Publicly-displayed digital images/scratchings. The opinions of others - nothing more, nothing less. Nothing else to say. Write to me for updates - I welcome your thoughts. alarkintexas@gmail.com
Agitprop (/ˈædʒɨtprɒp/; from Russian: агитпроп[ɐɡʲɪtˈprop]) is derived from agitation and propaganda,and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message.
The term originated in Soviet Russia (the future USSR), as a shortened form of отдел агитации и пропаганды (otdel agitatsii i propagandy), i.e., Department for Agitation and Propaganda, which was part of the Central and regional committees of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The department was later renamed Ideological Department.
The term propaganda in the Russian language did not bear any negative connotation at the time. It simply meant "dissemination of ideas". In the case of agitprop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of communism, including explanations of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. In other contexts, propaganda could mean dissemination of any kind of beneficial knowledge, e.g., of new methods in agriculture. Agitation meant urging people to do what Soviet leaders expected them to do; again, at various levels. In other words, propaganda was supposed to act on the mind, while agitation acted on emotions, although both usually went together, thus giving rise to the cliché "propaganda and agitation".
The term agitprop gave rise to agitprop theatre, a highly-politicized leftist theatre originated in 1920s Europe and spread to America; the plays of Bertolt Brecht being a notable example. Russian agitprop theater was noted for its cardboard characters of perfect virtue and complete evil, and its coarse ridicule. Gradually the term agitprop came to describe any kind of highly politicized art. In the Western world, agitprop has a negative connotation. In the United Kingdom during the 1980s, for example, socialist elements of the political scene were often accused of using agitprop to convey an extreme left-wing message via television programmes or theatre.
After the October Revolution of 1917, an agitprop train toured the country, with artists and actors performing simple plays and broadcasting propaganda. It had a printing press on board the train to allow posters to be reproduced and thrown out of the windows if it passed through villages.
<|>
In 1787 Alexander
Fraser Tytler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to
say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years prior:
"A democracy is always
temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of
government.A democracy will continue
to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves
generous gifts from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the
majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the
public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse
over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."
"The average age of the
world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about
200 years.During those 200 years, these
nations always progressed through the following sequence:
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (15 October 1747 - 5 January 1813) was a Scottish lawyer, writer, and professor. Tytler was also a historian, and for some years was Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities, in the University of Edinburgh.Tytler's other titles included Senator of the College of Justice, and George Commissioner of Justiciary in Scotland.Tytler was a friend of Robert Burns, and prevailed upon him to remove lines from his poem "Tam o' Shanter" which were insulting to the legal and clerical professions. His son was Patrick Fraser Tytler, traveller and historian.
Translation
Tytler wrote a treatise that is important in the history of translation theory, the Essay on the Principles of Translation (London, 1790). It has been argued in a 1975 book by Gan Kechao that Yan Fu's famous translator's dictum of fidelity, clarity and elegance came from Tytler.
Tytler said that translation should fully represent the 1) ideas and 2) style of the original and should 3) possess the ease of original composition.
Quotations on Democracy
In his Lectures, Tytler displayed a cynical view of democracy in general and representative democracies such as republics in particular. He believed that "a pure democracy is a chimera," and that "All government is essentially of the nature of a monarchy." In discussing the Athenian democracy, after noting that a great number of the population were actually enslaved, he went on to say, "Nor were the superior classes in the actual enjoyment of a rational liberty and independence. They were perpetually divided into factions, which servilely ranked themselves under the banners of the contending demagogues; and these maintained their influence over their partisans by the most shameful corruption and bribery, of which the means were supplied alone by the plunder of the public money."
Speaking about the measure of freedom enjoyed by the people in a republic or democracy, Tytler wrote, "The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people--through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch."
Tytler dismisses the more optimistic vision of democracy by commentators such as Montesquieu as "nothing better than an Utopian theory, a splendid chimera, descriptive of a state of society that never did, and never could exist; a republic not of men, but of angels," for "While man is being instigated by the love of power--a passion visible in an infant, and common to us even with the inferior animals--he will seek personal superiority in preference to every matter of a general concern; or at best, he will employ himself in advancing the public good, as the means of individual distinction and elevation: he will promote the interest of the state from the selfish but most useful passion of making himself considerable in that establishment which he labors to aggrandize. Such is the true picture of man as a political agent."
That said however, Tytler does admit that there are individual exceptions to the rule, and that he is ready to allow "that this form of government is the best adapted to produce, though not the most frequent, yet the most striking, examples of virtue in individuals," paradoxically because a "democratic government opposes more impediments to disinterested patriotism than any other form. To surmount these, a pitch of virtue is necessary which, in other situations, where the obstacles are less great and numerous, is not called in to exertion. The nature of a republican government gives to every member of the state an equal right to cherish views of ambition, and to aspire to the highest offices of the commonwealth; it gives to every individual of the same title with his fellows to aspire at the government of the whole."
Tytler believed that democratic forms of government such as those of Greece and Rome have a natural evolution from initial virtue toward eventual corruption and decline. In Greece, for example, Tytler argues that "the patriotic spirit and love of ingenious freedom ... became gradually corrupted as the nation advanced in power and splendor." Tytler goes on to generalize: "Patriotism always exists in the greatest degree in rude nations, and in an early period of society. Like all other affections and passions, it operates with the greatest force where it meets with the greatest difficulties ... but in a state of ease and safety, as if wanting its appropriate nourishment, it languishes and decays." ... "It is a law of nature to which no experience has ever furnished an exception, that the rising grander and opulence of a nation must be balanced by the decline of its heroic virtues."
Misquotation - Tytler Cycle
The following unverified quotation has been attributed to Tytler, most notably as part of a longer piece which began circulating on the Internet shortly after the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election.
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
There is no reliable record of Alexander Tytler's having made the statement. In fact, this passage actually comprises two quotations, which didn't begin to appear together until the 1970s. The first portion (italicized above) first appeared on December 9, 1951, as part of what appears to be an op-ed piece in The Daily Oklahoman under the byline Elmer T. Peterson. The original version from Peterson's op-ed is as follows:
Two centuries ago, a somewhat obscure Scotsman named Tytler made this profound observation: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
The list beginning "From bondage to spiritual faith" is commonly known as the "Tytler Cycle" or the "Fatal Sequence". Its first known appearance is in a 1943 speech "Industrial Management in a Republic" by H. W. Prentis, president of the Armstrong Cork Company and former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, and appears to be original to Prentis.
“Arrival at truth is many-layered… because it requires… the lifting of
veils. It requires quietude and introspection.
Today men speak of evolution… revolution… even devolution. Yet too few
speak of involution – looking inside one’s self, or turning inward – that they
may look before they leap.”
The study of
nonverbal bodily movements, such as gestures and facial expressions, as
communication.
Kinesics is the interpretation of body language such as facial expressions and gestures — or, more formally, non-verbal behavior related to movement, either of any part of the body or the body as a whole.
Birdwhistell's work
The term was first used (in 1952) by Ray Birdwhistell, an anthropologist
who wished to study how people communicate through posture, gesture,
stance, and movement, and later popularised during the late 1960's by
"hippies" seeking to deverbalise human communication. Part of
Birdwhistell's work involved making film
of people in social situations and analyzing them to show different
levels of communication not clearly seen otherwise. The study was joined
by several other anthropologists, including Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.
Drawing heavily on descriptive linguistics,
Birdwhistell argued that all movements of the body have meaning (i.e.
are not accidental), and that these non-verbal forms of language (or paralanguage) have a grammar that can be analyzed in similar terms to spoken language. Thus, a "kineme" is "similar to a phoneme
because it consists of a group of movements which are not identical,
but which may be used interchangeably without affecting social meaning".
(Knapp 1972:94-95)
Birdwhistell estimated that "no more than 30 to 35 percent of the
social meaning of a conversation or an interaction is carried by the
words." (Birdwhistell, 1985: 158). He also concluded that there were no
universals in these kinesic displays - a claim disproved by Paul Ekman's analysis of universals in facial expression.
A few Birdwhistell-isms are as follows:
Social personality is a temporo-spatial system. All behaviors
evinced by any such system are components of the system except as
related to different levels of abstractions.
Even if no participant of an interaction field can recall, or repeat
in a dramatized context, a given series or sequence of body motions,
the appearance
of a motion is of significance to the general study of the particular
kinesic system even if the given problem can be rationalized without
reference to it.
All meaningful body motion patterns are to be regarded as socially learned until empirical investigation reveals otherwise.
No kineme ever stands alone.
Modern applications
In one current application, kinesics are used as signs of deception
by interviewers. Interviewers look for clusters of movements to
determine the veracity of the statement being uttered. Some related
words may be:
Emblems - Substitute for words and phrases
Illustrators - Accompany or reinforce verbal messages
Affect Displays - Show emotion
Regulators - Control the flow and pace of communication
Adaptors - Release physical or emotional tension
Kinesics are an important part of non-verbal communication behavior.
The movement of the body, or separate parts, conveys many specific
meanings and the interpretations may be culture bound. As many movements
are carried out at a subconscious or at least a low-awareness level,
kinesic movements carry a significant risk of being misinterpreted in an
intercultural communications situation.
Inspired by Stanley
Milgram's iconic experiments on obedience, and interested in understanding why
people were induced to obey unjust regimes, Psychologist Philip Zimbardo paid
college students to participate in a mock prison, as prisoners and guards.
One of the central
findings of the study is that individuals only move towards tyranny once they
have come to identify with a group and its leadership (in a way that Zimbardo's
briefing of his guards encouraged) and once an authoritarian agenda has come to
define that group's identity and to be seen as a solution to its problems.
A theory holding that
economic variations within a given system, such as changing rates of inflation,
are most often caused by increases or decreases in the money supply
A policy that seeks
to regulate an economy by altering the domestic money supply, especially by
increasing it in a moderate but steady manner
monetarist
mon'e·ta·rist adj. & n.
Britannica Concise
Encyclopedia
School of economic
thought that maintains that the money supply is the chief determinant of
economic activity. Milton Friedman and his followers promoted monetarism as an
alternative to Keynesian economics (John Maynard Keynes); their economic
theories became influential in the 1970s and early 1980s. Monetarism holds that
a change in the money supply directly affects and determines production,
employment, and price levels, though its influence is evident only over a long
and often variable period of time. Fundamental to the monetarist approach is
the rejection of fiscal policy in favour of monetary rule. Friedman and others
asserted that fiscal measures such as tax-policy changes or increased
government spending have little significant effect on the fluctuations of the
business cycle. They argued that government intervention in the economy should
be kept to a minimum and asserted that economic conditions would change before
specific policy measures designed to address them could take effect. Steady,
moderate growth of the money supply, in their view, offered the best hope of
assuring a constant rate of economic growth with low inflation. U.S. economic
performance in the 1980s cast doubts on monetarism, and the proliferation of
new types of bank deposits made it difficult to calculate the money supply.
Oxford Dictionary of
Politics
An economic doctrine
which argues that changes in the supply of money in an economy cause changes in
the general price level. Coupled with this is a stress on minimal economic
intervention by government and an emphasis on the free play of market forces.
The term was first coined by Karl Brunner in 1968 but its antecedents can be
traced back to the quantity theory of money developed in the writings of
classical theorists such as Locke and Hume. It was through the work of Milton
Friedman, beginning in the 1950s, that the quantity theory was revived.
Friedman and his associates, the so-called Chicago School of economists, argued
that control of inflation could only be successful through restrictions in the
growth of the money supply. By the 1970s these arguments found political
succour due to the emergence of high levels of inflation and unemployment which
suggested the breakdown of Keynesian demand management policies. Hence, within
Britain the Labour government adopted control of the money supply as an
economic objective from 1976. The Conservative administration under Margaret
Thatcher in 1979 continued this process although an emphasis on the free market
was also fervently pursued. Strict control of the money supply had largely been
abandoned by the mid-1980s. Despite this an emphasis on the free market and the
importance of controlling inflation still pervades Conservative rhetoric.
Columbia Encyclopedia
monetarism,
economic theory that monetary policy, or control of the money supply, is the
primary if not sole determinant of a nation's economy. Monetarists believe that
management of the money supply to produce credit ease or restraint is the chief
factor influencing inflation or deflation, recession (see depression) or growth;
they dismiss fiscal policy (government spending and taxation) as ineffective in
regulating economic performance. Milton Friedman was the leading modern
proponent for monetarism.
Dictionary of Cultural
Literacy - Economics
The economic doctrine
that the supply of money has a major impact on a nation's economic growth. For
example, monetarists prefer to control inflation by restricting the growth of a
nation's money supply rather than by raising taxes. The doctrine is associated
with Milton Friedman.
Wikipedia
Monetarism is a
tendency in economic thought that emphasizes the role of governments in
controlling the amount of money in circulation. It is the view within monetary
economics that variation in the money supply has major influences on national output
in the short run and the price level over longer periods and that objectives of
monetary policy are best met by targeting the growth rate of the money supply.
Monetarism today is
mainly associated with the work of Milton Friedman, who was among the generation
of economists to accept Keynesian economics and then criticize it on its own
terms. Friedman and Anna Schwartz wrote an influential book, A Monetary History
of the United States, 1867-1960, and argued that "inflation is always and
everywhere a monetary phenomenon." Though opposed to the existence of the
Federal Reserve, but given that it does exist, Friedman advocated a central
bank policy aimed at keeping the supply and demand for money at equilibrium, as
measured by growth in productivity and demand.
German unification
had been one of the major objectives during the widespread revolutions of
1848–49, when representatives of the German states met in Frankfurt and drafted
a constitution creating a federal union with a national parliament to be
elected by universal male suffrage. In April 1849, the Frankfurt Parliament
offered the title of Emperor to the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The
Prussian king, fearing the opposition of the other German princes and the
military intervention of Austria and Russia, refused to accept this popular mandate.
Thus, the Frankfurt Parliament ended in failure for the German liberals. On 30
September 1862, Bismarck made a speech to the Budget Committee of the Prussian
Chamber of Deputies, which included Bismarck's emphasis on using "iron and
blood"—that is, military power—to achieve his goals.
