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Power politics is essentially a matter of plutocrats — superwealthy blue-blood families — controlling societal institutions such as banking, military, politics, commerce, media, natural and human resources, healthcare, entertainment, culture, education, and sports. The elites objective is to consolidate power under the rubric of a New World Order wherein national sovereignty is superseded by a militaristic, totalitarian state.

The term: the “Fourth Reich”, reminiscent of the despotic, Nazi era under Hitler, rings true. Elites use a variety of organizations to accomplish their goal of a centralized/global sphere of domination. The European Union, NAFTA, and the push for a “North American Union exemplify” elite usurpation of power over independent nation states. Apparently, European royalty rules the “roost”, although it seems that U.S. aristocracy also plays a vanguard role via corporate and banking interests. Some “conspiracy authors” furthermore claim that self-serving Manipulative Extraterrestrials are at the pinnacle of power.

I learned about ‘Power Politics’ while pursuing a masters degree in sociology. C. Wright Millls’ book The Power Elite is a classic in the field. Other authors who have written about political power include William Domhoff, Michael Parenti, David Icke, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Bill Cooper, Stuart Swerdlow, and Jim Marrs.

Political campaigns and races for President, Prime Minister, Congressional and Parliamentary positions represent a dog and pony show which distracts from the powers-that-be who manipulate their political puppets from behind the scenes. The puppetmasters are stuck like glue to their power positions despite which party dominates the Executive and Congressional/Parliamentary branches of government. Knowing the agenda of the puppetmasters is more important than believing the rhetoric of politicians. The agenda of the ruling elite is imperial power, economic and political subjugation of the masses, perpetual warfare, and exploitation of natural resources with reckless abandon. Mammon is their god; guile is their goddess.

Plutocrats are highly class conscious, unlike the variegated strands that comprise the so-called middle and working classes. There is little, if any, class consciousness (other than within the union movement) that binds the out-group of “useless eaters” as they are labeled by the dominant, minority ruling class. Consumer consciousness is the binding force of the middle and working class. The superwealthy, when compelled to do so by political pressure and protest, throw breadcrumbs to the hungry masses. Otherwise, a malleable and gullible public flex their feeble political muscle in the futile exercise of voting for either “Tweedle Dee” or “Tweedle Dumb”, as if it makes a big difference. In the U.S., voting is a matter of choosing between a rightwing conservative or a glib liberal; both candidates are backed by banking and corporate interests.

The business of an arms merchant, is to sell weapons of every kind — missiles, aircraft, land-based weaponry, submarines. This pariah has no allegiance to any nation. Author Anthony Sutton’s book entitled Trading With the Enemy exposes U.S. and British involvement in supporting conflicting sides of World War I and World War II. Sutton documents how British and American banking, oil and auto industries supported the Nazi war effort. After the war, Nazis war criminals secured prestigous jobs within various U.S. institutions.

Ego-driven plutocrats seem to delight in the suffering of others, which stems from a deep seated sense of impotence and self-loathing. They seem incapable of feeling love or compassion for another human being. People are their pawns in games of power. When an individual is victimized by constant abuse and neglect, and is socialized into a creed of superiority due to class hubris, the result is a sociopathic personality type that projects their schizoid perceptions onto the world.

Elites function from a Machiavellian philosophy, one that reinforces a compulsion to manipulate and control others. Plutocrats foment factionalism and mistrust that pervades human behaviour. They provoke racism, inculcate bigotry and excessive national pride, feed religious emnity and tribal warfare, and fan the flames of chaos and discontent wherever it may flourish. Wars cannot thrive without arms and weapons of mass destruction. Warfare is not possible unless people are seething with hatred and vengeance. Killing becomes commonplace under the guise of protecting one’s country from alleged and orchestrated “enemy” threats, from terrorists, for example.

Does this mean terrorism is conjured up by puppetmasters pulling strings from behind the scenes? On a recent visit to the U.N., Pope Benedict notably commented that the majority should not allow a minority to determine the course of human events.

by Che Kaye

CD — In recent months major international banks, financial newspapers and mass media have been forced to recognize that there is a major food crisis and that hundreds of millions of people face hunger, malnutrition and outright starvation. World conferences have been convoked and national emergencies have been declared, as millions riot in nearly fifty countries, threatening to overthrow regimes. In North America and Europe, skyrocketing food prices, combined with stagnant wages, home evictions and debt payments threaten incumbent regimes and increase pressures on all governments to take urgent action.

Mainstream responses are predictably inadequate, and their explanations for the crisis range from inadequate and self-serving to silly. The World Bank repeats the call for emergency food aid and several hundred-million-dollar grants to the “most needy,” which usually turn out to be regimes who have been model pupils of the World Bank and IMF policies.

Academics and policy advisers blame China, “for eating too much meat.” Others point to the diversion of production to biofuels like “ethanol” and “bio-diesel.” But they fail to ask which classes fashioned the economic policies that enabled this “diversion” to take place. In any case, as Bruce Burnett, director of market analysis with the Canadian Wheat Board, has said, ethanol’s impact has been greatly exaggerated: “the tightness in wheat supplies was not driven by ethanol; it was driven by our tight wheat stocks globally. Perhaps ethanol got us into this situation more quickly.”

It’s true that there is a supply problem, but from where does it really stem? While food shortages and food inflation have taken on crisis proportions in recent months, it’s a crisis whose roots can be traced to decades-old policies.

Heavy private and state borrowing in the 1970’s owing itself to the availability of cheap credit led to a growth of indebtedness in the so-called Third World. Indebted private banks, businesses, manufacturers and real-estate developers foisted their private debts onto the state. The state, faced with mounting debt obligations, turned to the IMF and World Bank to secure loans and, more important, to gain their certification for jumbo loans from commercial banks.

The IMF and World Bank demanded fundamental structural changes from states to grant loans. These conditional loans involved a comprehensive transformation in investment, trade, consumption and income policies, including the elimination of protective trade barriers in agriculture and manufacturing. As a result, there were massive inflows of subsidized agricultural commodities from the U.S. and the European Union, which destroyed small- and medium-sized family-farm producers of basic foodstuffs. Bankruptcy of food producers led to massive displacement of farmers and farm workers to the cities, and the concentration of land in the hands of agro-business plantations owners who concentrated on growing crops for export.

IMF and World Bank demands included the re-allocation of state credit, loans and technical assistance toward big agro-exporters in single commodities because such crops earned hard currency needed to pay back loans and for-profit remittances of the multinational corporations back to their stock holders, directors and owners.

The middle-term consequences of these policies manifested themselves after a little more than a decade. Family farmers were bankrupted, their land bought up by real-estate speculators (self-styled “developers”) for commercial uses, golf courses, resorts, gated luxury communities and export staples. Rice fields were turned into country clubs. This restructuring has produced the absurd and tragic result that millions of people are starving in countries that export large amounts of food.

Between constrained food supplies, increased food-import demands from China and India, diversion of crops from foods to fuels, rising farm-input costs of oil-derivative imports like fertilizers, rising transportation costs and, finally, the actions of huge investment funds in buying up enormous amounts of grain — bringing the story up to the present, this combination of factors was bound to drive up prices.

So, it was not simply that “demand” was up, as the orthodox pundits would have it. Under conditions of markets tightly controlled by big agribusiness, grain stocks fell to their lowest levels in 35 years relative to demand, largely because big agro-capital sought to limit the supply of food, increase production of biofuels and divert capital to commodity speculation. As a result of the ascendancy of giant agro-capitalist rule and their investment and land-use policies, average food prices rose by 45 per cent between July, 2007, and April, 2008, and are projected to rise by an additional fifteen per cent by July.

Frightened more by mass protests toppling compliant client regimes than by mass hunger and rising mortality among the poor, leaders from around the world met in Washington earlier this spring. They whined about the food riots and moaned over the “loss of a decade’s progress [sic] in Africa,” and even called for “action.” As might be expected, a few hundred million dollars in emergency food aid was promised.

Some countries were frightened into blocking exports of basic food items in order to prevent food riots turning into mass insurrections. Yet these actions and food handouts have had little positive effect at home, and have exacerbated scarcities for food importers.

None of the world leaders meeting in Washington “concerned” about hunger proposed agrarian reforms — redistributing land to peasants and farmers to produce food. None of them even proposed reforms like price and profit controls, or the re-conversion of land use to agricultural production, or outlawing speculation in commodity futures in the world bourses. It is no wonder that the IMF predicts food prices will continue rising until 2010.

The bankruptcy of export-product specialization at the expense of food security is abundantly clear. What was once the demand of a radical minority is now at the top of the agenda for a multi-billion-person movement: a return to policies of food self-sufficiency.

Food Sovereignty

La Via Campesina (The Peasant Way) is an umbrella body that encompasses more than 120 small farmers’ and peasants’ organizations in 56 countries, ranging from the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil to the National Farmers Union in Canada.

Simple access to food is not enough, La Via Campesina argues. What’s needed is food sovereignty: access to land, water and resources. The people affected must have the right to know and to decide about food policies. Food is too important to be left to the global market and the manipulations of agribusiness.

The central demand of the food-sovereignty movement is that food should be treated primarily as a source of nutrition for the communities and countries where it is grown. In opposition to free-trade, agro-export policies, it urges a focus on domestic consumption and food self-sufficiency.

La Via Campesina’s demand for food sovereignty constitutes a powerful agrarian program for the 21st Century. Labour and left movements worldwide should give full support to it and to the campaigns of working farmers and peasants for land reform and against the industrialization and globalization of food and farming.

We in the Global North can and must demand that our governments stop all activities that weaken or damage Third World farming. In particular: stop using food for fuel; cancel the debts of developing nations (ending that cash drain would provide essential resources to feed the hungry now and rebuild domestic farming over time); get the WTO out of agriculture; and self-determination for the Global South.

