent German authors.30 It is therefore significant that on August 31, 2009, this magazine published "Die Geheimakten von 9/11" ("The Secret Files of 9/11") as a full double-page spread, continuing with photos on two subsequent pages. It opened by saying: "9/11 is officially the largest criminal case in history ? but classified documents and witness accounts are surfacing, that speak against the official versions of the CIA and Pentagon."31 It then asks what force could pulverize 200,000 tons of steel in 11.4 seconds, quoting US engineer Neel Ginson: "In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially exploded outwards." Ginson added that, looking closely, one can see small explosions in the Twin Towers always occurring before the floors are reached by the collapse line. The fact that the towers were the first steel-frame buildings in the world to collapse because of fire, he added, was even admitted by NIST (the National Institute of Science and Technology, the government agency that produced the official reports). Among many other questions, the article raises the issue of adjacent World Trade Center 7, the 47-storey steel-frame building with a base the size of a football field that collapsed at 5:20 PM the same day: "But the official 9/11 investigation never mentions the building once." With reference to the Pentagon, this article asks: How were the victims identified by their fingerprints, when even the airplane steel had melted? Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Although this article does not specifically mention nano-thermite, it clearly suggests that artificial explosions brought down the buildings. By not defending the official story at all, this large-chain corporate media outlet was among the first to give an open hearing to the independent 9/11 research community. Case Study 7: Two California Newspapers Review the Role of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, September 2009 In September 2009, Metroactive (Silicon Valley's number-one weekly magazine) and the Santa Barbara Independent, each published slightly different versions of a long article on the controversy surrounding the WTC building collapses.32 The Independent article ? entitled "Twin Towers, Twin Myths?" ? begins: "One of the crucial technical disputes in American history, perhaps second only to global warming, is underway. It pits hundreds of government technicians who say the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by airplane impact against hundreds of professional architects and building engineers who insist that the Twin Towers could never have collapsed solely due to the planes and are calling for a new independent investigation. It is a fight that is not going away and is likely to get louder as more building trade professionals sign on to one side or the other."33 The version in MetroActive ? called "Explosive Theory" ? says "[E]ight years after 9/11, a growing organization of building trades professionals suspect that there was more to the event than the government will admit." It then gives a short history of Gage's now 1,000-strong organization, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE).34 Deputy Director Michael J. Heimbach of the FBI's counter-terrorism division, this article adds, had recently acknowledged in a letter to the organization that Gage's presentation is "backed by thorough research and analysis." One local AE member was quoted as saying "it takes too much energy" ? energy that was not there ? to collapse the buildings at free-fall speed, given the resistance that steel offers. This was borne out, this member continued, by a team of scientists "working at technical laboratories in the United States and Denmark [who] reported in April that analysis of dust gathered at the World Trade Center found evidence of the potent incendiary/explosive 'super thermite,' used by the military." Almost half of this article deals with the controversy over whether nano-thermite was used, with most of the space allotted to evidence supplied by the 9/11 Truth Movement. Near the end, however, spokesman Michael Newman is brought in to defend NIST's research, saying there was "no need" to test the dust for thermite. But the last word was given to engineer Ed Munyak of AE, who said: "The fact is that the collapses don't resemble any fire-induced behavior of structures, but it exactly mimics a controlled demolition, so why not investigate that? It's all very suspicious and that's why an independent investigation is needed so we can all learn from this." "Explosive Theory" also focuses pointedly on the growing number of professional organizations and retired officials calling for a new investigation, including: two dozen retired U.S. military brass and eight former U.S. State Department officials, along with a number of Republicans who have served in high federal positions since President Reagan, including former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts and former Reagan administration Assistant Defense Secretary (and retired Marine Corps colonel) Ronald D. Ray. The version in the Santa Barbara Independent concludes with an unusually candid observation: And how would America deal with such an investigation against the backdrop of suppositions that some officials in government were complicit? This idea is virtually unthinkable to most of the public, much less something the American political system can handle The forces of denial, in the system and in most of our minds, are innately powerful and probably sufficient to mitigate against a reopened