Notes from above
June 30, 2011
We have rehosted disturbingtrends.org (this new one carries on from the ancient blogger blog) with snippets, updates, and links to longer stories on the more indepth predicting future politics (and more historic covering the last ten years or so) blog. In addition other publications: medianightmare.blogspot.com, opensauces.blogspot.com, and weblogtheory.blogspot.com (these shall continue as blogger sites).
Korean Intervention
June 29, 2011
Korea appears to be simmering and bristling with weapons and threat in the most sustained unresolved civil war that could it seems erupt into further provocations by the North and responses of increasing violence from the South. American forces intervened in this war in the early fifties and US bases have been operational since. It seems to be a war of one of the most technologically advanced societies against a lunging starving beast with big guns. To the mind of a North Korean, the weight of evil may appear to be from the South and their weapons. The intervention does not appear to have removed the threat but sustains its presence but suspending violence until the weapons are too horrible to contemplate. Maybe that is why military spending keeps racing ahead of society – it is only possible to render your enemy unable to attack you if you can punish them even more than they can punish you.
“We are now in the most dangerous moment in Korean history over the last 25 years,” said Andrei Lankov, a Russian professor at Seoul’s Kookmin University. “South Korea has already committed itself to a strong reaction to a future North Korean provocation so many times and so loudly that if they don’t do it they will lose elections and be shamed.
Libya
June 27, 2011
While President Obama was rebuked by Congress for the American involvement in the war in Libya, the International Criminal Court in The Hague have indicted Muammar-el-Qaddafi for war crimes alongside his son Seif-el-Islam and his chief of intelligence, Abdullah Senussi.
Economic Maladies
June 23, 2011
The Greek Tragedy threatens to engulf Europe in a contagion of defaults, resulting in loans from other countries / investors not being repaid.
Does economic isolation logically follow a default? Would you lend to someone who never repaid their debts? Moreover, when a default occurs the overseas assets of the nation could be repossessed or nationalised by the creditor nation. Unable to borrow funds to finance Government spending could only be financed by printing money. And economies that inflate in this way render their currency meaningless. Like Zimbabwe.
The problem is that the trade between nations is the driver of economic wealth. The sudden cessation of the ability to import would hamper the capabilities for business growth as well as indulgence in the luxuries we can import. Exporting would also be limited as one could not expect payment from an erstwhile business partner to whom billions are not repaid.
Unemployment and criminal activity would follow.
So how can spiraling economies like Greece recover? When the bulk of Government spending is an ingrained bureaucracy without inherent value that can be exported, it does not provide much scope for a means to recover. And how does the unprecedented levels of imbalance become rebalanced?
The inherent force by which China forces its human economy to produce exportable goods for little pay has enabled it to outdo the West through sheer economic force. It is a flaw in values that money is a relativistic means of exchange, that economic prosperity can be distorted by risk to the degree it has and that greed should be the rationale over which economic decisions are reached.
Gambling produces nothing except increased risk. The only path out of this mess is to confront what is real, not what is imagined.
Solar Energy
June 22, 2011
To claim that solar power is too weak to power the world is simply wrong. We use so little of the solar power that arrives for free from the sun and investment in using more of it efficiently will not have the potential cost or nightmare consequences of a nuclear meltdown.
Climate change denial does not stop irreversible extinctions and “being real” by building nuclear plants on or near fault lines or population centres is plainly daft.
What commercial imperative is there for free energy? Free energy is the most efficient form of energy. It would mean we can spend more on the very real problems we face from polluting the seas.
[comment post on the Guardian.co.uk CIF talkboards]
Irrepairable damage
June 21, 2011
The damage humankind does by overfishing and polluting the ocean is a threat to our existence as well as the food chain for all life.
The IMF
June 17, 2011
Granted that the IMF bails out countries and finances deficits against future growth, it is seen as a stabilising force in the world. But to what degree are weapons funding inherently part of this structural adjustment to a nation’s expectations? If the IMF did not bail out a country, then what would happen to them?
The financial crisis that has rocked the world was, in case anyone has forgotten, due to Lehman Brothers and the sub-prime mortgage markets collapsing. It was due to the raised expectations and false hope provided by signing up everyone who could never afford it, loans that were almost certain to collapse in a pile of bad debt. These bad debts were then onsold into the “market” that was seen as being completely able to direct what happened next. It could not. And what happened was a call on the also illogical insurances that backed Lehman deals. And that saw AIG being bailed out by the US government for 185 billion dollars.