Current attempts by the U.S. to destabilize and overthrow the anti-imperialist governments of the ALBA group — Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada — continue a long history of actions by northern countries to prevent developing countries from asserting control over their own destinies. Organizing against such interventions “in the belly of the monster” is a key component of the fight to win food sovereignty around the world.

Editorial reference: LINK

Special to The Canadian

To address matters regarding the fellowship of mind, I will need to overlook the reservations, regarding the non-scientific appropriateness of the topic of mind, that were made by my colleague the late Robert Bigelow. He had stated to me that, as a scientist, the phenomenon of mind, did not allow him to accumulate for analysis, the mix of hard objective data that science stipulates as being required, so as to accommodate any feature or any issue. Accordingly, he stated that, although he could use science to address the presence and the phenomenon of brain, there was no such objective evidentiary material or reference context, which allowed him to address the phenomena of mind, (so that he could bring its influence to bear on his analysis of human evolution).

Although I am someone who appreciates the analytical insights which the usage of science has allowed, there is no necessity for me to buy into the parallel imputation that a degree of intellectual “fuzziness” and non viability, may be attached to exploring the proposition of a Fellowship of Mind.

I had met Robert Bigelow at a conference in the late spring to early summer of 1974. At that time I had praised the insights about the linkage of war to the evolution of human civilization , which he had presented at the IXth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences - The Etiology of War. His paper was entitled “The Role of Competition and Cooperation in Human Evolution”. It also became published in the book , War, Its Causes and Correlates; Nettleship, Dalegivens and Nettleship Eds. (Mouton Publishers, 1975) p.235. In that paper, Bigelow had advanced the thesis that, human civilization has basically evolved, intimately in concert with on-going sequential predatory territorial raids, by respective groups; with the aim to seize control over territory and resources.

Furthermore, I later discovered that Bigelow had presented his arguments in more elaborate form, in the Book , The Dawn Warriors: Man’s Evolution Towards Peace; (Little Brown & Company (Canada) Limited, 1969).

The bulk of the other conferees, made it known in discussions (and also in lack thereof), that they were not happy with Bigelow’s thesis; (and I surmise that it was because what he was presenting, went contrary to “accepted” pacifist truths, that were held by his colleagues in the ethnological and the anthropological sciences). However, in discussing his arguments with him later that day, after his presentation, I communicated to him that I had found his presentation to be genuinely illuminating and stimulating. I added, however, that I was surprised, and was also uneasy at the fact that in his arguments and in his presentation, he had not accommodated into his imputation (regarding the predatory roots of human reality), any apparent emphasis on the presence, or on the role of mind, as an influence on the revealed [and more likely deduced] evolutionary path.

Bigelow’s (long ago) response to that observation which I had made to him, has percolated in my thoughts over the years since that day. In addition, and my sympathies with the scientific method have led me to subdue and to leave alone what he said, until now. Furthermore, my intent after such a long delay, to address Bigelow’s (essentially orthodox) response, grows out of my current unease at the presence of some overlooked truths that must be faced, in the evolution on which we (as humans) must now proceed.

It is also not surprising that in Bigelow’s presentation in The Dawn Warriors, he gave much emphasis to the phenomenon of the evolution of the size of the human brain, (as an impact route on what had historically occurred as a part of our human evolution). His arguments in that matter, are persuasive. Yet, the linkage between mind, and brain, may not be so simply reduced or avoided – especially when one reflects on a Fellowship of Mind.

Brain, is essentially an organic entity. It is the largest single organ in the central nervous system; and via the autonomous nervous system, it operates to co-ordinate the functional organic parts, which together execute the material survival of any host entity to this organ.

In the process, the brain also operates as a co-ordinating receptor of external stimuli (however generated). Furthermore, if it is not impaired (by accident or by disease) and is functioning organically properly, the brain also operates as an endowment of programming that co-ordinates the normal biological functioning of the host organism. In the process it operates as a storehouse of previous survival-centred correlations that had been made on data (information) about the environment in which the (biological) organism is functioning. Brain, is the possession of AN INDIVIDUAL. As a result, an in situ collection of individuals with their respective brains, also parallels the presence of a basket of potatoes with the collective presence their respective harnessed or harnessing of organic potential, and also of material capabilities.

Mind, on the other hand, IS A DOMAIN, OR A (STIMULUS) FIELD. It operates in, or functions within an existential conwillowsence, which is tantamount to a prevailing bio-electrical sentience grid. As a result, a Fellowship of Mind emerges from, or embodies the union, and the sharing, and the community, which occurs in that bio-electrical sentience grid. There, mind accommodates and orients the recording and the storage of the impulses that the brain notes and digests.

Mind, also operates as a contextual directorate, in which information becomes digested. It contextualizes the recognition, collation, ranking, and priorisation of ambient information, in light of SELECTED survival-centred targets at which the socialized entity aims.

Mind, represents an instrument of environmental reconciliation. Meanwhile, a particular brain, (that has been stimulated to comprehend the operating presence of a larger – if not the total – universe, as being also a domain to which it is connected), effectively comprehends and construes its operating presence, by drawing upon the domain of mind. As a result, under the influence of prevailing distilled objective information, the host organism of the particular brain, frames context/meaning to any voluntary (as compared to reflexive) decision that it makes to continue living. In turn, that process will be indicated by a commitment or by an intention on the part of the brain possessor, to execute (or to fit into) existential targets.

Indeed, mind, is the repository which acts as the prime basis to the individual’s recognition of the concept of (a universal) community.

Whereas BRAIN, RECORDS PARTICULAR PIECES OF INFORMATION; MIND, CATEGORIZES, RANKS, AND PRIORISES IT in light of the existential survival targets (within a construed whole), at which the entity aims. That is because the domain of mind, is the domain of be-ing; whereas, the brain is an operating organ which absorbs and correlates communicated impulses and information, against achievements that are related to the execution of material survival.

The result is that, to focus on a Fellowship of Mind, is to invite communal attention to the existential/transcendental achievement targets to the operation of mind that also point human achievements to more than material results. Meanwhile, a particularly rudimentary Fellowship of Mind exists, as indicated by the fact that humans in communities, usually form ranking systems (regarding what action responses of individuals will be the tolerated). The respective individuals brain holders, are therefore somewhat aware of the presence of a shared mind, even though they are not aware as to how their commitment to the shared rankings of likely outcomes, was either generated or came about.

It is notable, for example, that on being aware of their mortality, and of the presence of a larger universe (which behaves responsively to some of their initiatives, as well as behaves noticeably autonomously to some of their prevailing capabilities), humans have also tended to create a common societal perception and weighting, by forming various types of organized religions. These religions have tended to communicate various types of superstition about how reality came about, and also to promote conforming behaviours within those superstitions.

In contrast, as a result of its attunement to the wider material universe, mind, requires individuals to pursue and to use objective information so as to develop a technical understanding of reality and its tolerances, as a basis for selecting among survival commitments/targets.

Within an awareness of the potential Fellowship of Mind, possessors of the human brain are being invited to become more existentially self aware, (as a part of their coping strategies with their environment). Singly, as well as in their groups, the reality and the Fellowship of Mind will lead humans to appreciate the diversity of which they are apart. Humans who are participating in that fellowship, will then be able to frame a path of their survival, that is much more sophisticated than the animal-like process (of predation, in assimilation of territory toward more secure sustenance), which is the path of evolution that Bigelow had reported on them as following.

Initiatives to enhance the quality-of-living of humans, will be one of the targets within a society that is articulated within a Fellowship of Mind. However, facilitating that enhancement in the quality of living of humans, is not likely to emerge in a universe where operating (local) resident governments, are complicit in the management and the usage of local material resources, primarily toward facilitating the increase in financial returns, to banks and other large corporations.

Notably, too, an environment which is committed to accommodating and to facilitating the Fellowship of Mind, will also be committed to promoting the practices of empathy and of mutuality; rather than committed to facilitating the practices of greed and of predatory exploitation (as the terrain in which the local expression of mind is limited to evolve). v Indeed, Western civilization, with all of its PROFESSINGS and its claims that it is guided by the pursuit of scientific truths, IS NO MORE THAN A FRONT MECHANISM for the sentience-beclouding materialist exploitation of the resources as well as the people of planet earth, in behalf of greed and financial-equivalent profits. What this civilization seeks to generate, are, mental slaves to those exploitive materialist objectives. A Fellowship of Mind, in a universe of souls, is alien to the greed-centred selfishness-promoting materialist goals of this civilization.

At the same time, a Fellowship of Mind is not a terrain that is built around the guilt-reinforcing and dogma-discharging religions. Rather, that fellowship (of the mind), is based on respect and awe at the integrated complexity of our universe.

A Fellowship of Mind, also represents an invitation to us to draw on the potential usage of our respective brains, to embark on establishing and executing information-guided linkages to our universe. Furthermore, the existential conwillowsence and the shared bio-electricexistential sentience grid, (which envelopes the reality of mind, as a prevailing guidance and weighting framework to stimulus response), also requires that, in our operations, we will need to execute respect for each other. That is because, we each comprise a functioning minuscule portion of the awesome reality of the context of be-ing in which we share, as respective components in our universe.

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by Horace R. Carby Samuels

The prevailing capitalism is about “capital” and not people, including “democracy”. In fact, capitalism operates to destroy “democracy”, by gradually concentrating power among an elite, who then seek to destroy democractic institutions.

The current so-called “global” economy is on a reckless course of on-going self-destruction, which threatens World War III. This self-destruction is being caused from a glorification of the pursuit of commercial profit irrespective of social and environmental costs, which in turn creates a ‘culture of violence’ and war.