Prussia
must concentrate and maintain its power for the favorable moment which has
already slipped by several times. Prussia's boundaries according to the Vienna
treaties are not favorable to a healthy state life. The great questions of the
time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions—that was the great
mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.
The Fabian strategy
is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided
in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and
indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy
harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and
affect morale. Employment of this strategy implies that the weaker side
believes time is on its side, but it may also be adopted when no feasible
alternative strategy can be devised.
History
This strategy derives
its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the dictator of the Roman
Republic given the task of defeating the great Carthaginian general Hannibal in
southern Italy during the Second Punic War (218–202 BC). At the start of the
war, Hannibal boldly crossed the Alps in wintertime and invaded Italy. Due to
Hannibal's skill as a general, he repeatedly inflicted devastating losses on
the Romans despite the numerical inferiority of his army—quickly achieving two
crushing victories over the Romans at the Battle of Trebbia and the Battle of
Lake Trasimene. After these disasters the Romans appointed Fabius Maximus as
dictator. Well aware of the military superiority of the Carthaginians and the
ingenuity of Hannibal, Fabius initiated a war of attrition which was designed
to exploit Hannibal's strategic vulnerabilities.
Hannibal suffered
from two particular weaknesses. First, he was commander of an invading foreign
army on Italian soil, effectively cut off from the home country by the
difficulty of seaborne resupply. His only hope of destroying Rome was by
enlisting the support of her allies. As long as the Italians remained loyal to
Rome, then there was no hope that Hannibal would win; but should the Romans
keep on losing battles, their allies’ faith in Rome would weaken. Therefore,
Fabius calculated that the way to defeat Hannibal was to avoid engaging with
him in pitched battles, so as to deprive him of victories. He determined that
Hannibal's extended supply lines, and the cost of maintaining the Carthaginian
army in the field, meant that Rome had time on its side. Rather than fight,
Fabius shadowed Hannibal's army and avoided battle, instead sending out small
detachments against Hannibal’s foraging parties, and maneuvering the Roman army
in hilly terrain, so as to nullify Hannibal’s decisive superiority in cavalry.
Residents of small northern villages were encouraged to post lookouts, so that
they could gather their livestock and possessions and take refuge in fortified
towns. He used interior lines to ensure that at no time could Hannibal march on
Rome without abandoning his Mediterranean ports, while at the same time
inflicting constant, small, debilitating defeats on the North Africans. This,
Fabius knew, would wear down the invaders’ endurance and discourage Rome’s
allies from going over to the enemy, without having to challenge the
Carthaginians to a decisive battle.
Hannibal's second
weakness was that much of his army was made up of mercenaries from Gaul and
Spain, who had no great loyalty to Hannibal, although they disliked Rome. Being
mercenaries, they were unequipped for siege-type battles; having neither the
equipment nor the patience for such a campaign. The mercenaries desired quick,
overwhelming battles and raids of villages for plunder, much like land-based
pirates. As such, Hannibal's army was virtually no threat to Rome, a walled
city which would have required a long siege to reduce, which is why Hannibal
never attempted it. Hannibal's only option was to beat Roman armies in the
field quickly before plunder ran out and the Gauls and Spaniards deserted for
plunder elsewhere. Fabius's strategy of delaying battle and attacking supply
chains thus hit right at the heart of Hannibal's weakness; time, not energy, would
cripple Hannibal's advances. The Fabian strategy, though effective in some
ways, was perceived as cowardly and unbecoming of the Fabian name, established
by his ancestors' victories in pitched battles.
Political opposition
Fabius's strategy,
though a military success, was a political failure. His indirect policies,
while tolerable among wiser minds in the Roman Senate, were deemed unpopular,
because the Romans had been long accustomed to facing and besting their enemies
directly in the field of battle. The Fabian strategy was in part ruined because
of a lack of unity in the command of the Roman army. The magister equitum,
Marcus Minucius Rufus, a political enemy of Fabius, is famously quoted
exclaiming,
Are we come here to see our allies
butchered, and their property burned, as a spectacle to be enjoyed? And if we
are not moved with shame on account of any others, are we not on account of
these citizens... a Carthaginian foreigner, who was advanced even this far from
the remotest limits of the world, through our dilatoriness and inactivity?
As the memory of the
shock of Hannibal's victories grew dimmer, the Roman populace gradually started
to question the wisdom of the Fabian strategy, the very thing which had allowed
them the time to recover. It was especially frustrating to the mass of the
people, who were eager to see a quick conclusion to the war. Moreover, it was
widely believed that if Hannibal continued plundering Italy unopposed, the
terrified allies, believing that Rome was incapable of protecting them, might
defect and pledge their allegiance to the Carthaginians. Since Fabius won no
large-scale victories, the Roman Senate removed him from command. Their chosen
replacement, Gaius Terentius Varro, led the Roman army into the debacle at the
Battle of Cannae. The Romans, after experiencing this catastrophic defeat and
losing countless other battles, had at this point learned their lesson. They
utilized the strategies Fabius had taught them, and which, they finally
realized, were the only feasible means of driving Hannibal from Italy.
This strategy of
attrition earned Fabius the cognomen "Cunctator" (the Delayer).
Later Usage
Though at first it
proved a political disaster for Fabius, eventually the Fabian strategy proved
itself.
The strategy was used
by the medieval French general Bertrand du Guesclin during the Hundred Years'
War against the English following a series of disastrous defeats in pitched
battles against Edward, the Black Prince. Eventually du Guesclin was able to
recover most of the territory that had been lost.
The most noted use of
Fabian strategy in American history was by George Washington, sometimes called
the "American Fabius" for his use of the strategy during the first
year of the American Revolutionary War. While Washington had initially pushed
for traditional direct engagements and victories, he was convinced of the
merits of using his army to harass the British rather than engage them both by
the urging of his generals in his councils of war, and by the pitched-battle
disasters of 1776, especially the Battle of Long Island. In addition, with a
history as a Colonial officer and having witnessed Indian warfare, Washington
knew this style would aid in defeating the traditional battle styles of the
British Army.
However, as with the
original Fabius, Fabian strategy is often more popular in retrospect than at
the time. To the troops, it can seem like a cowardly and demoralizing policy of
continual retreat. Fabian strategy is sometimes combined with scorched earth
tactics that demand sacrifice from civilian populations. Fabian leaders may be
perceived as giving up territory without a fight, and since Fabian strategies
promise extended war rather than quick victories, they can wear down the will
of one's own side as well as the enemy. During the American Revolution, John
Adams' dissatisfaction with Washington's conduct of the war led him to declare,
"I am sick of Fabian systems in all quarters!"
Later in history
Fabian strategy would be employed all over the world. Used against Napoleon’s
Grande Armée the Fabian strategy proved to be decisive in the defense of
Russia. Sam Houston effectively employed a Fabian defense in the aftermath of
the Alamo, using delaying tactics and small-unit harrying against Santa Anna's
much larger force, to give time for the Army of Texas to grow into a viable
fighting force. When he finally met Santa Ana, on the fields of San Jacinto,
Houston chose the time for attack equally well, launching his forces while the
Mexican Army was lounging in siesta. The resulting victory ensured the
establishment of the Republic of Texas. Houston's detractors were able to see
the validity of his delaying tactics, with the victory at San Jacinto,
otherwise improbable any other way.
Fabian Socialism
Fabian Socialism, the
ideology of the Fabian Society which originated in 1884 and launched the Labour
Party in the United Kingdom in 1904, utilizes the same strategy of a "war
of attrition" in their aim to bring about a socialist state. The
advocation of gradualism distinguished this brand of socialism from those who
condone revolutionary action.
“The shepherd drives the wolf
from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his
liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of
liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of
liberty.”
A social philosophy
propounded in England by Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton in the early part
of the twentieth century. Although primarily a political– economic doctrine, it
included ideas about art, culture, and spirituality. A version of communitarianism, it was strongly opposed to
laissez-faire capitalism, and to centralized collectivism, which it associated
with welfare liberalism and state socialism. The core element, elaborated most
effectively in Chesterton's writings, was a view of persons as
value-orientated, affective agents whose happiness can only be self-determined.
This personalist anthropology (admired by several central European
phenomenologists) led to an emphasis on social liberty and individual ownership
from which the name derives.
---
Distributism (also
known as distributionism or distributivism) is a third-way economic philosophy
that developed in England in the early 20th century based upon the principles
of Catholic social teaching, especially the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in his
encyclical Rerum Novarum and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno.
According to
distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right and the means of
production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace,
rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism)
or by an elite of wealthy property owners (laissez-faire capitalism).
Distributism therefore advocates a society marked by widespread property
ownership and, according to co-operative economist Race Mathews, maintains that
such a system is key to bringing about a just social order.
Distributism has
often been described as a "third way", in opposition to both
socialism and capitalism, which distributists see as equally flawed and
exploitive. Thomas Storck argues that "both socialism and capitalism are
products of the European Enlightenment and are thus modernizing and
anti-traditional forces. In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate
economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual
life, our family life".
Some have seen it
more as an aspiration, which has been successfully realised in the short term
by commitment to the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity (these being
built into financially independent local cooperatives and small family
businesses), though proponents also cite such periods as the Middle Ages as
examples of the historical long-term viability of distributism. Particularly
influential in the development of distributist theory were Catholic authors G.
K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, two of distributism's earliest and strongest
proponents.
Social Credit is an
economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas (1879–1952), a British engineer,
who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as
"the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy
"practical Christianity". This philosophy is interdisciplinary in
nature, encompassing the fields of economics, political science, history,
accounting and physics. Assuming the only safe place for power is in many
hands, Social Credit is a distributive philosophy, and its policy is to
disperse power to individuals. Social Credit philosophy is best summed by
Douglas when he said, "Systems were made for men, and not men for systems,
and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems,
whether theological, political or economic."
It was while he was
reorganising the work of the RAE during World War I that Douglas noticed that
the weekly total costs of goods produced was greater than the sums paid out to
workers for wages, salaries and dividends. This seemed to contradict the theory
put forth by classic Ricardian economics, that all costs are distributed
simultaneously as purchasing power. Troubled by the seeming disconnect between
the way money flowed and the objectives of industry ("delivery of goods
and services", in his view), Douglas set out to apply engineering methods
to the economic system.
Douglas collected
data from over a hundred large British businesses and found that in every case,
except that of companies heading for bankruptcy, the sums paid out in salaries,
wages and dividends were always less than the total costs of goods and services
produced each week: the workers were not paid enough to buy back what they had
made. He published his observations and conclusions in an article in the
English Review where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of
accountancy which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to
itself a technical impossibility." He later formalized this observation in
his A+B theorem. The theorem divides a company's payments into two categories:
A = income, and B = payments to other organizations. Prices equal A+B, but
income only equals A in any cycle of production. Since income (A) is always
less than total prices (A+B), he believed the theorem demonstrated that
people's income is always insufficient to buy back all of production: the
consequence of which is ever increasing debt.
Douglas proposed to
eliminate this gap between total prices and total incomes by augmenting
consumers' purchasing power through a National Dividend and compensated price
mechanism. According to Douglas, the true purpose of production is consumption,
and production must serve the genuine, freely expressed interests of consumers.
Each citizen is to have a beneficial, not direct, inheritance in the communal
capital conferred by complete and dynamic access to the fruits of industry
(consumer goods) assured by the National Dividend and Compensated Price.
Consumers, fully provided with adequate purchasing power, will establish the
policy of production through exercise of their monetary vote. In this view, the
term economic democracy does not mean worker control of industry. Removing the
policy of production from banking institutions, government, and industry,
Social Credit envisages an "aristocracy of producers, serving and
accredited by a democracy of consumers."
The policy proposals
of Social Credit attracted widespread interest in the decades between the world
wars of the twentieth century because of their relevance to economic conditions
of the time. Douglas called attention to the excess of production capacity over
consumer purchasing power, an observation that was also made by John Maynard
Keynes in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. While
Douglas shared some of Keynes' criticisms of classical economics, his unique
remedies were disputed and even rejected by most economists and bankers of the
time. Remnants of Social Credit still exist within Social Credit parties
throughout the world, but not in the purest form originally advanced by Major
C. H. Douglas.
Issue number 1 of the
relaunched The New Age May 2nd 1907
The New Age was a British literary magazine, noted for its wide
influence under the editorship of A. R. Orage from 1907 to 1922. It began life
in 1894 as a publication of the Christian Socialist movement; but in 1907 as a
radical weekly edited by Joseph Clayton, it was struggling. In May of that
year, Alfred Orage and Holbrook Jackson, who had been running the Leeds Arts
Club, took over the journal with financial help from George Bernard Shaw.
Jackson acted as co-editor only for the first year, after which Orage edited it
alone until he sold it in 1922. By that time his interests had moved towards
mysticism, and the quality and circulation of the journal had declined. According
to a Brown University press release, "The New Age helped to shape
modernism in literature and the arts from 1907 to 1922". It ceased
publication in 1938. Orage was also associated with the New English Weekly
(1932–49) as editor during its first two years of operation (Philip Mairet took
over at his death in 1934).
Content
The magazine was
founded as a Journal of Christian liberalism and Socialism. Orage
and Jackson re-oriented it to promote the ideas of Nietzsche, Fabian socialism
and later a form of Guild socialism. Opposing viewpoints and arguments were put
forward in The New Age, even on issues upon which Orage had strong opinions.
Topics covered in detail were: the role of private property in a debate between
H. G. Wells and Shaw against G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc; the need for
a socialist party (distinct from the newly-formed Labour Party); and women's
suffrage. On this last point, the editorial line moved from initial support to
bitter opposition by 1912. As The New Age moved away from Fabian politics, the
leaders of the Fabian Society, Beatrice and Sydney Webb founded the journal The New Statesman to counter its effect
in 1913, and this combined with the growing distance between Orage and the
mainstream left reduced its influence. By then, the editorial line supported
Guild socialism, expounded in articles by G. D. H. Cole and S. G. Hobson among
others. After World War I Orage began to support the Social Credit theory of C.