investigation. Despite this, [Richard] Gage [of AE] sees his role as provoking a better investigation. Concluding Comment: (Independent). The authors of this article, rather than referring to "conspiracy theorists," present the 9/11 issue as a "technical dispute" of historic importance. Both versions of the article represent a 180-degree turnaround in American newspaper reporting, providing a useful introduction to the long-ignored research by independent professionals. The Santa Barbara Independent, curious about public opinion rather than seeking to hide it, published a local poll asking if conspiracy was behind the collapses: 75% of respondents answered "yes".35 Case Study 8: Dr. Niels Harrit on NRK1's "Schr?dinger's Cat," September 10, 2009 NRK1 is the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's main TV channel. It's program "Schr?dinger's Cat", which is about scientific research and technology, comes on every Thursday following the evening news. It has won several awards, and averages 487,000 viewers. For the September 10 program, Dr. Harrit was interviewed for about ten minutes in his office and laboratory at the University of Copenhagen Nano-Science Center, where he demonstrated the magnetic quality of a WTC dust sample. He also showed videotape of molten iron flowing from the upper South Tower, which was iron, not aluminum (which melts at a much lower temperature than steel or iron). Emphasizing that an office fire, even if fed by jet fuel, could not possibly get hot enough to melt steel, thereby producing iron, he concluded that the flowing iron had to have been caused by something such as nano-thermite, which produces "an enormous amount of heat", and molten iron is created in the process, with a temperature of 4530 F.36 Although Harrit did not know who placed the explosives, he said, he had no doubt that a crime had occurred. In the final third of the program, three other people were asked for comments. Two of the people tried to cast doubt on Harrit's conclusions, but their comments were weak, even absurd. An architect argued that the energy from the airliners brought the Twin Towers down and then Building 7 came down because the collapse of the towers acted like an earthquake to weaken the ground. American buildings are weak, he explained, because they don't use reinforced concrete. Finally, Dr. David Ray Griffin has stated that "for scientists and people who study the facts, the official story about the Twin Towers is completely ludicrous, but for the general public it has seemed plausible. Jet fuel fires ? they seem so hot. Jet fuel's just kerosene." Concluding Comment: (Public). This prime-time coverage by Norway's largest TV channel was quite a turnaround from the earlier NRK radio coverage in May. Most of the time was given to Drs. Harrit and Griffin; the content was groundbreaking; and the opposing views were obviously insubstantial. Considering Norway's NATO membership and military participation in the US-led operations in Afghanistan, the program could prove to be significant. Case Study 9 : London's "Daily Mail" asks whether Osama bin Laden is Dead, September 11, 2009 This long and detailed article opens with the menacing bin Laden audiotape of June 3, 2009, timed to coincide with Barack Obama's arrival on his Middle East tour, and then moves to the new Anglo-American offensive to "hunt and kill" the al Qaeda leader. But, the Daily Mail asks, what if bin Laden isn't alive? What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake ? and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror? Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.37 Professors Angelo Codevilla of Boston University and Bruce Lawrence of Duke University point out that the early, verifiable videotapes of bin Laden do not match the tapes that have emerged since 2002 ? and even one in late 2001. Telltale distinguishing features include a changed facial structure and increasing secularism in the content of the messages. The article then presents the findings of Dr. Griffin's book on the topic ? Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? ? as "provoking shock waves". This book presents evidence that bin Laden died, probably due to kidney failure, in mid-December 2001, which would mean that his taped messages since then have been faked to "stoke up waning support for the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan." Perhaps the most controversial of all the tapes was released by the Pentagon on December 13, 2001, claiming that it had been found in a home in Jalalabad. Prior to this tape, bin Laden had, while praising the 9/11 attacks, consistently denied responsibility for them. But the bin Laden of this tape boasts about having planned them. President Bush, the Blair Government, and the mainstream media all hailed this message as offering conclusive proof of bin Laden's guilt. The Daily Mail, however, points to various reasons provided in Griffin's book to believe that the man in this video was an imposter. It refers to the existence of a "highly sophisticated, special effects film technology to morph together images and vocal recordings." And it quotes Griffin as saying: "The confession tape came exactly when Bush and Blair had failed to prove Bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 and both men were trying to win international public support, particularly in the Islamic world, for the anti-terrorist campaign." Far from seeking to ridicule Griffin's book, the Daily Mail concluded thus: "[T]he Bin Laden tapes have emerged with clockwork regularity as billions have been spent and much blood spilt on the hunt for him. Bin Laden has been the central plank of the West's 'war on terror'. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?" Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This 2400-word article is the first serious mainstream coverage the evidence that Osama bin Laden is dead ? and has been for many years. Case Study 10. The New Statesman announces Dr. David Ray Griffin as No. 41 in "The Fifty People who Matter Today," September 24, 2009 Two weeks after the Daily Mail article, a second corporate British publication put Griffin in 41st place in a list of people who "matter today.?38 Because this article was discussed in my earlier paper, Part I of this series, it is mentioned here only as a significant milepost, one that gave (grudging) recognition to the fact that the movement challenging the official account of 9/11 can no longer be ignored. Its impact on the media is shown by the fact that the New Statesman placed Dr. Griffin (who scores 200,000 results when googled) above Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, (who scores over 11 million results) on its list of influential people. Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Although the New Statesman called the movement represented by Dr. Griffin "pernicious", its evaluation of his importance represents a point of no return in the media coverage of 9/11 ? as we shall see. Case Study 11: Jean-Marie Bigard on France 2 Public Television, October 28, 2009 Back in September 2008, Jean-Marie Bigard, France's most popular stand-up comedian, was led to apologize for claiming 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government.39 But by July 2009, Bigard had started to post humorous videos on his website ridiculing the official account of the September 11 attacks. In October 2009, Bigard and award-winning French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz appeared for an hour in a debate on France 2, the publicly owned French national television channel.40 The hosts, who had refused to include the scientist who was originally supposed to be on the show (Dr. Niels Harrit) attempted to center the debate on "straw man" theories that neither Bigard nor Kassovitz held. This led to arguments, which then allowed Le Figaro, France's second largest newspaper, to dismiss the debate as "noisy sophistry".41 Concluding Comment: (Public). Although this program was aimed at debunking the 9/11 movement, as shown by its refusal to include a scientist, the fact that it was aired on this state-owned network was a breakthrough, ending the era in which 9/11 questioning was ignored in France. Case Study 12: "The Unofficial Story", by CBC's The Fifth Estate, November 27, 2009 On November 26, 2009, Canada's largest newspaper, The Globe and Mail, noting in an objective review42 that the 9/11 truth movement is "gathering steam," reported that a documentary airing that evening "follows up on some fairly startling public-opinion polls of late." It was referring to "The Unofficial Story",43 a program in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's weekly award-winning investigative series, The Fifth Estate.44 Host Bob McKeown, himself a recipient of multiple awards45, opened by saying that eight years after the "most scrutinized day in history", there may be "more questions than ever", and that an increasing number of people now believe the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. "Incredibly", he adds, "public opinion polls now show that a majority of Americans believe the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of those attacks, and one way or another allowed them to happen, and polls show that one Canadian in three believes that, too." "The Unofficial Story" then allows leading members of the 9/11 truth community to present a spectrum of evidence on various issues: Architect Richard Gage on how the towers were brought down by controlled demolition Canadian scientist A.K. Dewdney on the impossibility of cell phone calls at high altitude David Ray Griffin on the FBI's 2006 admission that, although US Solicitor General Ted Olson had reported receiving two calls from his wife, CNN commentator Barbara Olson on Flight 77, the evidence indicates that she attempted only one call and that it was "unconnected" and hence lasted "zero seconds" Dr. Griffin and Canadian media commentator Barrie Zwicker on the military's explanation of why it did not intercept the airliners 9/11 documentary filmmaker Craig Ranke on the fact that footage of the Pentagon attack is virtually unavailable to the public in spite of many cameras trained on the building Dewdney on evidence that Flight 93 was shot down by the US military Richard Gage on the presence of nano-thermite in the World Trade Center dust In response, defenders of the official account, such as Johnathan Kay (of Canada's National Post) and 9/11 Commission counsel John Farmer, focus more on why the American public is susceptible to conspiracy theories, than on the disputed evidence itself 46 ? although Kay does credit Richard Gage for being involved in a serious quest for truth. Jim Meigs, Editor-in-Chief of Popular Mechanics, also directs comments against the skeptics themselves rather than their evidence. Conspiracy theorists, he says, are deluded by "the myth of hyper-competence" in relation to the failure of the US Air Force to intercept the planes. However, Brent Blanchard, presented as a demolition expert, argues against the controlled demolition theory by producing seismographs showing