The well-being of people are the last things on the mind of most financially wealthy elites. These elites do such things as fire people from their jobs without thinking twice, or create knowingly unhealthy and dangerous products in order to maintain high levels of commercial profit. These elites also do things like instigate so-called “Wars on Terrorism” in order to subtantially pursue “oil riches”, that create hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.

The book Capitalism is Not Democracy, ISBN: 1894934636, exposes that market capitalism in association with so-called Globalization is about furthering the interests of principal owners of “capital”, and not people. These principal owners of capital are elites who own the largest corporations. The net result of “capitalism” is worsening human suffering; as well as environmental destruction, from pollutions to Global Warming. Become a member of Canadian, with a donation pledge and be notified with more details of this article.

by Peter Tremblay

If you read any Canadian newspaper, you’ve been treated to the same refrain: NAFTA has been good for Canada. It has led to economic growth and jobs for Canadians. And given that it’s been so wonderful for Canada, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) could only make things better, right?

What proponents of deep integration are not telling you is this: the notion that NAFTA has been good for average Canadians, Americans and Mexicans is a lie. The truth is that NAFTA has been responsible for growing poverty, the creation of a new underclass called the “working poor,” and the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

The numbers don’t lie

When political and business leaders sold Canadians on the merits of NAFTA, they promised that trade would boom, our economy would grow, more jobs would be created and our standard of living would skyrocket. In Mexico, politicians promised that free trade would lift people out of poverty. Look closely at the numbers, however, and all these promises begin to ring hollow.

A September 2006 study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that Canadian exports to the U.S. peaked in 2000 and started falling in 2001 and 2002. They have since risen again, but only because of a commodities boom particularly related to the minerals, forestry and energy industries.

In other words, if it weren’t for natural resources, especially oil, our exports to the U.S. would be falling steadily. Furthermore, a federal Industry Department study quoted by EPI reveals that 90 per cent of the export surge in the 1990s was a result of the low Canadian dollar.

In addition, Canada’s share of the American import market has stayed the same throughout the NAFTA years. So those who claimed that NAFTA would give us a “privileged” and growing access to the American market have been proven wrong. Canada is rapidly losing ground to India and China, two countries that have not signed trade deals with the U.S.

Exports don’t equal jobs

NAFTA’s proponents point out that Mexico has become the world’s eighth largest exporter. This, they say, is proof that free trade has been good for the Mexican people. But researchers at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University recently concluded that foreign investment was “largely disconnected from the domestic Mexican economy.”

In other words, large corporations are exploiting a cheap labour force for quick profit. The products of this labour immediately leave the country as exports. This accounts for the high trade numbers but it is not an accurate reflection of Mexico’s economic strength. The country as a whole does not benefit from technology transfers or new infrastructure.

A 2004 article in The Economist stated that NAFTA “champions” had oversold their case and that it was “never plausible” that NAFTA would be a net creator of jobs. The magazine went on to explain that free trade affects the pattern of jobs, not the total number of jobs created.

Disappearing middle class

In Canada, the middle class has taken the biggest hit. Wage growth has been almost flat since 1989 - it grew at a paltry rate of 0.63 per cent per year. NAFTA defenders point to the creation of “millions” of new jobs since the agreement was implemented, but a 2004 study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) questions the quality and stability of those jobs. According to the CCPA, 560,000 jobs were created in 2002, but 40 per cent were part-time and 17 per cent represented self-employed persons.

The CCPA’s study reinforces an argument that the labour movement has been making for years: free trade eliminates unionized, steady, well-paid jobs and replaces them with temporary, non-unionized and largely part-time “McJobs”. And this has come at a time when Canada’s social programs have been devastated by cuts - especially since the mid-1990s. In 1989, the CCPA points out, 87 per cent of unemployed people in Canada qualified for unemployment insurance benefits, whereas by 2001 only 39 per cent qualified for coverage.

Canadians aren’t the only ones suffering. Despite a flood of investment in the manufacturing sector along the Mexican border with the U.S., the real value of the minimum wage has dropped in Mexico by 18 per cent. A 2003 study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace points out that while the manufacturing sector in Mexico created 500,000 jobs between 1994 and 2000, the agricultural sector, where one-fifth of Mexicans still work, has lost 1.3 million jobs since 1994.

To add insult to injury, many of the manufacturing jobs are leaving Mexico for China, where wages are even lower. The most revealing indication of this trend is the skyrocketing numbers of Mexican immigrants to the United States. According to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, the flow of undocumented workers to the United States has ballooned from an estimated 200,000 a year in 1994 to more than 300,000 a year in 2004.

The irony is that the U.S. middle class has also been devastated by job losses in recent years. Between 2001 and 2003, 2.9 million manufacturing jobs were lost in the U.S. According to Forbes Magazine, the United States’ largest employer is now Wal-Mart, which pays its employees an average wage of $7.50 per hour. The growing gap

Here is the crux of the matter: If NAFTA has created so much wealth, why is poverty growing in all three countries?

Study after study reveals that the gap between rich and poor is growing both between countries and within countries. In the book Living with Uncle: Canada-US Relations in an Age of Empire, Bruce Campbell argues that after decades of declining inequality, the bottom 20 per cent of Canadian families saw their incomes fall by 7.6 per cent in the NAFTA era, while the top 20 per cent saw their incomes rise by 16.8 per cent.

A 2004 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada produced by Campaign 2000 reveals that nearly a third of Canadian children have lived in poverty for at least a year since 1996. According to the report, the richest 10 per cent of Canadian families have an average income 11 times as high as the poorest 10 per cent. The authors blame low-paying and insecure jobs for widening the disparity between rich and poor families. In other words, a “strong economy” has done nothing to close the gap.

The idea that free trade would make Mexico rich was the biggest fallacy of all. Under NAFTA, the number of Mexicans living in poverty has actually increased. According to a May 2001 World Bank study, Mexicans living in poverty represent 58.4 per cent of the population. That’s almost 8 per cent higher than in 1994.

The much-celebrated “NAFTA labour side agreement” - an after-the-fact peace offering that was supposed to appease the U.S. labour movement - has proven too weak to enforce labour rights in Mexico. The mechanisms it created to defend workers have no enforcement powers so there has been little impact on the lives of the people the agreement was meant to defend. The Wall Street Journal put it eloquently in 1997, reporting that under the agreement “not a single worker was ever reinstated, not a single employer was ever sanctioned, and no union was ever recognized.”

The evidence makes it clear that under free trade, the losers are the Canadians, Mexicans and Americans who are struggling to contend with low wages and insecure working conditions - if they are lucky enough to find a job. NAFTA has made corporate investors very rich, so it’s no surprise that they are the ones pushing for deeper integration with the U.S. and Mexico through the Security and Prosperity Partnership. They are the only clear winners under the NAFTA model, so they want to make free trade irreversible and broaden its scope.

In 1994, Canadians took a leap of faith based on false promises. In 2007, we know better.

by Jean-Yves LeFort  

About the author:

Jean-Yves LeFort is The Council of Canadians’ Trade Campaigner.

Many people think that war is just fine.

There are still many veterans who’ve been to war; but some of them are pretty old now.

Veterans for WW II are few and far between, but they’re out there, and their tales are vivid and horrible, and laced with honour and glory for having fought off the tyranny of the Japanese, German and Italian Fascists; though they aren’t much of a political force anymore; in their day they were the fighting force that saved our world from the Fascist Global take-over.

The Vietnam veterans are out there in greater numbers, but still they aren’t much of a political force either, all said and done, given the physical and emotional handicaps that so many are suffering as a direct result of a useless and wasted deployment.

So who is driving this war in Iraq ?

The army is currently using footage of the flag raising at Iwo Jima in their ads, to try to inspire recruits. That might work for WW II vets, but 18 year olds today couldn’t find Iwo Jima on a map if the had it for lunch.

Vietnam vets wouldn’t go for oneiota of any of that, since the travesty and the sting of that wasted effort lives in their daily nightmare along with their lost friends, Agent Orange and their post war injuries.

So how do we, as a civilization garner enough momentum to even contemplate war, let alone incite one!?

Mankind seems to have been waging war from the get go, and while the growth of civilization has produced some tremendous things far removed from warfare, war and the illusion of glory, both seem to have gotten into our genetic code.

These failures are in our genes.

I say that figuratively of course.

There is no ‘war’ gene, but culturally there would seem to be sometimes.

The Greeks, the Romans. Great cultures turned to ashes by war.

The Greeks overextended themselves and met their undoing because of it.

Likewise the Romans.

I’ll bet neither of then ever thought that they would collapse one day. In their glory and conquest do you think they ever doubted their sovereignty?

Yet everyone knows that Rome came to a sad end because of it.

Japan, Italy, Germany; all met the same fate that Greece and Rome did.

Hello-o-o-o-o, are we missing something here?

How can any culture still believe that war is the way to go??

Haven’t we learned ANYTHING ????

WHO are the people espousing war?

How do we identify the war mongers?

Well, let’s see.

There’s the military; they live for war.

The weapons manufacturers; they profit from war.

Oh, and the Catholic church; parts of it preach war.

I’ve never heard a Hindu saying, we must kill heathens to cleanse the Earth.

Nor have I heard a Buddhist claiming that all who believe in Hinduism must die.

So where do the Righteous Right Wing Catholic militants get their inspiration?

Shall we start with the Crusades?

Militant Christian soldiers donned their weapons and vanquished millions in the name of God?!

Then the Christian missionaries took it upon themselves to spread ‘the word’, based upon a misinterpretation of the Bible, and the misguided premise espoused by the Crusades, which had to some degree have been fortified by the Inquisition.

The precept that the Bible espouses is a righteous basis for exacting either salvation or condemnation upon the peoples of the earth, and that it is quite acceptable and quite honourable to do it in the name of God. In the back of human consciousness, the aggregate mind seems to have somehow been infiltrated with this notion.