H. Douglas.
The New Age was also
preoccupied with the definition and development of Modernism in the visual
arts, literature and music, and consistently observed, reviewed and contributed
to the activities of the movement. The journal was also one of the first places
in England in which Sigmund Freud's ideas were discussed before the First World
War, in particular by David Eder, an early British psychoanalyst.
Production
The journal appeared
weekly, and featured a wide cross-section of writers with an interest in
literature and the arts, but also politics, spiritualism and economics.
With its woodprint
illustrations reminiscent of artwork by the German Expressionists, its mixture
of culture, politics, Nietzschean philosophy and spiritualism, and its
non-standard appearance, The New Age
has been cited as the English equivalent of the German Expressionist periodical
Der Sturm, a journal to which it bore a striking resemblance.
The New Age was a weekly magazine, printed in double columns, folio
sized, and mostly in type sizes that varied from small to miniscule. A rather different
journal had been appearing under that name when a group led by G. B. Shaw
decided to provide some funding and asked A. R. Orage and his friend Holbrook
Jackson to begin a "New Series" in the spring of 1907. From then on,
volumes ran for six months, with pages numbered accordingly. Among the notable
contributors were Katherine Mansfield, Ezra Pound, Beatrice Hastings, T. E.
Hulme, Walter Sickert, Marmaduke Pickthall, and Herbert Read. The magazine
played a central role in the debates over modernism and in the social and
political issues of the day. The New Age continued for some years after Orage
resigned, but is not of comparable interest.
Cooperating With the
Supermundane World-the Hierarchy of Love, Light and Wisdom
Xian
To each one is entrusted the finding of the path to the higher sphere…
Only by one's own hand, only by one's own will, only by one's own striving,
only by one's own work can the spirit become a conscious co-worker of the
Infinite.
You can get a
doctorate in sociology from any Ivy League School and still not understand
American society today as well as Jack London already knew it in 1907.
If I was teaching a
history of the United States or a sociological study of American society I
would begin with this book - and perhaps end with it.
So accurate it is
very depressing. All of this was seen by a great and famous writer back in 1907
yet today people throw away the best years of their lives trying to penetrate
the wall of Oligarchy propaganda.
So descriptive of our
times and the futility of our situation under the "iron heel" - read
and weep and marvel that Jack London understood all of this and yet this book
is virtually unknown to the American people - while Catcher in the Rye is still
being forced on today's college students. Our colleges are exactly what London
told us they are. Every fact of our times vindicates the message of this book.
In 1943, during World
War II, they were making movies about great Americans. Jack London had a
"Liberty Ship" named after him and they made a movie about his life.
You can watch it here http://www.youtube/SWxx_95Hdgw-- but notice that in the beginning of the
movie they show a line of Jack London's books. They are all there -- White Fang, The Star Rover, Call of the
Wild, South Sea Tales and all of
the others EXCEPT ONE - you will not see The
Iron Heel among those books. Listen to these excerpts and you will know
why.
This paper deals with
the differing social philosophies of Henry George and George Bernard Shaw.
George became
world-famous in 1879 after having written Progress and Poverty wherein he
contended that poverty and other social ills are caused by the denial to most
people of access to privately-owned superior land sites. George proposed as his
"Remedy" a Single Tax on land values (in the form of rent collection
by the community), which would compel the relinquishing of gigantic land
holdings, and thus lead to unlimited production and equitable distribution of
wealth. He also advocated the abolition of all other taxes.
In 1882, George
toured Great Britain, presenting his theories to enthusiastic listeners, one of
whom was the young Shaw. The latter, under the spell of George's eloquent
oratory, became a Georgist, but soon, after reading Karl Marx's Das Kapital, he turned to Marxism.
Eventually, Shaw discarded the ideas of both George and Marx, and termed
himself a Fabian (evolutionary) Socialist. Still later, he converted once more,
proudly "shouting" that he was a Communist. George, on the other
hand, (even though some people have so designated him) was not a Socialist.
(It is necessary, at
the start, to note that Shaw had never met George; it is not even certain
whether George was ever aware of Shaw's existence.)
To understand the
views of George and Shaw, it is important to present a topical analysis. The
first topic discussed in this paper is poverty. Both writers emphatically
declared that poverty was a scourge which had to be eliminated. George and
Shaw, likewise, were much angered by the general public's complacent acceptance
of poverty as the will of God, each of them calling such attribution "blasphemy."
From this point on,
the Georgist and the Shavian doctrines are in sharp opposition to each other.
Concerning the cause
of poverty, George found it (as mentioned above) in the denial of access to
valuable land. His "Remedy" was designed to free monopolized land for
production; and the abolition of all other taxes was to be another spur to
economic growth. Capital, being a factor of production, would not be taxed.
Disputing George's
proposal, Shaw declared that poverty is caused by the joint monopoly of land
and capital, For his solution, therefore, he urged the collection, not only of
rent, but of the return to capital (interest) as well. All income had to be
confiscated by the State, and redistributed "according to need."
A further argument
involved Ricardo's Law of Rent. Both Georgists and Socialists, even though
their ideas were diametrically opposed to each other, claimed'
"descent" from the same source, Ricardo's theory, which demonstrated
that rent increases at the expense of both capital and labor. George found in
Ricardo's law a ready-made formula (and justification for his own
"Remedy.") All that was needed, he stated, was merely to funnel rent
from private appropriation into a communal fund. No other levy was necessary or
desired.
Shaw disagreed. To
him, the collection of rent (even though it was "the economic keystone of
Socialism") was only the first step toward total appropriation by the
State. The main object of Socialism, he stressed, was the collection of all
revenues and the imposition of an all-powerful (Socialist) State.
Another controversy
involved the Physiocrats. George had designated them to be the predecessors of
his own ideology, and honored them for the promulgation of the Single Tax. Shaw
ridiculed both the Physiocrats and George, and lavishly praised Voltaire for
allegedly "killing" the Single Tax proposal. (It appears to the
writer of this paper, however, that Voltaire's story, strongly endorsed by
Shaw, is arbitrarily contrived and completely frivolous. It has no merit in
reality.)
A final, important
theme is that of free enterprise versus Socialism/Communism. George championed
Liberty, individual worth, untrammeled' production and limited government.
Toward the end of his life, he cast a resolute vote against Socialism.
Contrariwise, Shaw
extolled the Superman, dictatorship, Communism, and the totalitarian State.
Toward the end of his life, he cast a contemptuous vote against democracy.
This, very briefly,
is a review of the two conflicting philosophies. The dispute between them rages
to this day.
American sociologist and political polemicist C. Wright Mills
(1916-1962) argued that the academic elite has a moral duty to lead the way to
a better society by actively indoctrinating the masses with values.
On Aug. 28, 1916, C.
Wright Mills was born in Waco, Tex. He received his bachelor's and master's
degrees from the University of Texas and his doctorate from the University of
Wisconsin in 1941. Subsequently, he taught sociology at the University of
Maryland and Columbia University and during his academic career received a
Guggenheim fellowship and a Fulbright grant. At his death, Mills was professor
of sociology at Columbia.
Mills has been
described as a "volcanic eminence" in the academic world and as
"one of the most controversial figures in American social science."
He considered himself, and was so considered by his colleagues, as a rebel
against the "academic establishment." Mills was probably influenced
very much in his rebellious attitude by the treatment his doctoral mentor,
Edward Allsworth Ross, had received at Stanford. Ross was fired from Stanford
in 1900, largely, it is thought, because he urged immigration laws against
bringing Chinese coolies into America to work on railroad building. (Stanford
was funded primarily by monies from a railroad which employed such labor.) The
firing of Ross spurred the movement for academic freedom in the United States
under the leadership of E.R.A. Seligman of Columbia University. Ross then went
on to Wisconsin, where, together with John R. Gillin, he built up one of the
broadest sociology departments in the nation and where Mills was one of his
early doctoral students.
Mills emerged as an
acid critic of the so-called military-industrial complex and was one of the
earliest leaders of the New Left political movement of the 1960s. Against the
overwhelming number of academic studies, Mills insisted - and this is the
central thesis of virtually all of his works - that there is a concentration of
political power in the hands of a small group of military and business leaders
which he termed the "power elite." Essentially, what he proposes as a
cure for this immoral situation is that this power be transferred to an
academic elite, a group of social scientists who think as Mills does.
As to how the power
is to be transferred, Mills is not too clear, as he died before he was able to
complete a final synthesis of his thought. In general, he maintains that the
academic elite already wields the power but that it is subservient to a corrupt
military-industrial complex which it unthinkingly serves simply because it is
the going system, the establishment. The task, then, is to convert the academic
elite through moral suasion or a kind of "theological preaching," as
one sympathetic critic has commented. A major reason why the academic elite
unwittingly serves this complex is the elite's behavioral approach, its
commitment to value-free social science. In the past, conservatives have
attacked the academic intelligentsia on the same grounds, that it has been
immoral not to inculcate moral values.
Now Mills and the New
Left made the same criticism, although in the interest of rather different
moral values. Mills and his followers argued that the so-called value-free
commitment to analyze "what is," that is, the existing system,
automatically buttresses that system and - since the system is wrong - is thus
immoral. In a sense, then, as one commentator has observed, what Mills's
program amounts to is: "Intellectuals of the world, unite!"
Mills's analysis of
political influence has received a much more favorable response. Mills, like a
number of other, earlier writers, as far back as Plato and as recent as Walter
Lippmann, perceptively pointed out that eminence in one field is quickly
transformed into political influence, especially in a democracy, where public
opinion is so crucial. Thus, movie stars, sports stars, and famous doctors use
their fame to secure elections or political followings. However, there is no
rational basis for this, since competence is related to function. If one
functions as a film actor or doctor, that does not mean that he has political
wisdom. Mills thus advocated his social science elite to replace such corrupt
manifestations of the existing system, thereby calling into question many of
the fundamental assumptions of democracy. He advocated a community of social
scientists, similar to Plato's philosopher-kings, throughout the world, but
especially in the United States, and this elite would wield power through
knowledge.
Further Reading
For a sympathetic
assessment of Mills see the work by the American Marxist theoretician Herbert
Aptheker, The World of C. Wright Mills
(1960), and Irving L. Horowitz, ed., The
New Sociology: Essays in the Social Science and Social Theory in Honor of C. Wright Mills (1964). Criticism of
Mills is in Daniel Bell, The End of
Ideology (1960; new rev. ed. 1961); various works by Robert Dahl,
particularly Who Governs? (1961); and
Raymond A. Bauer and others, American
Business and Public Policy: The Politics of Foreign Trade (1963).
When it comes to
politics today there is perhaps only one thing Americans, regardless of party,
can agree on: We’re all disappointed, aggravated, and irritable. The right
detects a creeping, un-American “socialism” that embraces elitist technocrats
and wants to recklessly redistribute citizens’ hard earned money to the
country’s losers. The left sees the Tea Party as an ill-informed confederacy of
fanatical dunces.
In “Our Divided
Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent,”
political commentator E.J. Dionne Jr. urges us to accept the philosophical
foundations of these differences as our patrimony. Dionne argues that American
greatness developed from longstanding, dynamic tensions between liberalism and
conservatism, values that “animate the consciousness and consciences of nearly
all Americans.” We’ve forgotten that the country emerged from these competing
political and moral perspectives, and this amnesia goes a long way toward
explaining our acidulous politics, where “compromise becomes not a desirable
expedient but ‘almost treasonous.’"
“Our Divided
Political Heart” isn’t innovative by any means — what legitimate history
doesn’t emphasize our contentious political origins? — but the book is a
well-mannered, thoughtful attempt to restore civic grace and productive
political conversation.
Contemporary politics
functions through appeals to history — a policy either is or isn’t considered
part of the American tradition — but such appeals are increasingly made with
little regard for factual accuracy. Since history has become the political
trump card, Dionne writes, “we should look toward an authentic past, not an
invented one.” The right, and the Tea Party in particular, applies a murky,
ideological filter to American history. The balance of “Our Divided Political
Heart” details these deeply felt errors.
Starting with the
Founders, Dionne shows a “balance” of liberal and conservative philosophies as
the historical norm. “[T]he best way to understand the core American philosophy
at the time of the Revolution and the Founding,” he argues, “is to see it as
both liberal and republican — in our terms, both individualistic and communitarian.”
This is anathema to
Tea Partiers, of course, who view our liberal tradition as a persistent
infection in the body politic. Dionne disposes of such shortsightedness by
efficiently and clearly moving through a series of historical moments over the
past 200 years. From the competing political positions of the Federalist papers
and the Supreme Court’s stewardship of liberal principles to Bush’s compassionate
conservatism, an attempt to reclaim the mantle of community from the
communitarian language of Clinton-era Democrats, Dionne skewers the Tea Party’s
historical fantasies with a robust genealogy of American liberalism.
Dionne correctly sees
the Tea Party as radicalizing the rhetoric and posturing of the right, but he
admits there’s nothing terribly novel about the group’s chicken-little
nostalgia. Every decade or so we endure a surge of conservative anxiety about
dispossession, which is at heart what motivates the Tea Party’s isolationist,
nativist ideas.
Nonetheless, Dionne
laments what he sees as a Republican Party moving away from its onetime,
legitimate concern with community. “What needs to be recognized,” Dionne
argues, “is how far Republicanism and conservatism have strayed from their own
history and their own past commitments . . . They have done so by jettisoning
their communitarian commitments, by adopting a highly restrictive view of the
federal government’s role, and by advancing . . . a view of the Constitution
that would prohibit or restrict activities that the federal government has
undertaken for a century or more.” This is, of course, an allusion to New Deal
and Great Society programs such as Social Security and Medicare and laws
offering protections to unions and workers and regulating financial entities
and markets.
Bush’s compassionate
conservatism was, for Dionne, the most recent, perhaps last, gesture of
politically viable conservative communitarianism; even Bush’s modest social
programs would be reviled by many Republicans if introduced today.
Dionne offers his own
balance by critiquing the left. Democrats err, he notes, by forgetting the
societal benefits of constructive conservatism. Such benefits include respect
for tradition and what Dionne considers a healthy skepticism about humanity’s
ability to mold itself according to political desire or personal will for a
greater good.