The damage done was having to reverse all these ridiculous agreements for those who could not afford mortgages they should have avoided. It is the illusion of being able to stay above water that keeps the poor sods struggling before they sink. If they remained in their affordable, uncomfortable, low expectation lifestyle, there would have not been a problem. It is a need to have things as a right rather than as a reward that seems basic to this horror.
And the same goes for the IMF bailing out the economies where tax payers have bailed out banks. All very well to continue to support these banks that have flouted their responsibilities. But are new investment rules and responsibilities not just overdue?
Are we being taken for a ride by the likes of the IMF?
See New York Times
Climate Change
June 14, 2011
Climate changes are directly affecting the wealth and well being of the world. Meantime educational advisers to the Government are asking that Climate Change be removed from the Science curriculum to make more room for core science.
Read full post on Disturbing Trends: Predicting Future Politics
Using Nature
Mankind has advanced by learning to work with nature.
Nature has supplied him with energy sources, building materials, food, water, air and fire.
What you eat
You can effect remarkable change by “doing one thing”.
An excellent talk by Robyn O’Brien about the corporations who profit from making Americans more unhealthy and charge them for the right to eat foods they have not so processed.
Miss Representation
http://www.missrepresentation.org/home.html
Looks like a great film – women who have enough of being defined and demeaned by men.
Using Nature
June 7, 2011
Mankind has advanced by learning to work with nature.
Nature has supplied him with energy sources, building materials, food, water, air and fire.
Fire is the catalyst that has bent iron, melted steel and released the energy nature had so carefully locked into hydrocarbons. Science can discover these natural advantages that have been adopted. The majority of advantages science can bring do appear to depend upon utilising nature. And this accelerated dig into the resources available becomes more finite as time and growth increase demand incrementally.
And it is the mathematics that is the real problem here. The renewability of nature deceives us as we tread all over it, wiping away in a few mere centuries millenia of genetic intelligence. What possible survival instinct led us to this rush to suicide, it is a misguided one. A malignant force that is no longer necessary.
Today we read of a protest by WW2 veterans who felt it was a sacrilege to position a wind farm at sea off the coast of Normandy due to the landings at Dunkurk. Celebrating defeat of an enemy like Hitler is their right and the wind farm could be relocated but that is not the point.
Continuing to learn only from failure blinds us to the very seriously obvious. War proves nothing except that progress can be dangerous.
New edition
June 2, 2011
Disturbing Trends enters its tenth year. It is now a family of blogs starting with the original blogger site. Unfortunately due to unresolved error states which may have affected growth, the site has been transferred to WordPress and will continue here. The history has been transfered but this is a new site with new capabilities now coming onstream. For a start the site is now available with translators, You can join the site (subscribe) or ask to be promoted to contributor status and present your articles for consideration.
This site will be updated, and the old sites will be repointed here at some stage.
Everything below this post is from the old site which shall remain on http://distrends.blogspot.com (but the current Disturbing Trends will be posted on this site, under the sites original URL http://disturbingtrends.org.
In depth analysis on our in depth analysis site http://disturbingtrends.org/politics
Sony Hacked
April 27, 2011
Sony Playstation network was shutdown after a hacker stole nearly 80 million identities of people who are obviously ready to spend online. Who is at fault, and why?
Social Equity
April 17, 2011
The very act of enacting laws is an erosion of the unfettered freedom some believe is necessary for business to succeed
from Social Equity
Read the full article
Tsunami terror
March 13, 2011
This amazing footage shows exactly what the terror of the Tsunami feels like as yachts stumble over the beach line, and water starts pouring onto roadways. It is well shot, with good sound by someone who must have survived along with the beach-side property it was shot from.
Full article including a theory for increased seismic activity
Nuclear threat
“There are now problems at the number three reactor – the concern is that it is overheating. They’re trying to pump sea water through it at the moment. That’s an unusual, somewhat innovative solution to the problem. But the fact that they’re prepared to consider unusual solutions like that gives you a hint of just how serious the problem is.” – Chris Hogg – BBC
Stopping the Tsunami
March 11, 2011
The Tsunami
Theories as to what causes Earthquakes are well established. The Earth has a group of tectonic plates which move gradually. This causes continental drift and parts of the world that are more likely to get volcanoes and earthquakes. There are a few countries that are more likely to get seismic activity due to their location and indeed origin as land masses drawn out of the Earth’s mantle, the product of volcanic activity.