Even today I find myself being cautious as to how I address this, while most certainly, outside of an alternate religious belief, I daresay any critique of the Catholic church in years gone by and even today could be met with a most violent end.

In Ireland for instance; or on some dark country road in KKK territory.

Or in the White House under Bush.

Still in all the Bible is a great achievement.

It’s a compilation of folk tales accumulated 16 hundred years after the fact, and written into literature by monks, who were at the time, virtually, the only people who were educated enough to read and write. One must realize that for all intents and purposes, the recollection of facts would have to have been sketchy at best.

The witnesses were all dead, and had been for a long time.

There was very little if any actual evidence other that the word of mouth stories handed down through the generations.

The material was brilliantly accumulated and composed into, and rightfully so; sections attributed to the various sources and named after them.

The Bible is a terrific effort, but in actuality, again, at best, it’s third hand information.

The essence is there, and the objective was met, but unfortunately the multitude of variations in practice today is clear testament to the fact that the Bible has been turned into a book of many faces.

This isn’t really any surprise. The human mind, the ego, the memory, the inclination to embellish, the imagination and the talent of the scribes all influenced the writing of the Bible and the resultant interpretation of it. And the misuse of it.

Some of you may remember that classroom experiment where someone at the back of the class was given a message to pass on to the person at the next desk and so on until it reached the front of the room. The final message was completely alien to the original.

Thus the ‘Word of God’ was only as good as the man who wrote it.

I am a baptized Catholic, so, thank God, I’ll be going to heaven.

Isn’t that special.

Everyone else is going to hell.

If you fear God, and do exactly as ‘He’ says; You may be redeemed.

But since ‘He’ is the only REAL God, then, all of the other religions of Humankind are going to hell, or worse yet, stoned to death in the name of the Lord.

” ‘A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death.

You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.’ ” (Lev. 20:7).

Wouldn’t you consider that a bit harsh?

Either you’re a Catholic or you’re going to hell??!

Either you’re Catholic or we stone you to death !

Wouldn’t you feel just a little bit like a ‘ Gringo ‘ or an ‘Ugly American ‘going into a Tibetan Temple and telling them that ?

If you went into a Shaolin temple with that line you may find yourself face to face with a serious ass kicking.

It’s a pretty fair guess to say that God did NOT tell anyone to do that!

That sounds more like Medieval mumbo jumbo.

The Dark Ages, when the bible was written were indeed dark.

Very similar to the propaganda of today, the scribes and monks were likely pressured to manipulate the storyline to create terror, and fear among the masses for the purpose of political control. Just look at the incredible and all but indelible scar that that fear has generated among the people’s of the past and of today.

A fair person, of moderate religious inclination, would not be inclined to go to the neighbour and stone him to death because of a difference in religious belief, Catholic or not.

But the Ku Klux Klan has taken it upon themselves to do exactly that.

In what is considered today as gang violence, they have burned churches, lynched blacks and whites, brandished guns and burned crosses in the name of some deviant offshoot of the Catholic church. An off shoot that’s inspired from the first line of Genesis and expounded upon ad infinitum through out ‘ the scriptures ‘; that there is ONLY ONE God !!

Now I know that the evenly tempered person of today really doesn’t go there, yet in some vague suppressed corner of the Catholic/Christian mind lurks the idea that the honourable and faithful is entitled to stone an unbeliever to death !

The Bible after all, says so many many times; so it MUST be true, and the Anglo-Saxon / European offshoots must still be wearing that energy today, but forgotten to identify it specifically any more.

Okay are you ready for this?

IT IS NOT TRUE!

THERE IS NOT ONLY ONE GOD!

Fortunately most good Catholics realize that the things written in the Bible are not necessarily to be taken literally.

Unfortunately, there are some who don’t, and go out brandishing weapons and killing people in a medieval mindset wearing their little crowns of righteousness, pointed hoods, or military uniforms.

What a horror it must be for the good Catholic to know that the same words he or she holds and worships for peace and compassion, are converted into the death cry of a rabid religious right. I don’t think anyone wants to try to talk a pack of white hooded men into an arena of good sense while they’re waving guns or burning crosses in their hands, nor incite a bloodthirsty militia of military gunmen to lay down their precious weapons to consider the error of their ways.

Given that that is the dilemma we’re faced with as a nation ‘at war’, the truly religious patriot is NOT a death machine at all, but rather a Truth Seeker.

A God loving person, not God fearing!!

Given that our ‘War on Terror’ has been incited from within our national trust by a power who’s interest’s lie within the unthinking hysteria of a nation bent on revenge, we, as a people must see through the blinding rage and ask why we have been manipulated to seek death to an unspecified enemy as the only recourse to 9/11.

The honourable and good piety of sincere souls has been twisted into a tool for a power hungry few who will benefit while we kill and are killed, while the war hungry few who have waited and trained for death are easily prompted to don armour and guns and seek out any and all violators as ascribed by a maniacal few.

Blind and numb, we have been duped into an un-Godly, un-Patriotic, and un-American rampage into a never ending theater of war against an unjustly convicted perpetrator.

That is NOT how our American Pride has been outlined or cultivated.

That is NOT our representation of Democracy.

That is NOT the core of our Heritage.

That is the core of the fascist, who inflicts weaponry and death upon innocent people for gain, and we all know what happens to ill gotten gains.

I’ve been at the hand of bullies inflicting unfair and undeserved wrath, served upon unjustly as a scapegoat for some vague, undefined resentment hand me down :- the dastardly relic of prior bad acts passed from parent to child like family jewels.

That type of hatred and blind injustice will raise an indignant fury within an innocent receiver that will cause permanent distortion and damage within said otherwise clear and benign recipient.

This freshly planted field of unfairly damaged souls IS going to come back and haunt us and our offspring. The children who have watched their parents burn at the hand of some adolescent idiot G.I. with a flame thrower who’s wracking death and mayhem upon anything that moves; are harbouring resentment that’s so deep they will most likely NEVER recover from it or the images of savagery branded into their innocent minds.

“ We’re liberating the people of Iraq and showing them the way to American Democracy“

ARE THEY KIDDING??!!
Nope. They’re serious.
They believe it.

“ THAT is NOT American Democracy.”

Do you understand?! You have been told.

What the current government is doing is; NOT DEMOCRATIC !! IT’S FASCIST !!

It’s a Fascist as the war that Hitler started.
A war based on lies.
A war based on murder.

A war based on false pretexts and seriously distorted allusions of Democracy, Religion, and American Justice.

It WILL come back and bite us.

Reverend Mike Goldsun, American columnist

Big Business interests have had enough of wasting money on trying to influence elections, as well as on dealing with labour laws, human rights legislation, environmental protection, public healthcare, and on other quality-of-living issues. After all, isn’t democracy “over-rated”? Wouldn’t society be better if a Council of the most successful corporate entrepreneurs, and other elites controlled how matters evolve in a “survival of the fittest” oriented “North America”? This re-born North American inhabitant would be controlled by fear, that developed under a never-ending “terrorist” threat, requiring a perpetuated state of war.

Elites freed of labour laws, for example, could forge a vast industrial army of workers, who could sell their labour power “competitively”, for as low as possible, without corporations being restricted by “minimum wages”. Society would operate with “order”, under the purposeful control and direction of “wise men”, and the masses would know their place in this type of society. The masses, in the context of a new sense of ‘freedom’ would be “freed”, from being “confused”, by the operation of democracy in the U.S. or Canada.

The mantra of the envisaged new regime is that the largest corporations in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, along with military interests, and a political clique, could do a much better job, if they formed a totalitarian-inspired government under the direction of “wise men”. Well, perhaps a couple of token positions can be reserved for women who “know their place”, and who do not challenge the “wise men”.

This totalitarianism for now, will be disguised as “freedom” and the protection of “liberty”, while North America is being transformed under the guidance of a Christian-driven political-military-industrial complex, away from the “hordes” of masses in what is now Canada, the U.S., and Mexico.

Indeed, thanks to “forward-thinking” men like former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, and current Prime Minister Stephen Harper, along with U.S. President George W. Bush, and Mexican leadership, we are now on a timetable to achieve a North American commercial paradise.

“Wise men” are pursuing a timetable to complete the creation of the North American Super-Capitalist state by 2010. However, it is apparently hoped by NAU advocates that another 9/11-like “terrorist attack” would be advantageous to help “convince” Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans, that their lives would be better being controlled under “Big Brother”, in a “Brave New World”.

A guiding principle of this “Brave New World”, is that ‘democracy’ weakens society, as affirmed by the writings of various “learned fascists”, like Leo Strauss. NAU will help support successful “white Aryan Christian wise men” (with the help of some Mexicans) being able to more quickly exploit North America’s natural and human resources, and to deal with the “Asian menace” of China and Japan, which threatens to displace “Aryan Supremacy”.

The NAU is one closer step toward a New World Order which will be achieved through a projected merger with Europe, that will unite the white race to stand against the “inferior mongrel races” that are currently in North America, including the “Islamists”, and other such races from across Africa to Asia.

See our NAU manifesto herein which was created by a “white brotherhood” of business leaders. These “wise men” have been executing an established timetable since 2005, to replace the current “inferior” form of democratic governments in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, by no later than 2010:

NAU Aryan Nation Manifesto pdf file.

by John O’reilly

Privatization and Globalization is taking humanity on a path of greed-driven self-destruction. It is vital that humanity avert this path of self-destruction. Localization provides a context for re-affirming both the political and economic context of democracy. “Privatization is a vulgar miss-characterization of the true definition of the word private. There is nothing private about robbing and looting public’s private properties of nations or individuals, such as farms, industries, businesses, natural resources and historical heritage”, stated Bahram Maskanian, who is a Persian American social activist and essayist.

“These apparent mass international robberies are aimed at taking away ownership and control from the public and handing it over to nation-less Corporations, which can be referred to as the United States of Nation-Less Corporations or the European Union of Nation-Less Corporations.”