the absence of spikes that, he says, would have been produced by explosions. He also expressed concern that people around the world, by reporting US government complicity in 9/11 "as fact", are affecting how people view America. But actor Daniel Sunjata (of "Rescue Me") ponders the price of not asking the hard questions: "Sometimes boils need to be lanced. Sometimes poison needs to be brought to the surface in order for real healing to take place." McKeown concludes: "We did it not to promote one side or the other, but to shine some light on some of those unresolved issues and unanswered questions." And indeed, the program website published links to both sides of the issue.47 Concluding Comment: (Public). This hour-long documentary was the first truly fair opportunity in North America for advocates of the "unofficial story" of 9/11 to present some of their case on mainstream television. Representatives of the "official story" were also given time to speak, but their case was patently weaker. This imbalance was allowed by the producers, and indeed by the Canadian government, to stand. Aired several times across Canada, this program drew unusually high viewer commentary. Case Study 13: New Zealand TV's "Close Up" hosts Architect Richard Gage, November 27, 2009 The same day "The Unofficial Story" was broadcast by the CBC, Richard Gage appeared on New Zealand TV's popular public affairs program, Close-Up, for a six-minute interview.48 "WTC 7 was never hit by a plane but it still came down," the host begins, "and that's what troubles internationally respected architect Richard Gage." Gage is then allowed to explain that the building fell straight down in 6.5 seconds, and that NIST, the agency tasked with explaining the collapse, admitted that it had come down in absolute free-fall for the first hundred feet or so. "That means the structure had to have been removed," says Gage. "There is evidence of very high-tech explosives in all the dust throughout lower Manhattan ? nanothermite." Normal office fires, Gage added, would start "a large, gradual deformation ? the building would tip over ? it wouldn't go straight down through the path of greatest resistance." This is why 1,000 engineers and architects around the world are demanding a real investigation that includes all of the evidence at the crime scene, not just the planes and the fires, says Gage. "In the nine months prior to 9/11, we had the largest elevator modernization in history going on inside the towers We're looking for an investigation that includes elevator companies, security companies, etcetera." Concluding Comment: (Public). New Zealand's national television station allowed open and unopposed discussion, by the founder of the world's largest professional organization calling for a new 9/11 investigation, of the claim that nano-thermite was used in a controlled demolition of the World Trade Center. The coincidence that this program and the CBC's "The Unofficial Story" both aired on the same day may prove to be a turning point in media coverage of the 9/11 issue. Case Study 14 : "9/11 Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura," TruTV, Premiere December 9, 2009 TruTV is an American cable television network owned by Time Warner through its subsidiary, Turner Broadcasting. Historically, its has given live homicide trial coverage and other criminal justice programming, though it has recently expanded into more caught-on-video reality, which it calls "actuality" television. "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" premiered December 2, 2009, to an audience of 1.6 million television viewers. The former Governor of Minnesota has good cause to look into conspiracies, as seen in his December 29 episode, which shows personal experience that the "secret state" holds more power than the senior elected representatives of the people: "About a month after I was elected governor, I was requested into the basement of the capitol to be interviewed by 23 members of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA And I said to them, "look before I answer any of your questions, I want to know what you're doing here." Because in the CIA mission statement it says that they're not to be operational inside the United States of America. Well, they wouldn't really give me an answer on that. And then I said, "I want to go around the room, and I want each one of you to tell me your name and what you do." Half of them wouldn't. Now isn't that bizarre? I'm the governor, and these guys won't even answer questions from me."49 Ventura made the 9/11 documentary after being approached by Donna March O'Connor, whose daughter died in the World Trade Center and wanted "every American exposed to the questions" about 9/11.50 Ventura's documentary contained interviews with the following people: Janitor William Rodriguez, the last man out of the North Tower and who was decorated for heroism by President Bush, who reported enormous explosions in the basements just before the plane hit up above, and whose testimony to the 9/11 Commission was ignored Physicist Steven Jones, formerly of Brigham Young University, who isolated super-thermite from the enormous dust clouds of the Twin Towers and Building 7, after which he was contacted by a consultant engineer from the Department of Homeland Security, who warned Jones that, if he published his findings "the pain would be great." Explosives expert Van Romero, of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, demonstrating how super-thermite can be painted onto a steel beam, causing it to burn