Examine the plate map around the Ring of Fire – the edges of the Pacific plate. Japan and New Zealand are both dissected by subduction zones, where the plates are pushing towards each other. So is Iceland (although the Atlantic plates are moving apart. Other trouble zones are evident around the Pacific rim, Indonesia and north of the Indian Plate. Mutual subduction results in mountain ranges and continental drift takes these land deposits and slowly but certainly reorders them. So New Zealand and Japan, in Geological time, are likely to both increase in land mass. The water in the atmosphere and sea and the fuming vents of the Earth appear to have interdependent roles in the maintenance of the conditions of life.
Tsunami
A Tsunami arises from the sudden upward thrust of one plate, the friction causes the earthquake and the land mass suddenly moving up creates a powerful wave that radiates rapidly. The displacement of large amounts of water is carried on the waves and move like a rapid tide. The laws of gravity counterbalance the effects of these waves, and the tide is drawn back out to sea. This has disastrous consequences for shorelines close to the wave and certain types of shoreline that may be distant but have a “line of sight” to the event.
Preventing a Tsunami
A Tsunami can not be stopped from our current technological options. Ideas are listed below of theoretical means by which a tsunami could be stopped or prevented from causing remote damage.
Ideas to Stop a Tsunami
- a tractor beam wall from a network of satellites protecting coastlines near faults that can be switched on when an earthquake is detected
- offshore barriers or baffles close to the fault line that absorb the energy of the wave
- giant fans that blow the waves away on potentially hazardous coastline
- underground plumbing
- hoping it will never happen again
Poetry
The Tsunami (poetry)
The Vote
March 6, 2011
Cameron is going to have to come up with some better arguments about the alternative vote if he wants to win the argument. In his speech he used this analogy:
Imagine it’s the Olympics, London 2012. We’re all watching the 100 metres. Usain Bolt powers home over the line. But then he gets to the podium, it’s the guy who came third who gets the gold. We wouldn’t put up with this in the Olympics. We shouldn’t put up with it in our democracy.
If Cameron carries on like this, he’s going to have to hand back that Oxford PPE first. An Olympic final is designed to establish who can run the fastest. An election is designed to establish who can govern with consent.
from The Guardian
The UK is about to vote between First Past the Post and AV (the system used in Australia).
AV? Alternative Vote means that you do not vote for one candidate but exercise a sort of “internal democracy” apportioning a diminishing vote from your first to last choice of candidates. In this way, a tie can be broken by a third vote that is marginally larger, who receives a large majority of second votes. By allowing the preference vote to cover more than just the first three or five selections, it becomes an exercise in democratic ignorance for most, most of us are not familiar with every point of view on offer nor should be be over concerned for the opinions of those we find philosophically untenable to be significant.
The attraction of FPP is that history can be blamed on the proportionality of the sub legislature, by which is meant that constituencies are not “equal” in that they may encompass populations that have no chance in overturning a local majority due to the established conservatism of the very wealthy (who in turn consider that social immobility is of value), or where the enterprising have no chance for a political voice because of a dominance of the more frequently occupied seats of economic fortune in the council estates of cities.
The constituency system has its illusion of traditional democratic choice. But it is more likely to express a government that slowly swings harshly to the left or right. A coalition government where significant minority voices are at least able to express policy options does not seek to divide peoples only by where they live.
A real democracy is enriched by the input of many voices. Nick Clegg has not a shit show of selling AV over Cameron backing the more decisive and “intelligent choice” or whatever soapsuds he will manage to briefly enchant the voter with until they wake up.
More ideas for progress are available if no regard to artificial “original” values are ascribed to them. Egalitarian societies would be a fortunate but unlikely result of Cameron’s philosophy. What he hopes to foster is unfortunately coloured by an increased perceived imbalance, a widening so sharp one can not help but view this Big Society as something very unpleasant that can also be subject to whitewash as well as swallow it as necessary punishment.
Egyptian Democracy
February 6, 2011
Noam Chomsky on the people power revolution that the Egyptian government appears intent on suppressing with violence.
