Disturbing Trends

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Unbelievable Malice

2010-03-14T03:28:00.000-07:00

The Right Wing strikes back! In memoirs published by Karl Rove and reflecting attack dog Dick Cheney and his daughter, truth is not respected but the myth that Bush did everything to contain terrorism and that "no attacks happened in America during his term of office" would be a joke if it were not for a sizeable slice of American that actually buy this twist on reality.

More

More on "Broken Britain"

2010-03-07T00:58:00.000-08:00

The trouble with negative campaigning is the feeling that it is all mouth and no head. That is what we can see in David Cameron's harping on about "Broken Britain" - the social disorder he disingenuously ties to the Labour Government due to a few isolated incidents of teenager violence - which were hardly representative of all teenagers. His remedies were insipid as his understanding of the root causes of social disorder seem to be. As has been the case with Labour. Giving freedom to gambling and too much leash to the banking community while allowing so many to fall below the irretrievable line demarking endemic poverty and persistent unemployment.

A credible conservative solution would be to encourage investment in enterprise. Instead its volunteer groups and marriage. How is that going to fix things, exactly? "Look your kids have been robbing the local pensioners, so anyone going to volunteer to give them a bollocking?". Or, perhaps - "your teenage daughters are getting pregnant to get on welfare. So we have changed the law so they have to get married to get on welfare."

Victorian times were wealthy times due to the British imperial expansion. Face it, conservation of those values is hardly a 21st century recipe for progress.

The intellectual poverty of British politics is what is broken. There is no credible solution from either side due in part to weak leadership and mouthing of solutions without much brain behind them. It becomes a matter of who we trust the most not to continue to ruin people's lives with their hollow greed rather than which party has the highest quality ideas.

The expenses crisis was not a financial crisis. It was a catastropie of trust. The sheer embarrassment of the Lord Aahcroft affair is evidence of just how little the Conservatives really care about due process and respect for the average man on the street and his progress in life. Conservatives will not just slash public services, but now it seems they feel they have to raise taxes in order to reduce the deficit.

The lack of inspired confidence shown in the people of Britain by both sides of the house is the problem. It is us, not they, who will pull the country out of the mess that has erupted after both parties went mad for the fruits of capitalism without regard for education.

Is Cameron the problem?

2010-03-03T00:35:00.000-08:00

The Conservatives, rattling on about black clouds and being generally negative about future prospects are creating a bleak outlook with an up to now near certainty that they will form the next government. The UK economy is reliant upon Government spending and this is what Cameron sees as the "real" problem. The Ashcroft affair (his non-dom tax status has just been revealed, and he is high in the ranks of the Conservatives) threatens to derail the very sincerity that Cameron so relies upon so his negative electioneering not only seems mean on the surface as he talks of cutting basic public services - a response to the structural debt arrived at after the public bought loss making banks - but it is also shaking the pound into devaluation.

Is that such a bad thing? Well, it increases the level of the deficit in pound terms. It makes it harder for the Government to reduce debt and instantly increases it.

So is Cameron and his razor gang of the greedy not in fact the problem?

The Conservatives and the Social Fabric

2010-02-28T17:43:00.000-08:00

The Conservatives have a difficult job convincing the electorate that it is not their fault when they complain of a "Broken Britain". It was after all they who exposed the manufacturing sector to world competition, not necessarily a bad thing, but the legacy of millions of unemployed left festering has led to a generation of people conditioned to rely upon Government spending, not by choice, more by circumstance and an inability to change that.

Reliance on private investment largely failed due to the "bling economy", the Yuppies of the 80s who invested their gains into fast cars and property contributing to the huge bubbles of that burst through the last decade. The most severe being the credit crunch recession that has seen a reduction in available capital that no political party seems to have confronted and said: "we need to rebuild by causing investment in the people of Britain by the people and Government working together" which seems now the path back from evaporation of supposed capital?

Vote, damn you Vote

2010-02-28T05:17:00.001-08:00

Democracy depends on people casting votes that are meaningful to their lives.

In this article voters are being encouraged to "vote strategically", basically to encourage voters to prevent a change of government to Conservative by not "wasting" a vote on the Liberal Democrats but going for more of the same (Labour) as a change to the right-wing Conservatives is "untenable".

What utter nonsense.

If everyone examines the actual policy of each party and casts their vote for that, then a government can be formed that reflects the democratic wishes of the majority, not manipulate the vote according to fears of what may happen if "we let the Tories take power".