through Ground Zero rescue worker Mike Mallone, who reported seeing one of the four black boxes removed from the site, and was told of two others ? and who was told by the FBI that if he talked about it, "there would be a problem." Investigative journalist Dave Lindorff, who was told "off the record" by a contact in the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated the boxes, that all four had been recovered by the FBI and taken away, though officially, the contact said, this would be denied Air crash investigator Dale Leppard, who said that the bright orange heat-resistant boxes are never lost Yet the 9/11 Commission Report claimed that the boxes from American 11 and United 175 were never found. Ventura concluded by asking: "If everything they told us was true, then why would they need to stonewall us?" Concluding Comment: (Corporate). By calling his series "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura", he openly declares that conspiracies do exist, and that they are a legitimate subject to investigate. According to TruTV, the first episode drew 1.6 million viewers, a record for a new series on this network. Case Study 15: German Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth Questions the Official 9/11 Investigation, December 15, 2009 Heinz Heise is a German publishing house, which publishes Europe's most popular computer and technology journals. It also owns Heise Online (heise.de), which is a top-50 site in Germany, and a top-1000 website in the world as a whole. On December 15 2008, Heise Online carried an interview with German Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth on the legality of the Afghanistan war and the question of whether the attacks were adequately investigated in the US.51 In his response, Deiseroth made the following points: The 9/11 Commission consisted of Bush Administration officials who were very close to the military industrial complex. Now, over eight years after 9/11, no independent court has applied legal procedures to review the available evidence on who was responsible for the attacks. It is not acceptable for a constitutional state to dispense with the necessary steps in identifying suspects and instead to declare war, bomb a foreign country where suspects reside, and place it under military occupation. Having made the claim that bin Laden was responsible for the terrorism of 9/11, the United States was under burden of proof, and yet America's own FBI admits that it has no evidence presented in court of Osama bin Laden's responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This ?top-50? online journal exposed many German people to the illegal and unconstitutional responses to the 9/11 attacks ? which were the underpinning for the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ? and even to questions about the truth of the official account of 9/11 itself. Case Study 16: Germany's ?Focus Money? says: ?We Do Not Believe You!? January 8, 2010 With 450,000 to 720,000 readers, Focus Money is the second most popular German weekly business magazine. In January 2010, it published a 5-page, highly detailed, and comprehensively researched glossy feature, "We do not believe you!"52 The article first looks at the many professional 9/11 groups, as well as a 2,000-strong list of prominent and qualified people who question the 9/11 Commission Report at the Patriots Question 9/11 website. It quotes Richard Gage saying: "The towers accelerated without interruption in free fall as if the lower 90 floors of the building did not exist. The only way to bring them down like that is controlled demolition." The article weighs Gage's list of ten features of a controlled demolition, which were exemplified in the World Trade Center collapses, against the three features of a fire-caused destruction, which were absent. Focus Money also explores the case of Barry Jennings, a former Deputy Director of Emergency Services in New York's Housing Authority, who reported being trapped in WTC 7 after massive explosions in this building occurred in the morning ? before the Twin Towers fell. Focus Money also reported that Jennings, aged 53, died mysteriously just days before NIST's report on WTC-7 was to be released in August 2008. The article recommends films that challenge the official report, including "Loose Change", which has been seen 125 million times on Google video alone, "9/11 Mysteries," and "Zero" ? all available online. Regarding the Pentagon, experienced commercial pilots are cited as maintaining that no one, let alone a Cessna pilot, could fly the route that Flight 77 allegedly took to hit the building. The article pointed out the lack of debris to support the official story: "There was no tail, there were no wings, no confirmation of the crash of a Boeing 757." And there were no titanium engines, which would have survived the crash. Also cited was Sergeant Lauro Chavez of the US Central Command in Florida, who was involved in exercises the morning of 9/11 to hijack planes and fly them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House. He asks why, when it became clear that the attacks were real, were the rogue planes not intercepted? Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission, in which he reported a conversation between Dick Cheney and a young officer prior to the strike on the Pentagon, supports Chavez' conviction that there had been a stand-down order. Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This 5,400-word article presented strong evidence against the official 9/11 account to Germany's economic