Moreover, Dionne
argues that the Democrats need to correct a nettlesome failing: their suspicion
of populism. Since the 1950s when politicians like George Wallace used populist
rhetoric to serve racist ends, Democrats have distanced themselves from the
great majority of populist ideas, forgetting the productive liberal and
populist alliances that made the social progress of the Progressive era
possible. Now Democrats treat populism as nearly a synonym for bigotry.
Democrats, Dionne
argues, need to reclaim populism, initially a “relatively coherent set of
egalitarian ideas” that shaped popular discontent and paved the way to removing
social, political, and economic inequity. Such a reevaluation would help the
Democrats shed the image of heartless social engineers and open space for more reasoned
bipartisan conversation.
Without a doubt,
Dionne is on thorny terrain throughout. His American history, however correct,
will have a hard time dislodging the Tea Party’s self-affirming ideas. The
argument that tensions between liberalism and conservatism have been around
since the 1770s won’t make an ideologue accept progressive values as innately
American. Such narratives merely confirm that this battle has raged since the
republic’s founding and that now is the time to end it.
Michael Washburn is a
research associate at the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City
University of New York. He can be reached at www.michaelwashburn.org; he’s on
Twitter as @Whalelines.
Book Review: The
Dangerous Wane of American Communitarianism
No member of the
Washington, DC journalism crowd inspires such widespread affection as E.J.
Dionne. Meet E.J. and you’ll be charmed—to know him is to love him. It is one
of the happy accidents of my life that I can say that from my own experience.
Over the years, he has been a boss, a colleague, a mentor, a sparring partner,
and a friend. My personal and professional debts will never be repaid—I hardly
know how to begin.
Though this means
that I am perhaps the worst of all possible reviewers for his new book, Our
Divided Political Heart, it also means that I’m vying for that status with
plenty of other DC writers. So if you’re looking for impartiality, you might
try looking somewhere else—though most reviewers may not be as candid about
their bias in E.J.’s favor.
(It’s possible, of course,
that this proximity comes with advantages. I worked as E.J.’s assistant at
Georgetown during the time that the book began to take shape. The resulting
conversations landed me a small mention in the book’s Acknowledgements.)
Fortunately, this
disclosure-as-prelude makes a useful starting point for considering Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for
the American Idea in an Age of Discontent. A large part of E.J.’s personal
appeal stems from his love of conversation. He is as talented a listener as he
is a teacher, and he’s generous with supportive and combative interlocutors
alike. Indeed, the book may be best understood as his frustration that
political conversations over the nature of the “American Idea” have so
universally degenerated into battles. As he notes several times, we can’t have
good conversations if everyone’s bunkered down in one of two disparate
ideological trenches.
Conversation depends
upon a basic minimum degree of common ground. Without some shared conventions
and convictions, we are alien to one another. We become a nation of sappy,
wealth-hating socialists on one hand and nostalgic, racist Ayn Rand acolytes on
the other. When one side mentions freedom, the other hears “anarchy.” To
paraphrase (and slightly adjust) an old line, if our current debates seem to be
full of (rhetorically) raised fists, it’s probably because we’ve given up on
sharing ideas.
But E.J. is no sappy
third-party centrist. Our Divided
Political Heart makes a novel analytical case about an increasingly obvious
fact: if our politics have become toxically polarized, the American Right is
responsible for poisoning the well. This is a newly popular view, thanks to
books like Geoffrey Kabaservice’s Rule
and Ruin and Thomas E. Mann’s and Norman J. Ornstein’s It’s Even Worse Than It Looks. But why bother reading what everyone
knows?
E.J.’s particular
angle is as good a reason as any. Kabaservice treats the rise and expansion of
Goldwater conservatism in terms of grassroots organizing and institutional
maneuvering. Mann and Ornstein “reveal” what Mitch McConnell announced a few
years ago: the Republican Party is more interested in scoring political points
than in governing. Still others have tried to explain the GOP’s new
intransigence in terms of social or cultural nostalgia. E.J.’s book is
interesting because it takes a much longer and more compelling view of the
situation.
His analysis gets its
leverage from the intersection between two sets of axes. Most critiques of
radical twenty-first century conservatism stay within the confines of “Right”
vs. “Left.” As it turns out, however, the real division in “Our Political
Heart” is between individualism and communitarianism.
As E.J. puts it:
[It] makes a mockery of the
American story to deny the power of individualism in our history. But it is
just as misleading to ignore our yearnings for a strong common life and our
republican quest for civic virtue. Our skepticism of excessive state power
arose from religious sources and classical traditions, and so did our doubts
about pure individualism. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness.” Thus began our Founding document. Yet its signers also forged a
full-hearted communal bond in defense of those freedoms. “With a firm reliance
on the protection of Divine Providence,” they declared, “we mutually pledge to
each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Individual liberty
and shared sacrifice are the bookends of our Declaration of Independence.
This approach allows
E.J. to frame the GOP’s new radicalism as a departure from the American
conservative tradition, rather than as a culmination. Historically speaking,
the American Right has never been as univocally concerned with radical
individualism as Tea Party activists now claim. Measured against conservatives
like Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, modern conservatism looks like a
bizarre exception, rather than the rule. It completely ignores American love of
community—a thought that never would have occurred to most American
conservatives.
To borrow E.J.’s
term, Grover Norquist, the Tea Party, and (most of all) the Koch Brothers have
marched American conservatism into opposition to “The Long Consensus” of
American politics. For most of the last century—America’s most powerful and
prosperous—liberal, progressive, and conservative politicians alike used the
organs of government to construct a community fabric that protected individual
liberty and encouraged private enterprise. Only recently have conservatives
convinced themselves that unregulated capitalism can reliably provide many of
the community goodsupon which Americans rely.
This shift hasn’t
happened in a vacuum, of course. Dionne is deeply critical of the American
Left’s weak attempts to provide an alternative to the Tea Party’s view of
politics, economics, and the American community.
With Thomas Frank, he worries that the Democratic Party is too obsessed with
technocratic solutions to bother providing an alternative moral vision to
compete with the Right’s—what I’ve called “The Wonky Left Problem.”
If conservatives are
to blame for abandoning compromise, community,
and conversation, their approach has largely succeeded because leftists have
ceded them so much rhetorical turf. Conservatives were able to hijack America’s
political conversation because leftists were often disengaged. E.J. puts it
this way:
[T]here is still a great deal
of liberal ambivalence about community,
and about populism. Any time a liberal uses words such as
“flyover country” or “Jesusland,” he or she is breaking faith with a broad democratic traditionthat
included Bryan no less than Roosevelt. This tradition acknowledges the wisdom
that exists in small towns and the countryside no less than the genius of our
sophisticated metropolitan areas. It honors the rights and dignity of religious
believers and secular people alike. It respects the loyalties of old tightly knit
working-class neighborhoods no less than the cosmopolitanism on the more affluent side of town.
Today’s leftists do
not always deign to engage in a conversation with their fellows—which makes it
that much easier for conservatives to serve the nation’s elites under the
banner of populism.
And this is where the
book could go further. Leftists should be better at explaining “that citizens in a free republic need a degree of economic security,
independence, and self-sufficiency [in order] to carry out their civic duties
and…participate fully in self-government.” Why aren’t they? I’m not
confident that I know (though I float some suggestions in the wonky piece
linked above), but it seems like the next stage in E.J.’s analysis. If American
conservatism has abandoned fully half of the American political tradition,
surely the Left should be prepared to speak to those Americans who recognize
that something has gone missing. And if leftists are prepared, surely there
should be much to say.
But wishes like this
are the best sorts of critique—since they implicitly indicate that the book was
worth extending. It’s a fantastic book, well worth a read, and E.J.’s the sort
of decent, sensible journalist who deserves to be taken more seriously than
most—especially if we’d like to improve our political conversations.
–
Conor P. Williams
writes and teaches in Washington, D.C. Find more on Facebook, Twitter, and at
http://www.conorpwilliams.com. His email address is punditconor@gmail.com
To define the human
creature as by nature communitarian
is to both oversimplify and to ignore the evidence to the contrary. It would be
more accurate to say that the majority, the followers, is naturally communitarian, while a minority, the leaders,
are egomaniacal. Recurring efforts to marginalize this segment with such labels
as “psychopath“, “sociopath”, or other presudoclinical badges are really little
more than an example of sheep passing resolutions in favor of vegetarianism in
wolves. They change nothing of the fact that an immensely larger than the average
— or “normal” if you will — self-regard, and even hubris, is required to
presume that one can and ought to command his fellow Homo sapiens.
Perhaps the most
paradoxical trait of followers of divers collectivist, communitarian,
and other progressive ideologies — whether they claim origins based on science,
revelation or morality — is their propensity to unquestioningly follow leaders,
and the greater the logic they claim as their justification, the less they seem
to give thought to questions regarding precepts, imitations or empirical
outcomes of their beliefs.
Lamentations of the
lost togetherness of communitarian
gatherings — usually from the mouths of the particularly prostrationist
intellectuals — tend to ignore empirical experience with such ecstatic communitarianism: mass martyrdoms and
persecutions, iconoclasms and iconovenerations, forced conversions, crusades,
jihads, mass suicides, wars of religion. If we desire peace, we must draw the
conclusion that peace flows not from subsuming the individual in the community but quite the other way around, as
clearly evidenced by the correlated fall in top-down and bottom-up coercion
with the rise of individualist ethic. Perhaps this sense of loss arises from
their deprivation of the comforts of the ritual, attendant as it is with communal gathering, but we must call to mind
that ritual — a set of gestures imbued with a desire for magical results — is
really a reflection of the powerlessness, the fear, in the face of the unknown
and the great, and as such makes little sense in our, today’s, society, now
that it we are capable of getting closer to understanding the cosmos’s inner
workings.
The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical
essay by Albert Camus. It comprises about 120 pages and was published
originally in 1942 in French as Le Mythe
de Sisyphe; the English translation by Justin O'Brien followed in 1955.
In the essay, Camus
introduces his philosophy of the absurd: man's futile search for meaning,
unity, and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and
eternal truths or values. Does the realization of the absurd require suicide?
Camus answers: "No. It requires revolt." He then outlines several
approaches to the absurd life. The final chapter compares the absurdity of
man's life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was
condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a
mountain, only to see it roll down again. The essay concludes, "The
struggle itself [...] is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine
Sisyphus happy."
The work can be seen
in relation to other absurdist works by Camus: the novel The Stranger (1942), the plays The
Misunderstanding (1942) and Caligula,
and especially the essay The Rebel
(1951).
The Pied-Noir
relationship with France and Algeria was marked by alienation. The settlers considered
themselves French, but many of the Pieds-Noirs had a tenuous connection to
mainland France, which 28 percent of them had never visited. The settlers
encompassed a range of socioeconomic strata, ranging from peasants to large
landowners, the latter of whom were referred to as grands colons.
In Algeria, the
Muslims were not considered French and did not share the same political or
economic benefits. For example, the indigenous population did not own most of
the settlements, farms, or businesses, although they numbered nearly 9 million
(versus roughly one million Pieds-Noirs) at independence. Politically, the
Muslim Algerians had no representation in the Algerian National Assembly and
wielded limited influence in local governance. To obtain citizenship, they were
required to renounce their Muslim identity. Since this would constitute
apostasy, only about 2,500 Muslims acquired citizenship before 1930. The
settlers' politically and economically dominant position worsened relations
between the two groups.
An Algerian Jew
Sephardic Jewish community
Jews were present in
North Africa and Iberia for centuries, some since the time when
"Phoenicians and Hebrews, engaged in maritime commerce, founded Hippo
Regius (current Annaba), Tipasa, Caesarea (current Cherchel), and Icosium
(current Algiers)." A tradition told they arrived from Judea after the
First Jewish-Roman War (66–73 AD) while it is known historically many Sephardi
Jews came following the Spanish Reconquista. In 1870, Justice Minister Adolphe
Crémieux wrote a proposal, décret Crémieux, giving French citizenship to
Algerian Jews. Thus, the Jews of Algeria came to be considered part of the
Pied-Noir community. This advancement was resisted by part of the larger
Pied-Noir community. In 1897 a wave of anti-Semitic riots occurred in Algeria.
During World War II the décret Crémieux was abolished under the Vichy regime,
and Jews were barred from professional jobs. Citizenship was restored in 1943.
Many Jews fled the country in 1962, alongside most other Pieds-Noirs, after the
Algerian War.
On July 31, 1940,
British prime minister Winston Churchill visited the coastal defenses near
Hartlepool, England during the bleakest period of the Battle of Britain. During
his inspection of the troops, he was photographed holding a machine gun (or
tommy gun as the Brits call it). The British press thought the photo was
unflattering and it got little attention. However, the Germans obtained a copy
and thought it had potential as anti-Churchill propaganda. They equated the
photo with lawless American gangsters and used it to create a leaflet.
Thousands of copies of this photo, bearing the caption 'Wanted for Incitement
to Murder,' were dropped over London in an attempt to portray Churchill in a
negative light. It didn't work. Far from being offended, the Londoners loved the
image of their gun-toting PM. Thus the German propaganda leaflet had the
opposite effect from what had been intended. It became a prized possession for
Londoners.
Bikes, Trees, Cafes?
Outrageous Instant Community Transformation in
Texas
Guerilla Urbanism
This is one of the
most joyful, funny and uplifting presentations we have ever posted on
Nextworldtv. Here is someone who will revitalize your spirit as much as he
revitalized his town.
Arts activist Jason
Roberts will have everybody rethinking what is possible in their communities
after watching this video. He lives in Oak Cliff, near Dallas TX. He's
responsible for some of the most outrageous initiatives, going out of his way
to break every ordinance in a neighborhood in order to show people, just for
one weekend, what kind of transformation is possible.
On a desolate,
depressing Texas street that for the last 70 years has only had cars and
traffic in mind, he painted on his own bike lanes. He created outdoor seating
areas. He set up trees and plantings just for the weekend. Instant cafes and
arts centers were created.
The message in his
enthusiastic talk is not just about what a great time they had with these
radical techniques to get people to rethink a city space, and turn it back into
being about and for people. What surprised even him was the unbelievable level
of support and response he got -- and how many joined his bandwagon and remain
committed to a new vision that is possible.