“The word ‘private’ means: what is secluded from the sight, presence, or intrusion of others, such as a private house or a private garden. Private means what has been designed or intended for one’s exclusive use, a private room, or confined to an individual, a personal private service and or privilege, private thoughts and opinions, ” Mr Maskanian also states.

“The word ‘private’ also means: not available for public or government use, control, or participation; a private club, a private party. Belonging to a particular person or persons, as opposed to the public or the government. Private property, conducted and supported primarily by private individuals or by a non-governmental agency or nation-less corporate entity,” further elaborates.

The word “Globalization” is intended to sound like it is about bringing the world together in some sort of constructive manner when in practice Globalization means to consolidation of the Earth as a marketplace of greed-driven exploitation.

Globalization and privatization are intended to mislead the public under the banner of the safeguarding of personal freedoms for everyone across national boundaries, when Globalization and privatization actually operate to undermine personal freedoms, under the unaccountable operation of “nation-less” corporations. Globalization and privatization are mechanism to make the super rich even richer through systematized exploitation which spreads worsening poverty

Privatization of our Earth operates in reality, is the legalized robbery of public resources and assets, and steals from the Earth as a common endowment of all humanity.

Privatizing government services as well as resources therefore corrupts the functioning out a responsible government in a democracy by unethically transferring the control of government services and resources for the commercial profit of elites.

The government is supposed to be formed by the people for the people to provide specific services for the citizens of the society from which its authority and existence stems from.

Bahram Maskanian concludes from his research that, “Globalization and privatization offers absolutely no benefit to any community it invades. The absolute consequence of privatization and Globalization is the destruction of democracy and in particular, local communities’ natural resources and assets.”

Unlike “Globalization” and privatization, ‘localization’ is a political and economic system, which encourages and supports local self-sufficiency and the spreads democracy, by enforcing the ability of communities to control their own economic destiny. Localization is basically an economic form of popular sovereignty which relies on the ability of representative political legislatures to be able to represent their communities local interest free of greed-driven corporate coercion.

The book entitled Capitalism is Not Democracy further explores the undermining effects of capitalism against democratic societal development relative to “Globalization”.

Globalization is occurring increasingly at the expense of social, environmental and labour improvements, and is causing rising inequality for most of the world. “Localization, by contrast, is a process that reverses the trend of globalization by affirming ‘the local’, as the basis for the development of a dynamic and vibrant democracy:, Colin Hines states in his critical essay entitled “Time to Replace Globalization with Localization”

“The policies bringing about localization are those which increase control of the economy by communities and nation states. The result should be an increase in community cohesion, a reduction in poverty and inequality, and an improvement in livelihoods, social infrastructure and environmental protection, and hence an increase in the all-important sense of security,” further states Mr. Hines.

Bibliographic Reference:

Bahram Maskanian’s representation on Localization versus Privatization and Colin Hines’ “Time to Replace Globalization with Localization”.

Compiled by Paul Chen

Did we ever think we’d find ourselves here of all places ?

Did we ever believe that things could get SO bad ?!

In 1961, during the Bay of Pigs, crisis I was attending an American Air Force Elementary school in Seville Spain, and the talk among the military ‘brats’ was like that of their parents, as if we preparing for World War III.

We practiced duck and cover in class and I spent the next 20 years living under the premise that we were all going to die soon. Somehow that had imprinted itself onto my young mind and just wouldn’t let go, and as the years went by I accidentally found myself practicing duck and cover scenarios in my mind wherever I was at the time.

In 1963 while passing through New York City on our way to Australia, we stopped to visit the U.N. building and were there when John F. Kennedy was shot. I saw grown men in suits panicking, rushing around, clearing the building with tears running down their faces, and in the echoes of the huge vacuous lobby I heard people screaming and crying in horror as we were led out of the building. Outside, the flags of the Nations were being lowered to half mast and soon after, as we walked, the news that our president had died, reached the streets.

I still get shivers remembering this. I had never seen grown adults bawling. All over the place there were people in tears, rushing hurriedly to unknown places, nursing a pain beyond my comprehension. In my lifetime I still believe that this was the moment when our innocence was lost. As a nation we had crossed over into a dark and ominous place, never to return; yet crippled by this burden we made our way down to greater depths of despair and horror. With this we have all lived and grown older while the atrocities seem to have grown too.

As the 60’s unfolded we faced the unfathomable reaches of Cosmic consciousness and death by Viet Cong. Many of us went and died, many of us fled and many of us stayed, waited and protested. The greatness that we had become after World War II, had somehow turned into a living nightmare for us in some obscure, inexplicable death trap in an Asian jungle for some obscure political motive. Yet throughout this war, the strength of our generation and the thresholds we crossed were unprecedented.

We picked up the ball from the places our parents had left it and ran with it.

We opened a consciousness far exceeding the limits placed on us by society, and in the tide of Beatlemania and Woodstock we contemplated eastern philosophies and macrobiotic diets, tie dye and mandalas, fasting and yoga, re-incarnation and Karma.

We were full of colour and hope for humankind; as if we could wash away the evils of the world with a mere wave of a stick of incense. We nurtured a new horizon for ourselves, one of compassion and love, of equality and peace among men. We fully believed that the ills of the earth and of greedy men would be absolved if we could just love enough. We lived in lifestyles considered radical and alternate, based on sharing instead of greed, health instead of money, love instead of war. We grappled with esoteric concepts and comprised a group known as the Counterculture as we shed our capitalistic breeding for group awareness, self realization and inner peace. We were going to change the world for the better; once and for all.

After ten years and 50,000 of our peers had passed in Vietnam our efforts finally brought an end to the atrocity that had been waged over there and amidst the shame of an unscrupulous president the next chunk of our integrity and faith was crunched under the hand of the ‘Man’.

Surely THAT was as bad as it could get!

Surely THAT was the end of evil and the beginning of our dream !

Surely we would live long enough to find out otherwise.

We are the Baby Boomers. Children of hope.

Sprouted from the Age of Aquarius and fed on the miracles of space and technology.

We eagerly embraced our future with power, strength and numbers enough to correct the ills of man and secure our planet from any more unnecessary suffering and death.

WE knew a better way.

WE lived a better way.

WE have lost our way.

On September 11th 2001, any remaining vestiges of hope we had clutched onto were yanked from us by the maniacal fat cat cartel that has seized our globe in their lust to own and control everything that is not theirs; from the air we breath to the constitution that runs in our veins, from the thoughts in our minds to the words that we may or may not speak, from the truth we know and the privacy we value to the peace, freedom and righteousness that we stand for.

Those vile men who have stolen and sold our nation from within; the unscrupulous, treasonous politicians; the blasphemers who use the word GOD like it’s either a magic sword or a secret password, the rapers of Faith who suddenly become pious while passing a church on their way to a whorehouse, the unworthy and unholy members of groups like the KKK, PNAC, WTO or GOP, the traitors in our own ranks, our own governing body, the corporate deviant – the anti-christs within. “

The ways of peace and love have been stripped to the bone and ground up for cannon fodder. The ways of fairness and equality have been eaten by the greedy and defecated into huge mountains that block out the light.

Humankind has done the worst it could have done and despite all of our awareness and consciousness we have failed to intercede.

We are to be forgiven though, because a force of mans nature is at play here and I shall describe to you what it is.

For simplicity’s sake I shall describe two entities.

A peaceful man and a greedy man.

The peaceful man/woman has spent his time on Earth collecting his answers from within, seeing peace as his/her goal and working in harmony with the world around him/her. He/she knows himself, he/she knows the difference between right and wrong and adheres to a rigid code of behaviour. He/she respects the world and all living things, he’s content with the way things are and is happy living in his/her peaceful world.

The ‘greedy individual’ has spent his time collecting money or power or both. He/she is a barren wasteland within, seeks no answers, doesn’t even know where to start; so he/she runs from his inner pain and conceals his/her anger at the universe for being robbed of inner peace by raping and pillaging anyone who crosses his/her path.

His/her goal is to accumulate power and wealth as a panacea for inner turmoil. The drive that he/she experiences is that of life and death, yet he/she takes no time to live and has made no preparations to die. His/her soul is tormented by his unhealthy quest yet he feels the only way out is to collect more; at any cost. His/her drive for power is desperate and merciless. He/her will stop at NOTHING. He/she forsakes his conscience, his morals, and his Earth.

So, a peaceful man or woman who crosses his path doesn’t stand a chance. He/she will not violate his/her morals, he/she will not cheat, pillage or burn. He/she will not kill and thus, when faced with this rabid dog of a human being, he/she is slain.

And so it is; ‘ Gods Fearing People’ are slain.

We, the generation of hope; the bearers of good news and global consciousness, healing and long life; are slain by the sword of the greedy who have murdered, cheated, lied and stolen their way into power.

This is a sad thing that man has done. Especially this American Man/Woman ! HE/SHE has taken this planet and thrashed it beyond survival. Of all of the good things that the mind of man has conceived, it is the evil in men’s hearts that strikes the death blow to us all.

The greedy have amassed and hoarded more wealth than they could ever consume if they lived for a million years, while the poor die by the thousands every day.

On 9/11 we were witness to the grossest most heinous act ever conceived of festering puss filled minds; the shared thought form that urged these soulless men to plan and execute an attack against our own to incite a war somewhere else.

Of course it was a home spun manoeuvre.

How else could we have been warned and not acted?

How else could our president continue staring blankly at a book when he was told?

How else could all of the elements have been controlled?

How else could the evidence be concealed?

How else could the rage be aroused except by the most primal incitement of our national pride?

And to what end?

Another pointless war in our lifetime.

A war executed on borrowed money that will not be repaid as long as we live, and very likely not in the shortened lifetimes of our children either.