Democratic choice is about evolution, not fear.

The change mechanism that depends upon fear is called War. Revolution results from massive disapproval following a failure of democratic choice.

Corporate Pollution

2010-02-18T18:51:00.000-08:00

Freedom means many things to many people. One of the supposed freedoms we are born with is to exist in nature. This is not a right bestowed by Government or God, but is part of what and who we are. One of the greatest crimes against humanity is the pursuit of profits to line the pockets of the wealthy with scant regard for natural consequences.

Read the full article

New Economics

2010-02-14T18:02:00.000-08:00

350 economists agree, it is time to change the parameters of finance. A suggested tax on the transactions between banks of 0.05% and a suggestion of a tax on speculation to alleviate poverty in this unbalanced world are two ideas which may take hold.

Full Article

What is Conservatism

2010-02-08T17:27:00.000-08:00

If we look after our children, give them the best opportunities that we can to get educated and get ahead, make sure they are given the best chance of healthy living, we are doing the right thing. So why do conservatives rail against medical care for all? What is the point of denial of human rights for the sake of the choice of the few?

Why Terrorism is a Failure

2010-01-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

Terrorism fails to exert political pressure on governments, as nobody in the world wants random acts of violence to take the lives of their children, or indeed themselves.

Full article

Freedom

2010-01-13T02:22:00.000-08:00

UK Police have had an EEC ruling against stop and search activities.

In the meantime, a Muslim group has been denied their right of protest and have been labelled a terrorist group. This seems a popularist measure by the Brown Government increasingly clutching at straws to find votes in the upcoming election Labour seems destined to lose. Having moved too far right, they will almost certainly lose as the Conservatives seem to put on a more moderate face. I have seen this sort of political reversal happen in New Zealand.

And enquiries into Britain's role in starting the Iraq war with George Bush is being defended by Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's master of spin.

Politics is the art of finding the middle ground. The war with Al Qaeda has been detrimental to the life of Great Britain but hardly as devastating as it has been to Iraq civilian life. Similarly, the war in Afghanistan seems, from the outside, to be a war against the poppy and criminal ideals. Terrorism is a political act when it creates a threat to everyday life. But Britain lived through its own Blitz in WWII and the threat of terror attacks is not going to stop this once world ruling nation from defending itself.

Freedom is too important to ignore. But is the medicine proscribed by Bush, Blair and now Brown any good for freedom? Not if the laws they enact reduce individual freedom. I returned to the UK expecting stop and search and intrusions by the law to be hard to deal with, but so far, I see people being indoctrinated behind their brick walls into being frightened of each other. The police presence is extreme but accepted. Most of the coppers go about their guardianship of civilised behaviour with good will and life goes on.

Google is concerned that Chinese hacking of freedom activists' gmail accounts has raised question by the US Government and a threat by Google of pulling out of google.cn completely. This will mean less freedom for the most populated country in the world.

Meantime, earthquakes destroy Haiti and millions die the world over from disease and starvation. Is this emphasis on terrorism all that wise? Are the acts of Osama bin Laden really going to make any difference in terms of Islam? Probably not. It is just a dirty war that will be over in another 2000 years or so.

Or both sides could signal an end to hostilities and the start of toleration and freedom.

Yeah, right.

What are we feeding our children

2010-01-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

Read the effects of drinking a can of Coke or other soda drinks, within one hour it has as much potential to promote disease as smoking a cigarette or consuming heroin. And due to the "sugar crash" the physical addiction is fairly instant, requiring "refuelling" within an hour. One of the most successful companies of the twentieth century is in essence a drug pusher? Read the link and judge for yourself!

A comment about the high fructose corn syrup used as a sweetener is truly alarming:

and this doesn't even touch on the negative impact of the sweetener used in most soft drinks now, high fructose corn syrup. To make a long story short, high fructose corn syrup causes your body to deposit fat around your major organs (liver, kidneys, heart, etc.) and slowly chokes out their function.

I find it very intriguing that the slave trade of the nineteenth century supported the sugar plantations and the war on the health of humanity continues with misleading advertising that relies upon the same symbols that the tobacco industry falsely used.

To be healthy, turn to nature. Evolution has ensured we are designed for raw unprocessed foods and not addictive chemicals and sugar.

Obama's Response

2010-01-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

When a flaw in the protective shield that makes airflight possible (without holding your breath) exposed American flights a new kind of designer suicide bomber with a chemistry set to be set off by an "emergency injection", the media in the UK highlighted how detailed scanners would fail to show such a kit but would expose people's nakedness to the security police, as if that exposure was indeed sinful. Making people the "apparent victims" of the potential they they exist as a parade of pornographic images is what the purient are most concerned about? Is that their response?