It's a ground swell.
This is how you get things going folks!
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE: Righteous “Mutiny” in Ron Paul Campaign; Executive Committee for
LAWYERS FOR RON PAUL Takes Over the R3VOLUTION Santa Ana, CA, June 15, 2012:
The Executive
Committee for LAWYERS FOR RON PAUL launches takeover of the campaign. Refusing
to be sold downstream for political or monetary gain, the REAL Ron Paul
R3volution without reservation is ‘in it to win it!” They are sending unbound
delegates to Tampa under the protection of a federal lawsuit filed on Monday,
June 11, 2012.
The Ron Paul Federal
Delegates Case was filed at Ronald Reagan Courthouse, Santa Ana, California.
Federal Judge David Carter, Ninth Federal Circuit presides over Case Number
SACV 12- 00927. This lawsuit serves to protect the civil rights of all
delegates to the Republican National Convention, as well as all delegates in
any federal, general, or special election regardless of party affiliation.
Title 42 USC 1971-1974 protects all delegates and alternates from coercion,
intimidation, and threats designed to further a political or social agenda.
The Executive
Committee for LAWYERS FOR RON PAUL seeks to obtain a Federal Court order
mandating ALL delegates are unbound and free to vote their conscience on the
first round of voting at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.
LAWYERS FOR RON PAUL, a grassroots community of lawyers, paralegals, and
concerned citizens are united to restore liberty to We the People and the
Republic.
All delegates and
voters experiencing election fraud go to:
Please share this
video, far and wide! Modern Science is now beginning to confirm what
Spirituality, Philosophy, Sages, Ancient teachings and psychedelics have been
saying for millennia, that the entire Universe is One and that what we think of
as "reality" is just an illusion. And the only real thing in the
Universe is Consciousness.
"If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you
haven't understood it yet."
UN Agenda 21, and who
appointed YOU the NEW GODS??
THE WORLD IS CHOKING ON
CARTOONISH HYPOCRISY
The very ‘humans’ who have gained
their immense wealth and power through the centuries from the sweat and toil of
others, and who have arranged the world to steal anything they want without
lifting a finger, are the same ones who have appointed themselves as the new
God’s of the universe.These carnival
barkers actually believe they have the final word on who, and how many humans
belong on this planet!!Of course, we
have yet to see any of them step up and volunteer to be an example to the rest
of us in their zealotry to demonize “the earth’s human plague”, and actually
help reduce the world’s population!!
Any critically thinking person would
be looking over their shoulder for the white coats to take us away in
straightjackets if WE went around spouting the very same ludicrous nonsense
they have come up with.Global warming
has turned into climate change??Now
there’s something you can’t argue with!!It’s why weather reports were invented!I suppose that the sky being blue will be the next ‘proof’ that ‘we’ are
causing the moon to exit the universe.
The hysterical and rabid
environmental ‘Gods’ seem to have been blessed with crystal balls and know
exactly how the earth is going to behave, and what the weather will be 75 years
from now.What they’ve done is create a
casino where they can take bets on what the temperature will be tomorrow, or on
any given day in the year 2062, while they control the temperatures with their
chemicals dispersed in the sky and electronic toys (HAARP).
One doesn’t even need to look beneath
the surface or read between the lines, to see the gigantic lies, blatant
deceptions, and the insanity of it all.You have to think that trying to pull off this grand scheme, and how
voraciously absurd it is, is part of the rush they are thoroughly enjoying,
while they madly jerk on their multitude of puppet strings.The mind drifts easily to the Wizard of Oz
behind the curtain, after they’ve led the gullible masses down the green brick
road.
We can only imagine how far these
‘people’ need to go to get any kind of stimulation out of life.When you have destroyed every moral code
possible, committed every kind of crime, violated every local and global law,
indulged in all manner of unspeakable human abuses, what is left??What could they think of next in their search
for a thrill??This is where it gets
very damn scary!This is where the
self-appointed New Gods provide the proof that they are indeed the devil in
disguise, and so mentally ill they don’t fit any framework for even the most gifted
psychiatrist to classify.
I wonder.Have you given any thought at all to the up
front and in your face hypocrisy they have put on the plate for you to
consume??Or the brutality with which
they demand that we obey?Their
ruthlessness is the giveaway that will tell you who you are dealing with.
Electric utilities are shutting off power to
elderly people who do not want Smart Meters!!“We will install this dangerous device on your home, even though it’s
not UL approved, no matter how sick you are”!“And if you are sick, you’ll pay through the nose to keep your old
meter, you sucker”!
Think about these items from very small,
to beyond all comprehension, when you hear their buzzwords the next time. On
second thought, they have realized the world is waking up and have drawn up new
buzzwords for their agenda, but here are the ones you are catching onto and are
sick of already:
SUSTAINABILITY
From now on, The Gods say humans must
be limited to sustainable activities and energy use. Yet they control the
corporations that make terminator crop seeds that must be purchased every
season, and create laws that make saving/storing seeds (sustainable)
illegal.It doesn’t matter if nature
ruins an entire crop, or the farmer commits suicide because he has no money for
the next season’s planting.And it doesn’t
matter if their concoctions fail by the thousands of acres, or that increasing
tons of additional pesticides and herbicides must be used each year to control
the unintended consequences created by GMO crop planting.One thing is for sure.We know that Monsanto’s Round-Up is as
efficient as cyanide for killing yourself and destroying animal and insect
species.Killing vast bee colonies that
pollinate a huge segment of our food supply is oh-so sustainable!And when the scientists get close to proving who
or what is responsible for bee colony collapse, the suspected responsible party
(starts with an ‘M’) buys up that research facility to silence the truth.
It’s also very sustainable for our
fuel supplies to prohibit from the American auto market, cars that are
available to Europeans that get 78 MPG.Their answer is that they are “protecting the US economy”.VW and even Ford build them right here in the
US, but we can’t have them! (those greedy over-consuming low life American
humans!)
I recently visited Washington for work while the Supreme Court
entertained oral arguments in the ObamaCare cases. When I asked some
friends to assess my chances of securing a seat for any of the hearings,
they scoffed: “The professional line-standers have gobbled up all the
tickets!”
And sure enough, both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran
photos of intrepid souls braving the elements to stand in line overnight
for a chance to receive coveted Supreme Court passes—for other people.
In fact, in D.C. and elsewhere, a cottage industry has arisen in
which under- and unemployed people—including the homeless—wait in ticket
lines for others in exchange for as much as $15 per hour. While this
practice is well worth it to those individuals, law firms, and lobbyists
with better things to do than wait around in line, it raises some
interesting moral questions: Is it right to pay others to take one’s
place in line in general, especially when most Americans cannot afford
such a privilege? Should access to civic hearings of great importance be
bartered on the open market? And are we somehow compromising the
integrity of such events by commodifying them?
These are the types of questions political philosopher Michael J. Sandel eloquently and unapologetically confronts in What Money Can’t Buy,
a stimulating volume on the limits of markets whose proposed solutions
are perhaps a bit less interesting and persuasive than the concerns they
address.
“Without quite realizing it, without ever deciding to do so,” Sandel laments, “we drifted from having a market economy to being a
market society,” or “a way of life in which market values seep into
every aspect of human endeavor” (emphasis his). In “concierge”-style
medical care, naming rights for stadiums, advertisements on city buses
(and even police cars), paid participation in clinical testing, and
selling tickets for papal audiences, Sandel finds ample material for
examining the relationship between ethics and the contemporary American
marketplace.
(Full disclosure: I had the great good fortune to study these issues
with Sandel a decade ago in an outstanding, small law school seminar
entitled “Markets, Morals, and the Law,” which fired my imagination on
the economic and ethical implications of patentinglifeforms.)
Sandel prosecutes two principal charges in his indictment of what he
derides as “market triumphalism”: Inequality and corruption.
First, “the commodification of everything has sharpened the sting of
inequality by making money matter more.” The deeper market thinking
penetrates into society, he claims, the more pronounced differences
between rich and poor become.
Second, “putting a price on the good things in life can corrupt
them.” Sandel explains that “to corrupt a good or social practice is to
degrade it, to treat it according to a lower mode of valuation than is
appropriate to it.”
This is undoubtedly true, as the author amply demonstrates, on the
extremes. It is plainly immoral to buy and sell human beings, whether as
adults (slaves) or children (black-market adoptions). Treating human
beings as commodities in this way entirely undermines their integrity
and necessarily curtails their natural rights.
It is also unethical—at least in Western countries—to sell one’s vote
or to pay a proxy to cover one’s jury duty. Such fundamental civic
rights and responsibilities form part of our social contract, and
bartering them breaches that agreement.
Self-mastery and self-autonomy – the essence of humanity
Reclaiming the meaning of ‘smart’
An endeavour to overstand the new meanings
Keeping the matrix a tool for the people, rather than making us mere tools of the matrix
Not being a ghost in the machine
Taking responsibility for your own mind, not leaving ownership of knowledge to the experts
Questioning what you’re told, reaching your own conclusions
Detecting fallacies
Being master of yourself, thinking holographically, for we are multi-dimensional beings
Keeping it real, not slipping into the illusory world of the matrix
Sovereignty of the self, not being lost to the collective
Making the best of what we have: using ‘their’ own tactics to ‘our’ advantage
Trying to be even smarter tomorrow
Remaining humble
Why get mind smart?
-Because it’s not their world
- the
world is becoming fully connected and AI is getting real smart – able
to think and decide, even on issues of law and governance
-It’s no longer the stuff of science fiction
-The
new meaning of smart is communitarian: a way of life, a state of mind –
it begins with standardization and progresses to picking out the best
-The new smart leaves no room for human imperfection – machines do it better
-Because
the Fordism of knowledge – the extra-specialised specialists telling us
what’s what - leaves only the global governors in control of the bigger
picture
-The corporations don’t care about people + planet; they are not humans and can’t be trusted
-And because we all have a say in this – it’s not a game.
Knowing what’s already happened, and
protecting that knowledge for future history-seekers – download and save
the information, print out hard copies, talk to people.
Practicing autonomy and autodidacticism – be master of yourself and your search for knowledge. Be your own expert.
Follow the money (corporations,
foundations, investors), the law, and the technology: the future is
smart and we’ve got to be smarter.
Global policies are built on fallacies
– shifting sands that hold no water. Study the trivium to rise above
them. Contact key people about your concerns – explain the fallacies to
them.
Words and concepts have been twisted:
‘sustainable’ now means ‘a tiny bit eco-friendly’ rather than truly
lasting. ‘Ethics’ has been co-opted to define a narrow set of
ideological preferences. Reclaim the meanings.
‘Ludology’ is the study of games/game
theory; learn about this to outwit the ones who design and control the
rules - stay ahead of the game.
International Institute for Sustainable Development
What is Sustainable Development?
Environmental, economic and social well-being for today and tomorrow
Sustainable development has been defined in many ways, but the most frequently quoted definition is from Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland Report:[1]
"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:
the concept ofneeds, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
the idea oflimitationsimposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs."
All definitions of sustainable development require that we see the
world as a system—a system that connects space; and a system that
connects time.
When you think of the world as a system over space, you grow to
understand that air pollution from North America affects air quality in
Asia, and that pesticides sprayed in Argentina could harm fish stocks
off the coast of Australia.
And when you think of the world as a system over time, you start to
realize that the decisions our grandparents made about how to farm the
land continue to affect agricultural practice today; and the economic
policies we endorse today will have an impact on urban poverty when our
children are adults.
We also understand that quality of life is a system, too. It's good
to be physically healthy, but what if you are poor and don't have access
to education? It's good to have a secure income, but what if the air in
your part of the world is unclean? And it's good to have freedom of
religious expression, but what if you can't feed your family?
The concept of sustainable development is rooted in this sort of
systems thinking. It helps us understand ourselves and our world. The
problems we face are complex and serious—and we can't address them in
the same way we created them. But we can address them.
It's that basic optimism that motivates IISD's staff, associates and
board to innovate for a healthy and meaningful future for this planet
and its inhabitants.
Contents
Twenty Years After Brundtland
This conference was held in Ottawa, Ontario, October 18-19, 2007 to
reflect on the past twenty years of sustainable development in Canada
since the publication of the Brundtland report in 1987. The
presentations are now available as well as information from the
conference.
Ten Years After Rio: Successes and Failures
Looks at the most important successes and failures in SD in the decade
following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Published in 2002 to coincide with
the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
The Sustainable Development Timeline
Silent Spring was published in 1962. The book's release was considered
by many to be a turning point in our understanding of the
interconnections among the environment, the economy and social
well-being. Since then, many milestones have marked the journey toward
sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Timeline captures
some of the key events. The original version was published in 1998 with
the support of the International Development Research Centre.
The Culture of
Democracy and Bolivia’s Indigenous Movements
By Robert Albro
Anthropology Department
The George Washington University
Hortense Amsterdam House
2110 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
“Looking back, we will move forward.”
– Carlos Mamani
Condori (1992), Aymara activist and historian
“We need a space where the people can talk not about the
past, but the future.”
– Oscar Olivera
(2004), Social movement spokesperson
Acknowledgments: A shorter version of this argument was presented
in the Fellows
Conference of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York,
June 13-15 2005. I
would like to thank Richard Wilson for his helpful comments on that earlier
draft. This manuscript was written while a fellow both at the Carnegie Council
and at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, and also
while a Scholar in Residence at George Washington University’s Program on
Culture in Global Affairs during 2004-2005. This article is based on
ethnographic research conducted in Bolivia in 1993-1995, 2001 and 2002. Any
inaccuracies are my own.
Following the offer
of the New Bible we want in the following open letter to the General Synod to
express our concern about the decision taken will be to this translation,
whether or not rising to pulpit Bible. We want the synod should be made aware
that such a decision the heart of the Christian community becomes and therefore
not could be dispensed to the theological decisions of such a Bible based.