A war that is running up a sand dune, with lives and hope lost in quicksand.

In return we have had our nation crippled and hobbled to a point of no recovery, teetering on the edge of oblivion on a planet that cannot survive long enough for the damage to be undone; a wanton and pointless waste of nations and resources on an earth already manacled to an irrecoverable handicap of gross consumption and egomaniacal absurdity.

Instead of doing something good, the rogue powers have chosen to continue rushing to our inevitable demise like a pack of psychotic lemmings.

Powerless, broken and despairing we can only watch.

There is NO hope.

There is NO choice.

WE have failed. Our youth is gone, our power is gone; our dreams are shattered, and death is knocking on our door; we might have done something good.

We didn’t.

WE ARE DOOMED

Rev. Michael V. Goldsun

“I say my prayers listening to Pink Floyd and absorbing the gaze of God, present all over the mountains that I drive through to Shemshak (a popular ski resort close to Tehran),” says Mojdeh, 25, fixing her skis and poles on the roof rack of her car. “I do it my way. Our beliefs tell us to customise our ways to fit in with new circumstances,” she breathes in the early morning air, shining in her colourful skiing suit like the cheerful mark of the birth of a new faith on the snowy page of a Tehran street in today’s Iran.

Young Iranians are creatively tapping into the pragmatic layers of Islam to update their lives as religious modern teenagers. They are deeply religious, yet the most noticeably dog-eared page in their religious books is the one which includes a frequently-referred-to saying by Imam Ali, Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law and the fourth caliph: “The faithful change with the times.”

Fasting, redefined from this point of view, is not only a religious practice. Iranian girls have included fasting in their slimming instructions and the boys a chance for a healthier life — Ramadan is when they stop partying hard and staying out late. The Islamic dress code is also only light-heartedly observed as a sign of respect for the conventions of an ancient culture. “You should renew your readings of religious rules day by day so that you can have a healthy relation with other cultures,” states Mojdeh.

Ashura, the anniversary of the death of Imam Husain, Ali’s son, is one of the holiest days in the Shiite and Iranian calendar—a day of public mourning. Husain’s martyrdom, speaking to Iranian teenagers you realize, has a solid place in their tender hearts which no time soon will be replaced by any other icon. However, the Iranian youth have never hesitated to paint Ashura ceremonies with an aesthetic brush. They have done their best to beautify the event. They put up huge portraits of Husain. They play musical instruments to the chants of mourners. And they soften up the violence of chest-beating and delicately turn it into chorographical movements. These alterations might be small, but they are exactly what made Dionysian festivals the Greek theatre.

Andre, whose father is working in a petrochemical company in Iran, is an 18-year-old Norwegian student. He goes to the Italian school in Tehran. When asked about the impact of religious boundaries on his relationships in the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, he pauses to think and says, “To tell you the truth, I can’t remember anything religious between us. I’ve got a couple of Iranian friends. We play computer games, go to the gym, and go to cafeterias and stuff like that. On some particular days there are ceremonies and festivals, but apart from that nothing that sticks out.”

Young people in Iran are displaying a strong desire to stretch the local over the dimensions of the universal, or, as far as religion is concerned, a common ground of coexistence called morality.

by Amir Azizmohamadi, Tehran Bureau Foreign Correspondent 

Back in 1933, Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany. He never actually received a majority of the German vote, although his party had received the largest plurality in the most recent parliamentary elections. Thus, in January of 1933, the ancient, revered, and decrepit Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany, appointed Hitler as Chancellor. A little more than a month later, the German parliament building, known as the Reichstag, was in flames. Arson.

Hermann Goering, director of the national police and number two man in the Nazi Party, immediately proclaimed this to be “the work of the Communists.” An easily confused and not-very-intelligent man, a foreigner (Dutch) and Communist, who was at the scene and had been goaded into the deed by the Nazis, confessed to everything and was executed. In fact, the best evidence indicates that Goering, Joseph Goebbels, and Reinhard Heydrich planned the whole thing. The result was the infamous Enabling Act, which gave Hitler dictatorial and extreme powers - supposedly temporary to meet the current crisis. The crisis happened to last for twelve years.

What I am saying is that 9/11 appears to be America’s version of the Reichstag Fire. The Silent Watchdog and Invisible Fascism People who live in their little private Idaho read all this with such incredulity. “Well, why isn’t any of this in the major media?” “Wouldn’t the press just love such a scoop?”

The answer is no. Of course not. That people can still believe this about their media is something that I continue to marvel at, but — in case, dear reader, you’re still not getting it- it is time to wake up.

The U.S. Patriot Act context

Americans have lived with the Patriot Act for more than four years. A few people have voiced their concerns about the loss of their Fourth Amendment right to privacy. For those who want a refresher, this is the complete amendment, which went into effect:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The 400-page Patriot Act (HR 3162) completely overturns this amendment, which has been the cornerstone of the American right to privacy for more than 200 years. The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress within weeks of 9/11. It was certainly written before 9/11, waiting in the wings, so to speak. The members of Congress rivalled the wisdom of Homer Simpson who, when once faced with a waiver to sue for damages from the dreaded Mr. Burns and his team of lawyers, stated courageously, “I’m not signing anything until I read it or somebody gives me the gist of it!”

The Patriot Act is bad, very bad. The carefully worded Section 213, for example, provides for the infamous ability to “sneak and peak.” It establishes the ability to issue secret warrants for any federal crime-not just terrorism-and indeed to extend the secrecy indefinitely. Police can break in, examine and remove or alter items, and can do this without ever presenting owners with a warrant detailing what they were entitled to do.

The U.S. Patriot Act also allows authorities to examine your medical, financial, educational, and even library records, whether or not they show any evidence of a crime. Credit reporting firms must also disclose to the FBI any information that agents request in connection with a terrorist investigation, without the need for a court order. In the past, this was only permitted in espionage cases. And just what constitutes terrorism, these days? Your guess is as good as mine.

It gets worse. For now we also live with the Intelligence Reform Act, passed in December 2004, an even more mammoth piece of legislation which continues the assault on the rights of American citizens.

For instance, it enables the President to select top Intelligence positions without Senate confirmation. As writer Mike Whitney put it, this is “an invitation to create his personal security apparatus without congressional interference.” It also enables the new Intelligence Director to exempt his office from audits and investigations. It eliminates provisions to ensure that Congress receives timely access to intelligence. It allows the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to screen testimony before the Intelligence Director presents it to the Congress. (Thus, a president-including the current one-can stonewall or selectively present information to Congress).

Whistle blower protections were removed from the bill so that federal employees cannot report on their superiors. Amazingly, it also hides the entire intelligence budget from Congressional scrutiny.

Finally, as Whitney points out, the Intelligence Director “shall have authority to direct or undertake electronic surveillance and physical search operations pursuant to FISA if authorized by statute or executive order.” Yes, that’s executive order.

Mass-media complicity and collusion with elites

The U.S. major media was silent on these issues. Indeed, our major media is a crucial part of the problem. It has become the watchdog that doesn’t bark. I’ve written about this a number of times. Talk about this long enough and you begin to feel as though you’re howling into a vacuum. Which is essentially the case. Just remember the words of long-time publisher of the Washington Post, Katherine Graham, in 1988: “there are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy “flourishes” when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.” That’s some interesting take on the idea of democratic rule. It is also a statement that our major media have taken to heart.

Fascist aspirations for “Empire” through “Privatization” and “Globalization”. is destroying constitutional democratic ideals of America as a “Republic”

There is of course the obvious culprit, finally and widely acknowledged these days. This is the Spirit (and reality) of Empire, which has provided a none-too-subtle knife in the back. Since the days of Rome, people have understood the incompatibility of constitutional-oriented ‘republican institutions’ with the tools of Conquest and Empire. By the time of Caesar, for instance, Roman rule stretched throughout the Mediterranean, dominating peoples as diverse as those under American military hegemony today.

The problem back then was that the old Roman Senate, already with five centuries of history behind it, was designed for ruling Romans-in Rome. The Senate managed well enough during Rome’s conquest of Italy in the third century BC, and even during the pivotal Punic Wars with Carthage. But ruling faraway (and valuable) lands like Gaul and Egypt were not so simple. Caesar knew this as well as anyone. Solution: end of the Republic, and the creation of such offices as Dictator for Life. Then, after his assassination, Emperor. Indeed, we may wish to remember that Caesar’s successor, his nephew, the Emperor Augustus, stated that his own absolute rule was only temporary, and that he eventually intended to restore the republic.

Ultimately, Republics cannot wear the armour of Empire. That is because two central principles of republican philosophy-freedom and self-government-wither under its weight.

Empires (i.e. the “American Empire”) mean war. Wars mean the stifling of dissent and constriction of free thought at home. This happens every time. Repeat: every time. It has happened in America today. Freedom of expression is a meaningless concept if everyone thinks the same. It is how dissenters are treated that enables us to measure how free a society is.

Empires also prevent people from governing themselves. That is because wars destroy truth. Without freedom of information from the elected and appointed leaders of our government-that is, without truth-how can ‘the people’ rule? This was a point heavily emphasized by America’s Founding Fathers. “An enlightened citizenry,” wrote Jefferson, “is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic.” Madison agreed: “The diffusion of knowledge is the only true guardian of liberty.” But as Phillip Knightly observed in his classic study of the subject, the first casualty in war is truth. This fact is once again in evidence regarding America’s current fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The so-called “War on Terror” is simply the latest manifestation of the “new order of things”, of what we may call the Permanent Warfare State. In such a situation, the old Constitutional-oriented republican virtues of freedom and self-government cannot survive.

One might argue that Empires don’t have to result in reduction of rights at home. Look at Britain, not a republic of course, but at least a “liberal” monarchy. The British Empire spread around the world, and Brits enjoyed a higher degree of freedom than many other peoples, at least during the Empire’s heyday during the 19th century. That’s true, but the other side of it is that we don’t know how free the British people would have been without Empire. And let us not forget that there was also a great deal of “unfreedom” in Britain, even during glory days of Britannia.