More (full article)

Happy new decade

2010-01-02T00:55:00.001-08:00

The year 2000 was a fine boundary, because of the mathematics of dates. 2010 seems a little more mathematical, in that the century count is double that of the year count. 2000 however exposed a hole in thinking shared by everyone who entered a two figure date into their computers. Time marches on, and it is necessary to record the details.

The 2000 decade was the decade that Tony Blair and GW Bush decided that the Geneva Convention prevented them from dealing with the threat of Iraq. There is a movement to bring them to justice as their actions were not legal or desirable.

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Overpopulation is the main problem

2009-12-15T02:34:00.000-08:00

Overpopulation is the world’s top environmental issue, followed closely by climate change and the need to develop renewable energy resources to replace fossil fuels, according to a survey of the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) reported in April 2009.

“Overpopulation is the only problem,” said Dr. Charles A. Hall, a systems ecologist. “If we had 100 million people on Earth — or better, 10 million — no others would be a problem.” (Current estimates put the planet’s population at more than six billion.)

I agree.

Russian Dead Hand Defense Strategy

2009-12-14T21:42:00.000-08:00

The "Dead Hand" defense, a sort of Russian Roulette with the certainty of death for the other side in the event of a nuclear explosions that had not been responded to due to no orders from whomever carries the football in Russia these days.

The West believes that hand to now be Vladamir Putin's; making the existence of a system, such as the "Dead Hand", perhaps a little redundant. What it did, upon detecting nuclear tremors, is launch a devastating attack on America. Lucky no major earthquakes triggered this!

Now that the Cold War is over, we can look back at its horrific potential for errors leading to the annihilation of all life on the planet. So last decade. So not current thinking. The constant terror of being educated as a child about nuclear fallout shelters and the possibility that the accelerating state of tension between the USSR and the USA was punctuated with moments of greatness, such as Yuri Gagarin, Sputnik and the Apollo programmes. It was not the putting a man on the moon, which factually achieved less than putting the second one there as well, and so on; but, the very act of being able to populate another world was a significant stage in the evolution of humans.

Insofar as we know, humans seems to adapt more rapidly and inherently in our behavior, primarily language, and as such are the very least stable artifact of nature. Impatient to the very nucleus we are, increasingly prodded into grand magical majesty of change and recombination of elements.

There is no "should" that can dictate to us what we do next. Our self belief has been superseded by our technology. It is only by a process of mutual responsibility and love can we see a path past war, past suffering, where agreements are made as a token of faith in each other rather than a unworthy belief that another causes our decisions.

Can humanity evolve enough frugal inventiveness to conquer the limitations of growth? Imagine one day if the entire earth was one city. Due to the nature of growth, in its second year there would be so many homeless. We must share our resources with all the generations that follow, and we must somehow put an end to this need to destroy each other. If populations were stable, the differences would not matter as much, but there would be budget crises keeping up with pension costs.

Our generation took a time of extreme plenty and turned it into grand larceny on an exceptional scale. Gambling with the future is extreme folly.

Iran Nuclear Memo

2009-12-14T10:45:00.000-08:00

A memo leaked in Iran that indicates as recently as 2007 there were discussions about nuclear weapon development. Disturbing, certainly, for Europe and Israel, for the UK and of course for President Barack Obama who will be seen by the world as the person who has to lead the charge against Iran for surging on with their nuclear arms aspirations.

Of course the leak could be propaganda, the BBC was unable to verify if the document was genuine. If it is propaganda, it is disturbing for Iran - what is the motivation?

Either way, it is a sadly revealing moment. Occams razor says that it is more likely that the memo is real, simply as it is reflected by the behaviour of Iran - a leadership that dictates to its population how they must vote, how they must not protest and how they must respond to religious edicts. As well as the ten reactors they have planned.

Danger to Food Chain

2009-12-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

Climate change is not being viewed as a complex problem, but more in black and white terms of the likelihood that mankind is causing it.

This article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8411135.stm

on the BBC introduced a new idea to Copenhagen. The idea that changes in the climate may endanger the food chain by changing the composition of the oceans - to more acidic. Therefore changing the basis of what life survives, thrives or starves.

Dubai bailed out

2009-12-13T23:04:00.000-08:00

Abu Dhabi has bailed out Dubai's extraordinary property ventures with a US$10Billion grant to its sister state.