Because in circles around the Synod already enthusiastically responding to this
translation, we believe that this heart cry on our part is necessary. We
sincerely hope that you by return this letter by 27 October signing and
signature forward to fellow ministers and officials possibly within the context
of this call our churches to strengthen it. Please email to:
nbvopenbrief@hotmail.com or writing to: open letter NBV, c / o Princess Irene
Street 36, 1077 WX Amsterdam. The intention in this letter the week after the
offer of the translation for publication to offer to the newspapers and the
church press. Can we count on you? Very much!
Nico Bakker, Rinse
Reeling Brouwer, Charles Deurloo Constandse Coen, Miriam Elbers, Wouter
Klouwen, Ad van Nieuwpoort and Rochus Zuurmond
Editor's note: Amitai Etzioni is professor of
international relations and director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy
Studies at George Washington University.
(CNN) -- If you are reluctant to challenge your physician on a
certain procedure or medicine, you are hardly alone. Focus groups show that
many patients feel intimidated by their doctors. They're reluctant to take an
active role in discussing their care because they're afraid that the doctor
will see them as "difficult."
Recently, nine
medical associations each took the unusual step of listing five medical
procedures commonly used in their fields that patients don't need, amounting to
45 tests or procedures. The associations report some of them might actually be
harmful. Eight medical associations have signed on to release additional lists
in the fall.
An annual EKG is an
example of one test you can do without, unless family history or symptoms
suggest otherwise. Some procedures, such as repeated abdominal CT scans without
a significant change in the patient's condition, subject patients to a
relatively high dose of radiation and can increase their cancer risk.
Bolivian President Evo
Morales’ 10 commandments to save the planet, life and humanity
First: a call to end the capitalist
system. The capitalist system was inhuman and encouraged unbridled economic
development. The exploitation of human beings and pillaging of natural
resources must end, as should wars aimed at securing access to those resources.
Also, the world should end the plundering of fossil fuels; excessive
consumption of goods; the accumulation of waste; as well as the egoism,
regionalism and thirst for earning where the pursuit of luxury was taking place
at the expense of human beings. Countries of the south were heaped with
external debt, when it was the ecological debt that needed paying.
Second, the world should denounce war,
which brought advantage to a small few, he said. In that vein, it was time to
end occupation under the pretext of "combating drugs", such as in
South America, as well as other pretexts such as searching for weapons of mass
destruction. Money earmarked for war should be channeled to make reparations
for damage caused to the Earth.
Third, there should be a world without
imperialism, he said, where no country was dependent upon or subordinate to
another. States must look for complementarity rather than engage in unfair
competition with each other. Member States of the United Nations should
consider the asymmetry that exists among nations and seek a way to lessen deep
economic differences. Moving along those lines, he said the Security Council —
with its lifelong members holding veto rights — should be democratized.
Fourth, he said access to water should be
treated as a human right, and policies allowing the privatization of water
should be banned. Indigenous peoples had a long experience of mobilizing
themselves to uphold the right to water. He proposed that they put forth the
idea of forming an international convention on water to guarantee it as a human
right and to protect against its appropriation by a select few.
Fifth, he said the world should promote
clean and eco-friendly energies, as well as end the wasteful use of energy. He
said it was understood that fossil fuels were nearing depletion, yet those who
promoted biofuels in their place were making "a serious mistake". It
was not right to set aside land not for the benefit of human beings, but so
that a small few could operate luxurious vehicles. It was also because of
biofuels that the price of rice and bread has risen; and the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) were now warning that such policies must be
prevented. The world should explore more sustainable forms of alternative
energy, such as geothermal, solar, wind and hydro-electric power.
Sixth, he said there should be more
respect for Mother Earth, and the indigenous movement must bring its influence
to bear in fostering that attitude. The world must stop thinking of Mother
Earth in the capitalist sense — which was that of a raw material to be traded.
For who could privatize or hire out his mother?
Seventh, he stressed the importance of
gaining access to basic services for all. Services such as education and
transport should not be the preserve of private trade.
Eighth, he urged the consumption of only
what was necessary and what was produced locally. There was a need to end
consumerism, waste and luxury. It was an irony that millions of dollars were
being spent to combat obesity in one half of the globe, while the other was
dying of hunger. He said the impending food crisis would necessarily bring an
end to the free market, where countries suffering hunger were being made to
export their food. There was a similar case with oil, where the priority lay in
selling it abroad, rather than domestically.
Ninth, he said it was important to promote
unity and diversity of economies, and that the indigenous movement should put
forth a call for unity and diversity in the spirit of multi-lateralism.
Tenth, the world should live under the
tenet of "trying to live well", he said, but not at the expense of
others.
There is a real
danger about relying on communitarian justice when the state is not able to
establish its presence in rural areas. That is the problem that has been
highlighted by Bolivia's attempts at relying on communitarian justice in order
to complement the weak judicial apparatus in the country.
The Bolivian
constitution raises communitarian justice to the same rank as ordinary justice.
On the back of ethnic, autonomic and indigenous peoples discourse, now rural
dwellers around the country (there where the state is not really present) can
claim the use of communitarian justice as an equal alternative to ordinary
justice.
This, on one side,
stems from the insecurity these dwellers feel because of the lack of presence
of police forces. In addition, more often than not, people have to travel long
in order to come to the nearest judge.
On the other side,
these affinity for communitarian justice stems from the traditional forms of
justice some Andean groups have had in the past and still have now. This has
become the fundamental argument, within this indigenist discourse, to justify
uses of what otherwise would be known as mob justice.
The reason for this
post is to highlight an example of what has been happening in Bolivia for some
time now.
In the last weeks,
the Bolivian statistical institute has been sending people to the rural areas
to gather survey data to measure poverty, health, and other things. In the last
days, eight of those people were thought to be thieves, kept captured, and
almost lynched by the skeptical people in a small town in Cochabamba. The
people could be freed after long negotiations with the police and other
security forces.
What does this latest
example says is that this form of "justice" is not adequate to be a
legitimate form of justice. At the most, if anything, it should be incorporated
into a conflict solution mechanism.
Bolivia: National
Revolution and "Communitarian Socialism"
By Federico Fuentes
Forward
During the last two
weeks, the Bolivian people have won two significant victories toward
implementing their new constitution. On April 9, Evo Morales went on a hunger
strike while thousands rallied in the streets to protest the refusal of the
Opposition-dominated Senate to ratify constitutional provisions for new
elections. A compromise was reached after five days of the strike, and the bill
was passed.
Following this event,
federal police foiled a plot to murder Morales. Police broke in on a mercenary
group who launched a 30-minute gun battle. Three of the right-wing plotters
were killed and two arrested. State prosecutor Jorge Gutierrez issued a statement
which said the terrorists included men of Croatian and Irish, Romanian, and
Hungarian, nationality abetted by members of Bolivia's "far right,"
including a Bolivian who may have also held Hungarian and Croatian passports,
and who fought in separatist movements during the Balkan wars.
This plot comes on
the heels of events last September, when, prior to the overwhelming 61% vote on
the new constitution, rioters seized state buildings in a battle that took
eleven lives. At that time, Morales accused Gov. Ruben Costas of Santa Cruz, of
fomenting anti-government violence. A United Nations report found Pres.
Morales' political opponents responsible.
At that time, Morales
ejected the U.S. ambassador and Drug Enforcement Administration officials who
had championed the opposition. He also claimed that the U.S. organized groups
to assassinate him. Washington denies those charges.
As the following
article from Green Left Weekly reports, the Bolivian struggle for indigenous
democracy continues.
Suzanne
Weiss
The historic
enactment of Bolivia's new constitution that grants unprecedented rights to the
country's indigenous majority, approved by over 61% of the vote on January 25,
represented the beginning of "communitarian socialism",
according to President Evo Morales.
This was not the
first time Bolivia's first indigenous president had raised the concept of
"communitarian socialism". In his April 2008 speech to the United
Nations, Morales spoke of the need for "a communitarian
socialismin harmony with Mother
Earth".
While Morales's
political party is officially known as Movement Towards Socialism–Political
Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP), it was originally
simply IPSP.
Blocked from
registering itself as an electoral party, the IPSP took up the offer of the
then-existing MAS party to use its registered name to run in elections.
While individual
socialists were involved from the beginning with the IPSP, they were a tiny
minority within a party that was formed as a "political instrument"
of Bolivia's largest peasant organisations.
Forged through the
struggles of the coca growers and the other peasant organisations, against US
military intervention and neoliberal policies, the MAS developed a strong
anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal character.
As the social
struggles intensified, and the MAS's weight began to grow in the electoral
sphere, this political instrument increasingly became an outlet for growing
disillusionment with the corrupt traditional party system.
The election of
Morales as president in 2005, with a historic 53.7% of the vote, consolidated
the MAS as the leadership of a broad-based national liberation movement — in
which the peasant and indigenous majority led urban and middle class sectors.
The dominant ideology
was a militant indigenous nationalism, whose vision involves promoting the
inclusion and empowerment of the indigenous majority.
Since being elected,
the Morales government has focused on modernising the country, promoting
industrialisation, increasing state intervention in the economy, promoting
social and cultural inclusion, and a more democratic distribution of revenue
from natural resources through various social programs.
A major achievement
has been the successful drafting of a new constitution by an elected
constituent assembly — with the draft adopted by referendum — to refound the
nation on the basis of justice for the indigenous majority.
In early 2008,
Morales began to develop some underlying principles of what "communitarian socialism" might entail,
according to sources within and close to the MAS leadership.
Differences, and then
the onslaught by the right-wing opposition against the government, put this
discussion on the backburner.
However, the crushing
defeat of the right-wing attempts to bring down the government in 2008 greatly
weakened the power of the opposition.
In this context, the
MAS-IPSP held its seventh national congress on January 10-12, where it approved
the document "Communitarian socialismto liberate Bolivia from the colonial
state".
The document provides
a picture of how the MAS views the current revolutionary process and its
direction.
Recent climate
records show that the world is getting warmer, and that the rise in temperature
is taking place with unprecedented speed. Evidence is also mounting that
extreme weather events - such as floods, cyclones and droughts - are becoming
more commonplace, and more severe.
Though cause and
effect are notoriously difficult to prove in climatology, the chief culprit
behind global warming is thought to be the build-up of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, arising from the use of coal, oil and gas during the past 200
years.
Businesses are
responsible for a large slice of global carbon dioxide emissions. It is not
just heavy industries like steelmaking and chemicals that contribute to the
'greenhouse effect', but also the wider commercial sector, which consumes large
amounts of energy for lighting, space-heating and transport.
The 1997 Kyoto
Protocol committed industrialized nations to reducing their carbon dioxide
emissions. Business will need to play its part in delivering these targets, and
in helping to stabilize the atmosphere.
Welcome to the blog of
the Latin American Platform on Climate
The methodology
Pachamama Raymi was developed at the end of the eighties in Peru, in the Rural
Development Program PRODERM, financed by the Dutch Foreign Cooperation and the
European Union and the Peruvian government. The main intellectual author and
promoter of the methodology was Willem van Immerzeel. He introduced and further
developed the methodology in Bolivia, Guatemala and Chile, adding new elements,
improving others, and adjusting it to specific cultural and institutional
realities.
The Pachamama Raymi
methodology has demonstrated its scalability showing it can be applied in micro
and mega projects. Scaling up was first demonstrated in projects financed by
the European Union (from PRODERM, to PAC-II, and ALA 94/89) and later by
several IFAD projects (MARENASS, Sierra Sur and others).
Many now ask us about
the origins and history of Pachamama Raymi. In this section, we present,
document and illustrate it wherever possible.
The history of
Pachamama Raymi presented here isn’t complete. Maybe you have a missing piece?
If you wish to contribute, please contact us.
Johan Galtung is a
prominent Norwegian academic, the founder of the field of peace studies and
author of more than 100 books and more than 1000 scholarly papers. He has also
been officially labeled an anti-Semite as a result of recent statements, at
least some of which are sensible.
Galtung believes that
historical anti-Semitism is based at least partly on Jewish behavior: On the
rise of anti-Jewish attitudes in Germany during the 1920s, he says that it was
“not unproblematic that Jews had key niches in a society humiliated by defeat
at Versailles.”
He distinguishes
between predicting anti-Jewish behavior and justifying it: “In no way,
absolutely no way, does this justify the atrocities. But it created
anti-Semitism that could have been predicted.” In the same way, he argues that
medieval pogroms were motivated by the role of Jews in usury: “The Jews played
a role in demanding payment from indebted peasants.
This of course
violates the dogma that all anti-Jewish attitudes and behavior are completely
irrational—the result of things like Christian religious ideology or individual
psychopathology—rather than reality-based conflicts of interest. In the modern
world, Galtung claims that “the Jews control U.S. media, and divert for the
sake of Israel.”
VDARE.com’s Patrick Cleburne has a nice article on Sheldon Adelson (“Has Romney Sold Immigration Policy To Sheldon Adelson?“),
the billionaire who has emerged as the largest single donor in the
current presidential campaign, promising up to $100 million for the
Republicans. After supporting Gingrich in the primaries, Adelson has
thrown his considerable weight behind Romney. We all know what that
money buys: fealty to Israel. Throughout the campaign, Romney and
Gingrich competed on who would be more slavish to Israel; Gingrich must
have seemed slightly more reliable to Adelson, but Adelson must have
been impressed with Romney as well.
There is no question about Adelson’s support for the most racialist
and nationalist elements in Israel. Adelson owns an Israeli newspaper
that supports PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard right Likud government. And
there can be little question of where his loyalties lie. He has stated
that he wishes he would have served in the Israeli military rather than
in the US Army, and that he wants his son to grow up to “be a sniper
for the IDF.”
All we care about is being good Zionists, being
good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born,
Israel is in my heart. … All we care about is being
good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am
not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart,” he said toward the end of his
talk.
I was surprised to read that Senator John McCain,
referring explicitly to Adelson, complained that foreign money is
entering the US presidential election race. This seemed too good to be
true, and it was. It turns out that he was only making the point that a
lot of Adelson’s money comes from his casino operations in Macau. What
McCain should have been saying loud and clear is that Adelson is for all
practical purposes a citizen of Israel with no demonstrated loyalty to
the US and that he should not be allowed to influence the US political
process.
But he won’t.