The American Empire Lest you doubt that America is indeed a bona fide empire that garrisons the world, consider that according to the Pentagon itself, the U.S. military has 860 bases in 41 foreign countries. That’s twenty percent of all the nations on Earth.

But this figure is certainly too low. It leaves out bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Chalmers Johnson, in The Sorrows of Empire, argues that the true number is probably closer to 1,000 bases in perhaps more than 50 nations. Unlike during the cold war, when it was possible to learn the specifics about American bases in foreign lands, today much of the jurisdictional information is classified, and so we sometimes don’t know matters as elementary as which nation ‘owns’ a particular base in a particular country.

Military bases are a big part of it, but not the whole story. American troops, once again according to the Pentagon, are currently being stationed in 135 nations of the world. This is seventy percent of the world’s nations. Not all these places have large numbers of troops, it’s true. But many do, and the point is, they’re there. Today, we are told this is in order to defend and advance the noble cause of globalization. This is only part of the truth. In reality, empires are taken and defended in order to win great prizes for those few who are powerful enough to make money from them. This was true with Rome, it was true with Britain, it is true with America today.

“Globalization” is a game with winners and losers, and you can be sure that America’s policy makers (as distinct from the American people) intend to be the winners. Since World War II, America has pursued a grand imperial strategy to stake out the globe. Today this strategy wears the scantiest of veils, and America’s leaders now talk openly of “full spectrum dominance.” That’s bureaucratese for “we’re taking over the world.”

US Empire Circa 2003

Meanwhile, a profound but silent “national security revolution” has transformed America. It is silent because there is still no formal acknowledgment of any real change. As long as the external appearances are the same (e.g. President, Congress, Supreme Court, etc.) most people continue to live under the delusion that things are the same, when in fact they are entirely different.

More than three decades ago, Gil Scott-Heron sang The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He was right. It wasn’t. Criminal Globalization But, as I suggested at the beginning of this article, the demands of empire are only part of the problem.

The death of the American Republic is clearly a book-length subject, so I will content myself to mention some of the other culprits more briefly before moving on to my main theme.

There is a creepy interconnection of most of these villains. There is, for instance, the unsettling confluence of the major financial institutions of the world, the major groups of organized crime, and numerous intelligence agencies from around the world, all carving up the globe in the name of privatization. Behind all this is the unsettling evidence that elite powerful interests and families do indeed exercise dominant power behind the scenes of our public institutions, and that this is being done on an international scale.

Most Americans live in a mindless “autopilot” of self-imposed ignorance

Americans have lived on a mental autopilot for long enough. Every day, millions of children mindlessly recite a pledge of allegiance to the flag “and to the republic for which it stands.” Do they know what a republic is? Do the adults who teach them know? Do you? The word once had meaning for all Americans, but those days are long gone. Today, we hear nothing about such things as republican institutions, and even less discussion about what structures of real power have actually evolved in the United States, and indeed throughout the world. I am not sure what exactly we should be calling this new government, but it isn’t a republic, nor is it particularly democratic.

Has Fascism taken over the effect governance of the United States?

One certainly hears a lot these days about “American fascism”. Certain commentators like to point out that fascism was a distinct historical development that evolved from the European wreckage after World War I. Some maintain that to call what is happening in America “fascism” is a “disservice” to those who lived under Hitler, Mussolini, or other dictators.

It’s true that there are major differences here today with certain features of those regimes. For one, the current regime is not as in-your-face about it as, say, Hitler was. There has been no openly acknowledged coup d’état to which one can refer. But the changes to America have yet been profound. What I believe is that the Jacobin-styled revolutionaries who run America these days have learned an important lesson from the past: that the best revolutions are silent. Manage the media, manage the other major institutions of power, and you can have your way about almost anything. You can change the structure of society at the most profound levels, as long as you keep the old appearances. I call this “silent fascism”.

Americans must “wake up” in a timely manner, if they are to save America, from a destructive fascist greed-driven agenda that had also inspired Adolf Hiltler quest for “Global Empire”.

The necessity of systematized UFO and other disclosure toward the renewal of American democracy

But my main quarry herein is not on ‘Empire’, not the covert influence of big money, not “Globalization”, not the co-option of what was once an independent media, nor even fascism per se in America.

There is another disease eating away at America. It is something that receives nearly no attention, even from those people who think and care about such quaint issues as democratic-oriented ‘republican’ virtue and freedom.

But the UFO topic has important political implications. We cannot afford to ignore them. One of these is the damaging effect UFO secrecy has had on our society. It is an issue that intimately affects public policy, national security, and our very freedom.

UFOs are not fun and games, they are not delusions. They are real. The phenomenon has involved real technology, doing real things that are not supposed to be possible. We know this because, for a relatively brief period in America’s history (primarily the late 1970’s and into some of the 1980s’), the Freedom of Information Act enabled researchers to obtain official documents from government agencies, which clearly demonstrated this.

As far as efforts to currently try to obtain UFO-related information, FOIA’s moment of glory was long ago, in the post-Watergate and post-Vietnam era.

It is furthermore notable that Dr. Edgar Mitchell, of Apollo 14 fame, and the sixth man to walk on the moon, on several occasions, has also spoken in public about his knowledge of UFOs.

Apparent secrecy on UFO’s has been an integral part of a silent fascism which is effected seizing away control of America from the American people, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Freedom and Self-Governance

Americans elect a member of Congress, with the idea that he or she will represent your interests within the nation’s primary instrument of political power: the Congress. Except that Congress has been made irrelevant by other centers of power, or been taken over by them.

You get your news from television or your newspaper with the idea that the journalist on the other end is a kind of watchdog, looking out for the public interest. Except that the journalist is working for a corporation which is itself antithetical to the public interest.

Unseen structures of power have evolved over the previous generations, advancing sometimes slowly, sometimes with a dramatic suddenness. But most people lack the conceptual means by which to understand what is happening.

As bad as things look today, I retain hope for a post-disclosure world. I retain a faith - yes, I guess it’s faith — in the value of truth over all things. A statement by my favourite writer, Leo Tolstoy, hangs before me every day: “the one thing necessary, in life as in art, is to tell the truth.” I cannot believe that a society based on a foundational lie can be better than one based on a foundational truth.

Article excerpted from ‘UFO Secrecy and the Death of the American Republic’ LINK.

by Richard M. Dolan

Similar to vultures over a carcass, there is a current convening at Davos in Switzerland, a labelled “World Economic Forum” which is comprised of this year’s gathering of the heads of large trans national corporations and of their national surrogates, together with their respective government parallel operators, apparachnicks, and technocrats. Substantively, when the window dressing parts of the sessions have been put aside, the gathering will be discussing techniques and strategies for more access of conference participants (and their surrogate agents and agencies) to the financial bonanza that can be extracted from (what they see as) the resource base, that is represented by the earth, and its peoples.

Accordingly, with governments as hostages to corporate capitalism, our future is in jeopardy. That is because the capitalist perspective on the prevailing environment, (and on how humans are linked to it), has led governments to operate under the corporate view on planet earth, as being essentially, no more than A RESOURCE BASE that must be exploited for maximum financial-(equivalent) corporate profit. However, planet earth is not merely the resource base that these capitalists see it as being. Rather, it is our homeland or home base. The environment in which we live, provides the support for our survival. Additionally, IT IS SPACE SHIP EARTH on which we are all crew; and which we must husband and protect, if we are to survive.

Meanwhile, the normal circumstance in today’s Western society, is that capitalist-dominated corporations secure their profits from the control of resources, and from the sale of items which the manipulation of these resources generates. At the same time, capitalist economics through its impact on the ambient educational system (and therefore on the awareness context within which people process information), has now embedded a number of unfortunate attitudes and tolerances into the Consciousness of human society.

There is a particular capitalist premise that those of us who are concerned with the quality of human survival need to challenge. That premise is the capitalist view OF OUR ENVIRONMENT as being a resource-base, that is best managed when profit-seeking holders of financial resources (and of technical information), can obtain fee-simple access to the component parts of this environment, (as resources that may be treated as PRIVATE property).

Capitalist economics, has succeeded in influencing governments and the members of respective societies, TO OVERLOOK how the quality-of-living of people (as Conscious entities) is being serviced by the existing resource base. That is because capitalist ideological control over the education system, has succeeded in influencing how governments interpret reality. Governments and the citizens who make up the society are influenced to see the success from prevailing human activities (in trading and exchange), as being indicated in financial rather than in quality-of-life terms. Capitalist educational propaganda therefore influences governments, to see satisfactory economic development initiatives as being those that lead to activities out of which will arise high levels of profit-producing financial-equivalent trade, that satisfies the priorities of the holders and managers of money.

Members of the society (inclusive of those who are functionaries in government) are therefore victims of a beguiling capitalist (propaganda) premise. It posits that financially-centred weights comprise the most “scientific technique, with which to measure the results and outcomes of trading operations. For example, individuals in capitalist-dominated societies are conditioned to accept as scientific truth, the following proposition. Best “economic” results, and highest levels of “prosperity”, will be forthcoming when well funded corporate interests, are allowed to use fee-simple purchase, to acquire and manage for private discretionary use (in pursuit of their greed-driven private profit targets), the materials and resources in the environment on which our survival as humans depends.

Arguably, however, these capitalist planners of how we (as humans) should be linked to our environment, have neglected to give attention to the following critical fact. When the human members of planet earth had formed themselves into groups, they had invented, created, and given to government, the responsibility to protect the survival of the members of the group.

