Thursday, October 27, 2011

Wall Street Peaceful Demonstrations - 2

Dredd Blog began to mention the peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the first post of this series (see also here, here, and here) beginning a month ago.

Those demonstrations are big news everywhere now (see here, here, and here).

We fully support the protests over the 1% - 99% disparity caused by the robber barons (which we call MOMCOM because in our culture government is a parent).

Nevertheless, we still think that the plutocracy which created the plutonomy is the work of a ruthless bunch of thugs, but that neither the Occupy Wall Street protests nor elections will change the status quo.

Not because justice will or won't be done with regard to the protests, but because injustice has become institutionalized as the lifeblood of America, through not only endless wars of aggression abroad, but also by the class war of the elite against Americans at home.

We have said that Marx was accurate in everything he said about future US economy, except when he said Americans would throw down the plutocrats who, through an economic-military coup, began to rule over them.

That being said, in this case Dredd Blog can think of nothing that would be better than for Dredd Blog to be wrong on this issue, for Marx to have been correct, and therefore that the 99% Americans, through demonstrations and elections, will throw off their captivity by 1% Americans so that the old America can return.

The first goal would be a 50% - 50% America (the old America).
The American Way Of War



Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Bad Economy: A Cure Must Have A Nexus To A Cause - 2

In the first post of this series we discussed how the storm of words concerning how to fix the economy has not produced favorable results, largely because officialdom has not linked the problem with the solution.

In today's post we will link that problem with the emotional damage that the ongoing official detachment from national economic reality is likely to do.

Everyone knows, conceptually at least, what a horrible thing it is when children cannot trust their parents, but not every child in the USA has had to experience that.

But in the USA it is getting closer to everyone experiencing that unfortunate circumstance, if we consider a related issue that sociologists, political scientists, and psychologists inform us about.

Which is to realize that, as people grow into adulthood, they tend to naturally transfer certain emotions like trust of parents into a trust of the government.

We discussed this non-controversial issue in the post Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?, where we pointed out "a common metaphor, shared by conservatives and liberals alike -- the Nation-as-Family metaphor, in which the nation is seen as a family, the government as a parent and the citizens as children".

Getting to the point set out at the beginning of today's post, the nation is experiencing that very lack of trust children of bad acting parents experience, according to the writing all over Wall Street, and now all over the walls of Main Street as well:
With Election Day just over a year away, a deep sense of economic anxiety and doubt about the future hangs over the nation, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, with Americans’ distrust of government at its highest level ever.
(New York Times / CBS Poll, emphasis added). Don't tell me that "the government" is surprised, after ignoring the wishes of the people by continuing to proceed in what the people have said, in poll after poll for a decade, is a wrong direction.

Just as problematic as not linking the solution to the cause, is the failure to understand the fundamental revolution that has taken place in the USA.

An economic coup has taken place by the 1%, who we have called The Plunder Barons for years, whereby the 99% are being plundered out of their economic well being which they previously enjoyed.

The 99% face growing, lasting economic hardship as the 1% faces growing wealth, because the government we no longer trust has become a warmongering plutocracy, and the economy has become a plutonomy.

One thing we can trust is that this economic and emotional damage being done will not be solved by elections anytime soon.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Monday, October 24, 2011

The neoContagion

In a recent post, The Peak of Health and The Peak of Oil, we looked at some of the known impacts that peak oil will have on health care and food production.

At least as far as the professional opinion of The American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) is concerned.

That contemplation of the impact of peak oil and the subsequent decline in the production of oil, set forth by the AJPH, unfortunately comes at a time when The United Nations is slated to issue a warning about overpopulation running amok.

Not only that, this looming unwelcome reality also comes at a time when contagion is in a position to raise its ugly head too:
"Scientists have been accused of overreacting and crying wolf over the threat of virus outbreaks after the influenza pandemic of 2009," Lipkin told the Observer. "Sars [Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome] didn't progress beyond a few locations, but outbreaks and pandemics will occur and we need to get our heads out of the sand and realise the real risks that we face. More than three-quarters of all emerging infectious diseases originate when microbes jump from wildlife to humans.

"Our vulnerability to such diseases has been heightened by the growth in international travel and the globalisation of food production. In addition, deforestation and urbanisation continue to displace wildlife, increasing the probability that wild creatures will come in contact with domesticated animals and humans."
(Guardian, review of movie Contagion). It looks like the concept of "a perfect storm", as some have described these conditions in recent times.

Add to that the specter of global warming induced climate change, that governments are already bogged down with economic disasters, and that their revenue is declining.

It then becomes reasonable to think that governments are likely to have to throw up their hands to simply plan for triage as the best they can do.