Blair justifies Iraq War

2009-12-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

Tony Blair states that Saddam Hussein "had to go" as justification for the invasion of Iraq.

"I would still have thought it right to remove him. Obviously, you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat," he said.

"I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons still in charge," he added.

This logic puts government above the law. The reckless disregard for international agreements and the sovereignty of nations was not respected by the British Empire, or any other. Although it is hard to defend the acts of Saddam Hussein and the apparent evil in his heirs, it is also hard to defend a "we will employ any rhetoric we can think of" as a reasoned course of action for international intervention.

The rationale is bias. It has led the West (the UK and USA) into the worst deficit crisis in history. It may have been right for the sensibilities of Tony Blair and GW Bush. But the rest of the world thinks that this intervention was handled in the worst possible way.

To have continued to use the Rule of Law would have been far more effective, than a war that has not solved the issue of Iraqi political stability.

Fuel alternative

2009-12-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

A genetically engineered bacteria converts CO2 into a liquid fuel. Brilliant - is this the solution to global warming? Perhaps. The disturbing trend we see following discoveries such as this is the justification to continue to produce pollution as it is now safer to do so.

China's inverse bubble

2009-12-08T18:20:00.000-08:00

A population constriction, when the population is forcibly reduced by war, disease or policy requires a different set of release valves than a growing economy. Instead of inflation vs interest rates, it is deflation sets in because decreasing numbers of people create demand, in other words nobody is there to buy things. It is hard enough to sell your products into a niche in competition, but when your customer base erodes, there is a sense of that being economically troubling.

Continued/...

The crisis is Energy

2009-11-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

The climate change debate has been set on edge by the revelation that records were "homogenised" and the original data lost by the East Anglia researchers. The conservative columnists seem to be convinced that disproving human created pollution is affecting our environment is their duty, even if it is. The risk to cities and low lands over the next 90 years or so, notwithstanding.

It is as though the threat to business, if the oil taps are turned off one day, is simply untenable. It is as though the status quo was a holy relic to be preserved for ever and a day.

The answer is not limiting productivity; it is finding better and less expensive ways to use energy. The oil industry is not really that different to the cancer causing tobacco giants - oil is however intimately tied with the economic model of industry. Industry can change direction, replace oil use by creating opportunities and find ways to produce energy without risk or damage to the environment.

As it is possible to achieve this, and failure to do so results in no conservation of the world as it was, the progress of clean technology remains an important priority for research and development.

Sovereign Debt - UPDATE

2009-11-26T18:37:00.000-08:00

Dubai has asked that it may suspend payment on it's extraordinary property development schemes including Palm Island, projects that are owned by a holding company, 100% owned by the Dubai government. It is therefore "Sovereign Debt".

What is disturbing is that loaning governments may respond to Dubai effectively giving the Dubai economy a bail out. There really is no reason to, as the holding company is limited in liability therefore creditors may sit it out and not seek it's downfall, as they have too much invested and the incomplete project has less value than a completed one.

The actual risk involved (apart from the unnecessary environmental intrusion) if Dubai borrowed more to cover payments and keep building, seem minimal. If the company cannot borrow more, then creditors may tolerate late payment.

The news of Dubai's possible default had a large impact on world financial markets

December 1st, 2009
UPDATE: Dubai government will not support the debt as it is a problem for negotiation with creditors BBC

Views of Dubai - "you can go to prison for a bounced cheque" "I am trapped here"

Loan Traps

2009-11-25T13:56:00.000-08:00

Organisations that feed off poverty by lending with ridiculous rates are coming under a bit of a spotlight of protest in the UK. As they should. Anyone who loans money to another person is entering a business transaction. If the APR is over 15% per annum, and the borrower has to pay more than 15% of their income in loan repayments, it is bound to fail. With APRs as high as hundreds of percent per annum, and incomes being uncertain, it does not take much fancy maths to see that it is a trap that the poor will never see the end of.

However, the same could be said of credit cards, sub-prime mortgages in general and much business debt. It simply has a future of not being repaid.

What does that mean? It means suffering, stress and the undoing of the potential of real lives for the sake of enriching a person or organisation that is essentially criminal in their intent. To profit from the suffering of others.

A new economic model is required. The current one may have suited a smaller world but the majority of humanity is being used by a small rich minority in an intergenerational scam that enslaves the lives of the many.

One solution is revolution. Economic revolution.