On having discovered the benefits to which trading and exchange contributed, people therefore vested government with the power to protect intra-group as well as inter-group resource exchange conditions, (so as to enable the members of the group to enhance their quality-of-living). Groups of people had also vested in government, the power to requisition and to accumulate the resources it would need to execute that task of group protection.

In full oversight of that quality-of-living responsibility of government, capitalist economists argue that the responsibility of government is to promote “prosperity” (as indicated by extensive and buoyant sales levels, of the types of goods and services for which people are prepared to offer money in exchange). Meanwhile, structured human dominance and subjugation result, when governments abstain from their responsibilities to foster enhanced quality-of-living, and instead allow the financial profit goals of corporations to dominate the access of humans to their means of survival. However, capitalist economists are indifferent to that resulting living related trade-off. Instead, these capitalists impute that the commerce-supportive and non interference role for government, which they are promoting, was long ago set forth by the English cleric Adam Smith, (as per his writings in his An Inquiry Into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations).

Indeed, to advocate a government hands-off policy when corporations (as seekers after greed driven exploitation), set out to use the trading realm to control the prevailing resource environment, capitalists use that particular book by Adam Smith, as a sort of ideology-validating reference “bible”. These capitalists also draw on a further analytical artifice. It imputes that, where individuals are allowed to “freely” trade (without government interference), the price at which the bulk of the trade takes place, provides government with a scientific weight, such that they may judge the economic importance of each traded item, by its exchange value/price. Capitalist advocates, therefore continue to emphasize that when appraisals are made about what economic results have been happening in the prevailing environment of resources, governments should look on financial results; and these analysts then completely overlook how the quality-of-living of the populace at hand has been affected.

As a result of that capitalist influence, governments then use the aggregate value of trade (in recently “produced” goods and services), rather than how extensively quality-of-living has been enhanced, to show how effective their economic policies have been over any reference period. Indeed, it can also be argued that, governments made themselves comfortable with the financial emphasis on results, because, as far as they are concerned, these traded goods (as wealth objects), form an uncomplicated visible base from which that government may extract tax revenues (which they may then funnel via “projects”, to their cronies).

Additionally, the unimpeded profits which corporations secure (as a result of that capitalist-promoted hands-off policy by government), can also fund handsome levels of short term “political” “contributions”. The result is that, governments tend to find it convenient to overlook the feature that in the society at hand, they were created to take initiatives to foster and to protect the Quality-of-Living targets of Conscious human economic agents.

Responsible members of the society who are concerned about human survival, and about the forthcoming quality-of-living results, ALSO need to make themselves particularly aware of the following fact. A number of ethically chilling results have followed from this capitalist (and market-economics-supported) principle of concentrating on financial results, and of allowing corporations almost free rein to orchestrate how human access to survival is managed.

For example, in principle, the educational institutions IN ANY SOCIETY, need to prepare exposed humans to develop their critical intellectual capabilities (as they pursue their objectives in Human Development). Therefore, the current practice, of allowing the departments, faculties, infra-structure, and the buildings of prevailing educational institutions, to be recognized under the names of respective corporate “sponsors”, tells a story ABOUT PREVAILING GOVERNMENTS, and about the type of leadership of the society which these governments are promoting.

Governments which tolerate that type of corporate sponsorship of the prevailing infrastructure of the educational sector, merely demonstrate that they themselves operate under corporate sponsorship, rather than under a commitment to protect their citizens responsibly. Not surprisingly therefore, in the name of economic growth, these governments now appear to operate via program and policy tactics, which at the same time CAUSE the universities and other educational institutions in the environment, to operate as no more than glorified vocational schools that will turn out “paid slaves”, to fit into the financial profit-maximizing-needs of corporations.

Such a structure of corporate-sponsored educational programming, leads to a number of distressing outcomes. For one, when development performance is computed primarily in financial-equivalent terms, capitalistocrats find it convenient to make themselves indifferent to the following fact.

An economy, is essentially and is effectively an ADMINISTRATIVE domain, where the functioning government, polices the integrity of prevailing trade and exchange, and where it also enforces (via a court system) the terms under which voluntary contracts have been struck.

However, rabid right wing capitalists who (collectively, and via their meetings and their official trade associations) are in pursuit of unrestrained control over the resource environment as they pursue market exploitation, usually advance the following claim. They usually disingenuously, and incredulously proclaim that they want to get government out of the economy. Meanwhile, these right wing capitalists at the same time also seek to get the governments of their society to use military means (if necessary, as in Iraq) to enable them to acquire or to get control of the resources of other societies.

The capitalistocratic propagandized capturing of the “educational” and the information-processing system has led to some additional Consciousness-related distressing results. Notable examples are found in the routine adaptation of two unspeakably odious capitalist-centred word-sets, that in the name of science, have been inserted into the current pervading vernacular of the communications system, about how our environment should be interpreted. One of these odious word-sets, is the term “human resources/capital”; and the other word-set is the term “globalization of economies”.

The human resources term, (of which capitalist economists talk in the name of science), seeks to promote dis-enfranchisement and dis-inheritance of the effort-providing members of the society from also being seen as its owners, (whose Human Development objectives, democratic government was invented to service). Instead, (in the name of science), the human capital/resources word-set is used by economists, to denigrate citizens, into being perceived as no more than “service instruments/implements” that corporate interests may manipulate (as surrogate machinery). The imputation is that these effort providers may be used, or may be discarded on the environmental rubbish pile, dependent on the capability of these persons to service profitable trade.

Meanwhile, the “Globalization of Markets” word-set, is a corresponding propaganda term, that capitalist economists (and their right wing corporate masters) are proselytising. This word set, is designed to seem as no more than the description of events and of trading relationships, (that arise as the result of a legitimate pursuit of market efficiency by profit-seeking entrepreneurs and multinational corporations). However, THIS GLOBALIZATION OF MARKETS WORD-SET MASKS THE TRANS-NATIONAL USING OF FINANCIAL RESOURCES, AND OF THE BANKING SYSTEM (rather than the former usage of standing armies), to subjugate, to prey on, and to appropriate the domestic resources within any TARGETED nation-state.

At the same time, another feature which must be deplored, is the technique of economic performance appraisal which imputes that, communicating about the quantity of money which has been exchanged for “sold” items (inclusive of the sale of natural resources to capitalists), represents an equitable communication about what has happened in the environment of economic exchange However, that submission by capitalist economists, has overlooked the fact that the power of humans to survive, is vested in their use of the material environment and in its associated natural resources. Therefore to vest to trans-national corporations for money, the power to determine how these resident natural resources (inclusive of space, land and natural resources) are used, also represents transferring out of local hands, the power to substantively manage their survival.

However, notably, in order to execute the (unpublished) objective of providing capitalism with a human face, (and thereby making the world safe for capitalist priorities and emphases) even world wide international bodies (associated with the United Nations, such as the I. B. R. D., and the I. M. F., and some other parts of that organization) have set out to overlook/bypass the (management centred) Consciousness-expression out of which quality-of-living arises. Instead these bodies have set out, to formulate, to promote, and to provide financial-equivalent weightings to the human commitment of resources, efforts, and time.

This whole CORPORATE-FRIENDLY CAPITALIST EMPHASIS, which presents humans as being linked to their environment primarily through how they can make use of a “for sale” sign, is linked to the capitalist procedure of drawing on The Wealth of Nations as their historical ideological “bible”. That is because these capitalists saw Adam Smith as (like themselves) talking of wealth as a stock of financial-equivalent purchasing-power which trade can yield.

Yet, these capitalists (as represented by those who are now gathering at “the World Economic Forum” at Davos), have overlooked the fact that Adam Smith also had a focus on wealth, (as the enhanced Consciousness, and the quality-of-life attainment), which he saw humans as securing from their interpersonal exchange commitments. The commerce-centred capitalist society which has succeeded in capturing the focus of governments, has overlooked the fact that in his other book, the Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith had introduced this non financial wealth context (which one can associate with quality-of-life enhancement).

In fact, those of us who are correspondingly concerned with the quality of human survival, may argue that this other book by Adam Smith, represented the second blade of the intellectual scissors which he had brought to bear on the “trading” arrangements, into which humans enter. Therefore, responsible citizens, as well as respective governments who want to accommodate to the societal support feature for which government was initially invented, will want to bring together these two blades of Adam Smith’s intellectual scissors. Thereby, they will foster quality-of-life enhancement of the sort that releases human society from the modus operandi of prevailing corporate societal dominance.

In spite of the institutionalized constituency that the annual Davos meetings represent, there is no absolute existential need for us to join with capitalistocrats to support and to promote a greed oriented transformation of our environment into a profit generating sewer. Additionally, although a corresponding activist constituency does not yet exist, citizens and governments that desire to foster quality-of-life enhancement, are invited to draw on an alternative to the current capitalist financially-centred economic performance appraisal context. This alternative is presented in the book Quality of Living and Human Development as the Outcome of Economic Progress, ISBN 1897036353.

The alternative economic performance appraisal context does not primarily promote corporate-led capitalism and globalization of markets. Instead, it argues for a remedy of the prevailing operational capturing and awareness-subjugation and the general “dumbing down” of the population,(on which the corporate-led operational capturing of the system of mass communications and also the education system, has embarked).

In particular, the alternative economic performance measurement focus (which was set out in that book), accepts the usefulness and the convenience of monetized trade. However, its focus is on the impacts of trade on people, rather than on corporate profits. Instead, it promotes the need to use programs of economic development management to foster human survival, in conjunction with the evolution of Human Consciousness. The alternative focus also requires governments to focus on evaluating how effectively their choices of economic development programs contribute to high quality human time-use-commitment opportunities. The overall emphasis is that, the choices of economic development programming on which governments embark, must particularly promote and must also enable OPPORTUNITIES for each individual human being to pursue the type of survival, that is accompanied by enhanced understanding (of themselves and of their environment).

by Millar J. Stuart