Cleburne’s suggestion that Adelson’s money also buys immigration
policy is interesting as well. I am not sure he needs to buy it, except
on the issue of illegal immigration—a big issue, but certainly not the
heart of the matter. During the primary campaigns, Romney had to fend
off charges by Gingrich that he was anti-immigrant.
Romney says that the charge that he is anti-immigrant is
“repulsive,” and points out that his father was born in Mexico. He then
expresses his support for expanded legal immigration. Romney loves
immigrants as long as they’re legal. … Despite the fact that immigrants
of all stripes will vote Democrat and, along with the rest of the
non-White coalition, make the Republicans irrelevant in the very near
future. …
So the two Republicans supposedly trying to appeal to the angry White
base of the Party by showing how conservative they are (just what are
they conserving?) end up competing over who is more pro-immigration—not
to mention their equally insane competition on who is more pro-Israel.
(Newt is Sheldon Adelson’s boy, but Romney has actually gotten far more money from Jews than Gingrich; both have surrounded themselves with neocon foreign policy hawks eager to attack Iran). (See here.)
Nevertheless, it’s frustratingly difficult to find what Adelson
thinks about immigration policy although, as Cleburne points out,
Adelson as a casino-hotel operator in Nevada is a beneficiary of
low-wage labor. Further information provided by commenters would be
much appreciated.
But it’s not difficult to make an educated guess. The fact that
Romney had already gotten a great deal of support from wealthy Jews is a
sure sign that they see him as safe on immigration. Jews have a long
record of supporting liberal social issues within the Republican Party,
and in at least one area, gay marriage, Jewish Republicans seem at least
as interested in social issues as they are in Israel. As John Graham
pointed out (“New York Gay Marriage: Follow the Jewish Money”),
wealthy Republican Jews have pushed gay marriage (here’s a recent
example involving New York Hedge fund operator, Paul Singer (“SuperDonor backs Romney—and Gay Marriage“).
So don’t expect much from Romney on immigration. He wouldn’t be where
he is if his liberal Jewish donors believed that he would be seriously
anti-immigration.
For the past few
decades there has been raging a kind of subterranean debate, one of monumental
importance. It is a debate about the Holocaust -- not whether or not it
"happened" (this is a meaningless claim), but rather, HOW it
happened, through what MEANS, and to what EXTENT. On the one hand we have the
traditional, orthodox view: the six million Jewish casualties, the gas
chambers, the cremation ovens and mass graves. On the other hand there is a
small, renegade band of writers and researchers who refuse to accept large
parts of this story. These revisionists, as they call themselves, present
counter-evidence and ask tough questions. Among the issues they raise are
these: (1) there is no trace of a 'Hitler order' to exterminate the Jews; (2)
key witnesses have either falsified or greatly exaggerated important aspects of
their stories; (3) major death camps -- Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Treblinka
-- have all but vanished; (4) we find little evidence of disturbed earth for
mass graves; (5) we find few remains of the millions of alleged victims --
neither bones nor ash; (6) mass-gassing with Zyklon-B would be nearly
impossible without ventilators and ceiling holes; (7) mass-gassing with diesel
engine exhaust is practically impossible, given the low level of carbon
monoxide; (8) wartime air photos of Auschwitz show none of the alleged
mass-burnings or cremations; (9) the '6 million' number has no basis in fact,
and actually traces back decades before the war; (10) trends in Jewish world
population strongly suggest less than 6 million lost; and (11) the present
number of "survivors" -- currently over 1 million -- implies few
wartime deaths. The revisionists arrive at a different account. Hitler, they
say, wanted to expel the Jews, not kill them. The ghettos and concentration
camps served primarily for ethnic cleansing and forced labor, not mass murder.
The Zyklon gas chambers did in fact exist, but were used for delousing and
sanitary purposes. And most important, the Jewish death toll was much lower
than commonly assumed -- on the order of 500,000. In this book, for the FIRST
TIME EVER, the reader can now judge for himself. Arguments and
counter-arguments for both sides are presented, and all relevant facts are laid
out in a clear and concise manner. The entire debate is presented in a
scholarly and non-polemical fashion. Citations are marked, and facts are
checked. READ and JUDGE FOR YOURSELF.
In the largest episode of forced migration in history, millions of
German-speaking civilians were sent to Germany from Czechoslovakia
(above) and other European countries after World War II by order of the
United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union.
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth
becomes a revolutionary act."
--George Orwell
I suppose it would
eventually come to this: all the reading, investigating, and research I’ve done
since discovering the truth about 9/11 would lead to a re-examination and
re-learning of much of history, especially the mainstream version of WWI and
WWII history. Since I began looking into 9/11, I’ve explored all sorts of
“conspiracy theories”, but lately, largely as a result of following the work of
Deanna Spingola, ZionCrimeFactory, Carolyn Yeager, Veronica Clark, and others,
I’ve began to delve deeper and deeper into revisionist history and what Adolf
Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) really stood
for. And today I’d like to share some of my thoughts with you about this
subject.
I’ve mentioned before
that I once bought into Jim Condit, Jr.’s thesis about Adolf Hitler and the
NSDAP, namely, that Hitler and many of the top Nazi leaders were either Jews
themselves, or puppets of the international bankers and Jewish crime network,
operating as part of the bankers controlled opposition in order to facilitate
the establishment of the illegitimate, terrorist state of Israel as a safe
haven and central headquarters for the global Jewish mafia, in the process
fulfilling messianic Jewish prophecy in order to advance what is commonly known
as “The New World Order”, whose foundations are laid out in detail in the
supremacist Jewish Talmud. However, I’ve always kept an open mind about this
and many other subjects, and only recently (i.e., the past six months or so)
began to really explore it in greater detail. And I’m now firmly convinced that
Condit and others that promote this ridiculous theory about the NSDAP being
puppets of the Rothschilds are 100% wrong in their assessment. I’ve concluded
that all the other ridiculous theories and outright slanders against Adolf
Hitler and National Socialist Germany are merely attempts to divert people’s
attention away from what Hitler and his movement actually stood for, what they
represented, what they actually said, and what they actually did. By the way,
Deanna Spingola and Veronica Clark refute many of these outlandish theories in
a recent interview for those interested.
One thing I want to
make clear here: Hitler and the National Socialist movement were most
definitely “anti-Semites”, and used “anti-Semitism” in their political
propaganda and messaging. After all, even critics of Hitler and the NSDAP
recognize that their propaganda was based on truth, and in our ass-backwards,
Jew-run world, the truth is fundamentally “anti-Semitic”. So let’s not get
caught up in this childish meme of “Hitler and the Nazis were evil, racist
anti-Semites’” nonsense, and simply refuse to investigate objectively what they
stood for. Look at what they said, did, wrote about, and represented, and you
will come to the obvious conclusion that I have: that this movement was the
greatest threat the world has ever known to the parasitic, subversive, and
destructive nature of the international Jewish criminal cabal largely
controlling the West, pushing for their “New World Order” on every front
imaginable.
Lake Vostok mystery: Alien life, global warming and Hitler's archive
Scientists, environmentalists and even World War II historians have
reacted with a mixture of excitement and concern to news that Russian
geologists have drilled through to a huge subglacial lake in Antarctica,
some 20 million years old.
It has taken more than 30 years to work through 3,700 meters of thick
ice – drilling in temperatures as low as minus 80 centigrade.
But it will have been worth it, if even half the claims being made about the lake are true.
Life not on Earth
Sealed off below the ice for millions of years, the lake is a unique environment. “According
to our research, the quantity of oxygen there exceeds that on other
parts of our planet by 10 to 20 times. Any life forms that we find are
likely to be unique on Earth,” says Sergey Bulat, the Chief Scientist of Russia’s Antarctic Expedition to Russian Reporter magazine.
But there is one place not on Earth that has similar conditions – Europa, the mysterious satellite of Jupiter.
"The
discovery of microorganisms in Lake Vostok may mean that, perhaps, the
first meeting with extra-terrestrial life could happen on Europa," said Dr Vladimir Kotlyakov, Director of the Geography Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences to Vzglyad newspaper.
So far scientists disagree about the presence of life forms in the water.
A
lot depends on how the lake was formed. If the lake formed when
Antarctica was already frozen – as ice was melted by the Earth’s core –
then the chance of finding interesting micro-organisms are slim. But if
the lake already existed when the Antarctic was still warm, anything is
possible.
Non-scientists have asked if these life-forms could be dangerous – undiscovered viruses, or perhaps even a monster, like that in the John Carpenter film The Thing.
“Everything but the samples themselves will be carefully decontaminated using radiation. There is no need to worry,” Valeriy Lukin, Head of the Antarctic Expedition told Russian Reporter Magazine.
"We work collectively, to improve the computing
experience of each other," said Google+ blogger Alessandro Ebersol.
"There's nothing selfish in that." Rather, "it's voluntary communitarian work. My benefit is the
benefit of others, as what others make also benefit me. So, there's no place
for selfishness."
OPINION: There's nothing new about welfare reform, it's as old as
the ideas advanced in its justification. Managing the poor and vulnerable is
just one of those perennial problems with which governments of every stripe
have to contend. Mostly, politicians restrict themselves to tinkering but every
so often a government engages in the sort of ruthless reform that leaves deep
scars upon the body politic.
Fortunately, the
bitter historical memories handed down by its victims serve as a prophylactic
against similar "reforms" for generations. But eventually popular
memory fades and, when it does, the threat of root-and-branch reform returns.
And tragedy follows it.
New Zealand may soon be
facing just such a threat and, curiously, it's as likely to come from the Left
as the Right. If that sounds improbable, then perhaps we should all remind
ourselves that it was the supposedly Left-leaning Labour Party which unleashed
the "New Right" economic reforms of the late 1980s.
And that it was no
less a "liberal" than Bill Clinton who campaigned on a promise to
"end welfare as we have come to know it" and who, in 1996, affixed
his presidential signature to the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Act.
But why would Labour
do such a thing? How could attacking the poor and vulnerable possibly help it
reclaim the Treasury benches? Part of the answer lies in the "communitarian" beliefs evinced by followers
of Labour's "Third Way".
This philosophy
asserts that too much emphasis has been placed on "rights" and not
enough on "responsibilities" in the formulation of public policy.
Society, they say, has a duty to see that one group of citizens' rights are not
upheld at their neighbours' expense.
The implications of communitarianism
for solo mums, the unemployed, the sick and the disabled are readily imagined.
Indeed, they'd do well to remember that David Parker, Labour's finance
spokesperson, is a strong believer in communitarian principles.
The other reason
Labour might opt for root-and-branch welfare reform involves the same reasoning
that went into the National Party's own root-and-branch solutions to the
"problem" of "welfare dependency": poor people don't vote.
In the last election, 800,000 New Zealanders failed to cast a vote.
Most were young, many
were poor, and practically all didn't give a stuff about politics. Motivating
them to vote requires immense effort, so National has opted instead to appease
its more conservative supporters by transforming the young and the poor (Maori
and Pasifika especially) into handy targets.
Labour's challenge is
to find some way of mobilising the young without at the same time making itself
a political hostage to the needs of the poor. One of the easier ways to do this
might be to provide younger voters with a hate figure: a stereotype capable of
igniting both their indignation and their fear.
Fortunately for Labour,
such a stereotype already exists: the Selfish Baby Boomer.
By encouraging
Generations X and Y to blame the Baby Boomers for everything from the price of
real estate to the rising cost of tertiary education, and enlisting their
support for a "root-and-branch" reform of New Zealand's
"irresponsibly generous and fiscally unsustainable" system of
universal superannuation, Labour could offset its declining levels of support
among older voters.
By attributing New
Zealand's indebtedness to the "intergenerational theft" of Baby
Boomers, this stripped-down, communitarian Labour Party could, at least in
younger voters' minds, transform "austerity" from a political
swear-word into a righteous electoral virtue.
In combination with
the Greens' bracing mantra of ecological restraint, they could be on to a
winner.
In 1834 the newly
enfranchised English middle-class shrugged-off its responsibilities to the poor
and vulnerable by passing a new Poor Law. Its hated symbol, the workhouse, was
immortalised by Dickens in Oliver Twist.
The new Poor Law's
sponsor was not some Tory reactionary, but the liberal Whig, Lord Melbourne.
What follows are
excerpts from Roger Ebert's review of "Trust":
"It tells its story of a 14-year-old
girl and a predatory pedophile as a series of repercussions in which rape is
only the first, and possibly not the worst, tragedy to strike its naive and
vulnerable victim."
"At its core is a remarkable
performance by young Liana Liberato, who plays Annie Cameron, the happy child
of a good home in upper-crust Wilmette. We hear a lot about the premature
sexualization of young teens; she portrays a "good girl" who isn’t
advanced, who feels uncomfortable at a party where "popular girls"
fake sophistication. She’s ... a nice kid."
"She’s never had a boyfriend when she
meets Charlie in an online chat room. Charlie is in high school. Like her, he
plays volleyball. He’s a nice kid, too. He understands her. She grows closer to
Charlie than any boy she’s ever known. They talk for hours on the phone."
"Charlie makes a confession. Actually,
he’s in college. Actually, he’s a graduate student. Actually, he’s 25.
"Why do you keep lying?" she asks. But Charlie is comforting and
persuasive. She agrees to meet him in a mall."
"She must have been warned about cases
of online predators like him — but they couldn’t have been talking about her
Charlie. Yet when Charlie turns up, he’s clearly well into his 30s. Annie is
crushed. But he is persuasive and compelling, a smooth talker, pushing all the
right buttons, exploiting her idealized fantasies about himself."
"For Annie, the loss of her virginity
is not the worst of it. More important is her reputation, her world in New
Trier High School, her self-esteem. She might almost have been better off not
telling anyone what happened. She confides in a friend, who blabs to the school
principal, and she’s led away from school by two uniformed officers who come to
investigate the crime. In this and countless details for the rest of the film,
we realize a psychic rape is being added to the original one. Only a reserved
but tactful psychiatrist (Viola Davis) completely understands what is
happening."
"Annie’s parents are good people. Her
British father Will (Clive Owen) is a marketing executive — ironically,
catering to the market for sexy teen fashions exploited by the notorious
American Apparel retail chain. Her mother Lynn (Catherine Keener) is sensible
and loving. The marriage is healthy. What Annie desperately needs is privacy
and space. What she gets is an intrusive FBI investigation, brutal gossip at
high school, cruel jokes played on the Internet, and the destruction of the
idealized vision of Charlie she clings to."
"It is all too tortuous and
complicated. Liana Liberato does such a poignant job of showing how, and why.
She has three scenes in particular where her wounded feelings spill out in
words of anguish, and they are so well-written and well-acted that they’re
heartbreaking. David Schwimmer has made one of the year’s best films:
Powerfully emotional, yes, but also very perceptive."
31 u. s. c. sec. 5118
(d) (2) provided for many years that a requirement of repayment of debt in a
particular kind coin or currency could be made by legal tender. as of october
21, 1977, legal tender for discharge of debt is no longer required. that is
because legal tender is not in circulation at par with the promises to pay
credit. negotiable instruments guaranty trust co.of new york vs. henwood, 307,
u.s. 847 (1939) holds that 31 u.s.c. 5118 was enacted to remedy the specific
evil of tying debt to any particular currency or requiring payment in a greater
number of dollars than promised. since october 27, 1977, there can be no
requirement of repayment in legal tender either, since legal tender was not
loaned and repayment need only be made in equivalent kind: a negotiable
instrument representing credit.
The Obama administration,
including his czars and along with his closest Progressive supporters, are
planning a manufactured insurgency against America.
CIA Microwave Weapons,
Mind Control, and a Secret Dirty War
The narrator of this
clip explains that from the standpoint of military intelligence personnel
involved with the Phoenix Project during the Vietnam War, the defeat of the US
was not a military failure but instead a defeat caused by a campaign of
demoralization fought by domestic enemies on the homefront.
He states that a
counterinsurgency doctrine has since been enacted in the "Homeland,"
armed with "soft kill" electromagnetic weapons that would ensure that
such a "betrayal" of the military could never be repeated. He states:
"The generation
of CIA and military intelligence, led by Shackley, Helms, Casey, Secord,
Alexander, Aquino and Vallely have built the perfect beast, using selective
assassination that leaves no trace. The ability to cull the human herd with
Silent Kill technology allows a few personalities to remake the entire society
in their own image.
"Extreme Low
Frequency technology slowly drives the target crazy with Silent Sound,"
similar to the way the CIA's MK Ultra psychiatrist, Ewen Cameron's
"psychic driving" technique was used to break down targets'
personalities.
Additional notes by
the uploader of this clip express his views that Toshiba HDTV sets are crucial
components of the Pentagon's arsenal of nonlethal weapons that specialize in
mass mind control through brainwave entrainment, subliminal suggestions and
other covert means.
“Everygreen” CIA Owned
Airline: Dropping Poison On You And Your Family
Evergreen Air is a
CIA front company for chemtrail operations within the US, based out of Marana
Air Park near Tucson Arizona and McMinnville, Oregon, near Portland.
A major missing piece
of a grand conspiracy has been targeted by a drunk pilot. In a small town 30
miles east of the Pacific Ocean in Oregon is the center of a major global
operation. At a bar in McMinnville, Oregon, an inebriated pilot attempted to
impress one of the pretty ladies with tales of his secret mission.
The pilot’s pathetic
attempt to portray himself as a Sean Connery or Daniel Craig caused him to
(ante up) his importance and spill the secrets of the CIA’s asset Evergreen
International Aviation.
The slurred
revelations confirmed suspicions that Evergreen (International Aviation) is
part of the major crap dump on the planet. Chemtrails made up aluminum, barium
and other ingredients contribute to respiratory ills and change the acidity of
the soil.
Evergreen works from
over a 100 bases and employees 4,500 people. Delford Smith privately owns the
company. They admittedly “perform” for the CIA.
Evergreen was given a
no contest bid that gave them all the facilities in Marana, Arizona that
previously belonged to CIA’s Air America (Pinal Air Park, Arizona).
The security at the
Pinal site is said to be as severe as that of Area 51. It is run as a military
base where one lost pilot got an armed escort immediately off the operational
base. The 10 year pilot said it was nothing like anything he has ever seen.
Evergreen
International Aviation brags of their planes that have 7 times the capacity of
other fire fighters. One can carry 20,000 galleons. Firefighting … Right … and
next we will be told the chemtrails are to prevent global warming as millions
more are advancing to an early death.
Evergreen
International Aviation has exemptions from the law that are advertised on their
web site. They can fly anywhere and not stay on a designated route. Has CFR
members paved the way? People like Philip Lader and John Wheeler III … they
were in a position to do just that.
Evergreen’s public
relations (propaganda) spokesman is handled by WPP run by Council on Foreign
Relations member Philip Lader. He worked under the present head of the CIA …
Leon Panetta as White House deputy of staff under Bill Clinton.
Philip Lader is an
“inside” authority on international affairs and business. He is the
non-executive Chairman of WPP Group, Senior Adviser to Morgan Stanley
International, and a board member for think-tank RAND Corporation. He is also a
trustee of UC Rusal (largest aluminum company in the world) the British Museum
and St. Paul’s Cathedral Foundation. Ambassador Lader has addressed
trans-Atlantic audiences from the U.N.’s General Assembly Hall to state
chambers of commerce and local world affairs councils, is a member of
Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations.
Philip Lader (CFR) is
a key player driving toward world government. In addition to running the Public
Relations for Evergreen International Aviation … Lader is a director of UC
Rusal, the largest Aluminum producer in the world located in Moscow, Sweden,
Italy, and Australia. Nathaniel Rothschild is a big investor.
Eugenic operation of
Chemtrails has had the assistance of Mitre a non-profit Corporation that
manages the Federal Aviation Administration, Homeland Security, and IRS. (1)
The IRS is part of the Federal Reserve which is a major transmission belt
driving the conspiracy.
Philip Lader’s fellow
Council on Foreign Relations member John P Wheeler III was recently dumped into
a land fill in Wilmington, Delaware. Wheeler III was a consultant to Mitre the nonprofit
corporation with jurisdictional advice over the Federal Aviation Administration’s
flight patterns.
Was John P. Wheeler
III to sentimental for the killing underway? And got murdered by the Company?
The CIA is the
enforcement arm of the Council on Foreign Relations
Mitre is conveniently
located in McLean, Virginia, home of the CIA.
Thanks to the drunken
pilot and his loose lips … the Free People of the world can focus on the
criminals who are poisoning our air and our water.
The CIA’s Insertion of Barack H. Obama, Jr. Into the White House
By Wayne Madsen
This book covers Barack H. Obama, Jr’s rapid rise in American
politics and the role that the CIA played in propelling him into the
White House. Research is based on formerly classified CIA and State
Department files, personal interviews, and international investigations.
Obama’s birth certificate has never been the issue. The real issue,
which affects his eligibility to serve as President of the United States,
is his past and likely current Indonesian citizenship. The reader will
be taken through the labyrinth of covert CIA operations in Africa,
Southeast Asia, South Asia, and other regions. The real history of
President Obama, his family, and the CIA quickly emerges as the reader
wades into the murky waters of America’s covert foreign operations.
Ashton’s spokesman, US
psychological warfare expert: Report
A report says Michael Mann, the
spokesman for EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton, is a “senior American
psychological warfare officer.”
The only background
of Mann which exists in the media depicts him as a former member of the US
Embassy staff in Baghdad.
Mann was replaced
with Maja Kocijancic as Ashton’s new spokesman ahead of the talks between Iran
and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and
Germany) in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in May.
The replacement of an
American agent with the former spokesperson of the European negotiator has
raised serious questions about the motives behind the move.
Being the spokesman
on the P5+1 negotiating team indicates that Mann is an information outlet
channeling all the data from the talks for the global public opinion.
The means of
information dissemination now lies in the hands of US agents and not European
negotiators, the report said.
According to the
report, Mann worked as a senior American psychological warfare officer in Iraq
and has had a key role in creating political and media controversies against
the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and certain regional
states.
Is there a truly a
natural and organic way to treat cavities that is harmonious with how our body
functions? What about a cure for cavities that lasts for your entire life,
rather than the generally short lived "cure" offered by the dentist.
---
The new paradigm for
dental health is nutritional healing. It is not about fixing a problem
mechanically with surgery, but about fixing it organically with diet, and other
factors that relate to health.
The current myth is
that humans have always had tooth decay. But in reality, humans have not always
had tooth decay, something has changed.
National Institutes
of Health (NIH): "Tooth decay, known formally as “dental caries,” has been
a serious health problem for all nations since time immemorial."
Comment: I am of the
opinion that beyond ten thousand years ago, cavities were rare to nonexistent.
It is with the advent of farming, that cavities started to appear. There are
many burial grounds of more recent civilizations, whose skeletons show no
evidence of cavities.
Dr. Weston Price
recounts that "the Indian skulls that have been uncovered in many parts of
the United States and Canada show a degree of excellence comparable to those
seen in this Figure. These levels of excellence were the rule with them, not
the exception as with us. The parents of these individuals knew what they and
their children should eat!"
Think about this.
Many of us have teeth falling out of our mouths, or decaying in our mouths. Yet
these skulls have perfect teeth without cavities. How is it that these skulls
keep perfect teeth even when the individual has died? Whereas modern humans
have severe cavities even when they are alive?
The answer has to do
with the food that we eat. It is explained in great detail in my book, Cure Tooth Decay.
For more than fifty
years, Texas has issued version after version of a comprehensive water plan.
The newest edition includes $53 billion in projects, ranging from new
reservoirs to treatment plants. So why is so much of the state always left high
and dry?
Did you know you can
get 500 showers worth of hot water -- from a compost pile?
This one, from
Inspiration Farm in Bellingham, WA was built by 3 people in 90 minutes, and
that includes gathering material. They ran 100 ft poly pipe to the pile, where
the heat was generated by the compost. Cold water was also run to this rustic
outdoor shower.
For two months in the
summer, there were an average of 6 showers a day - and they never ran out. When
the compost pile was done generating heat, they had finished compost to use!
And plenty of happy moist mushrooms where the shower was.
Electric utilities:
‘Smart' air-conditioners will be cycled today
Philadelphia area
electric utilities, responding to the hot weather, say they plan to cycle the
home air-conditioning systems today of customers who volunteered for a special
conservation program.
Peco Energy Co. said
it plans to curtail electrical power to the air-conditioners of 87,000
customers between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. today during a period of peak demand on the
regional electrical grid. Customers who signed up for its Smart A/C Saver
program agreed to allow the utility to shut down the compressors of their
air-conditioners for 15 minutes every half hour during a conservation event.
Peco declared a similar event Wednesday between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., said
Catherine Engel-Menendez, Peco's spokeswoman.
Atlantic City
Electric, which has 25,000 customers enrolled in its Energy Wise Rewards
program, say it plan to curtail air-conditioner use from 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Thursday. The homes of customers in the program might experience a 1 to 3
degree increase in temperature during the event.
Generate power for corded tools anywhere you go without the cost and hassle of a gas-powered generator by wiring a power inverter to your truck battery.
By the DIY experts of The Family Handyman Magazine: September 2011
Overview
No matter how good your battery-powered
saw or drill is, sometimes
you need a plug-in tool to get the job
done. Don’t have an AC receptacle
nearby? Well, if you have a truck,
you already have most of the makings
of a rolling AC generator. Just install
an AC inverter and you’ll have about
1,800 watts at your fingertips. The
basic setup runs about $450, and the
upscale version (with auxiliary battery
and isolator relay) about $700. The
installation takes just a few hours and requires only a drill and hand tools.
Component shopping
Photo 1: Thread the cables and connect
Pop 1-in. chase nipples into the holes in the bed and the box and spin on locknuts. Then
push the "smurf" tube and cable through the nipples and connect them to the inverter.
AC inverters come in two styles:
modified and pure sine wave. A modified
sine wave inverter (such as the
AIMS No. PWRINV1800W; available from
theinverterstore.com) is less expensive
and works great with power tools. For
“cleaner” power to run a computer, TV
or portable tool battery charger, buy a
pure sine wave inverter. Be sure it has
built-in overload, over-temperature,
over-and-under voltage and fault protection,
as well as neutral isolation.
You’ll also need one 200-amp fuse
block/fuse kit (two if you add a second
battery and three if you add a battery
isolator). Order separate lengths of
1/0 cable for the positive and negative
connections. Adding a 100Ah valve
regulated lead acid (VRLA) absorbed
glass mat (AGM) battery is optional.
It adds a few hundred dollars to the cost, but it
helps prevent alternator overheating
and helps maintain the voltage
under heavy loads. Add an isolation
relay at the same time to prevent
draining your main battery.
Select a mounting location
Inverters create a lot of heat, so mount
yours in a spot with adequate airflow
like your truck bed toolbox or on the
floor behind the driver's seat. Open the
toolbox lid or the cab door when the
inverter's in use.
Run the cabling
Every vehicle is different, so I can’t
give you a “one-size-fits-all” wire routing
scheme. But the most important
rule is to keep both cables away from
the engine block, pulleys, steering
components, and the exhaust manifold
and pipes. And run a separate negative
cable from the inverter back to
the main battery. To protect the cables
under the vehicle, run them (especially
the positive cable) inside flexible plastic
3/4-in. conduit. (This Carlon Flex-Plus Blue product, nicknamed “smurf”
conduit by electricians, is available in
10-ft. lengths in the electrical department
at home centers.) Then drill two
1-in. holes in the truck bed and two in
the toolbox and install electrical fittings
(Photo 1). Next, mount the inverter.
Mount the optional battery isolation
relay under the hood and connect the
trigger wire to a switch-powered “hot”
wire. Install the optional auxiliary battery
close to the inverter. See Figure A for the complete wiring diagram.
Finish the job at the battery
Photo 2: Secure the fuse block
Clamp the cable ring terminals under the serrated washers and install the fuse. Then
tighten the nut and install the protective cover.
Connect the positive cable to a fuse
block before attaching it to the battery
(Photo 2). Finish the job by connecting
the negative cable to the battery.
/ˈædʒɨtprɒp/; from Russian: агитпроп [ɐɡʲɪtˈprop]) is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message.
