Its Simple.

 

While reading The IMF connection with the Ukraine Crisis by Probhat Patnaik I was struck by the fact that if one has to invest time and energy into knowing about all the nuts and bolts of how Ukraine is not just a victim of its own hubris, believing that without being invaded it could have been another example of a growing democracy, wanting all the perks of the West and none of the Wests treachery, then life would be simple, wouldn’t it?

The IMF is, of course, the monetary arm, or finger, if you must, of the West’s economic fist, giving loans to countries who think they’re punching their own ticket to heaven and just need a boost.

The IMF is always willing to give a boost but with conditions. At first, the conditions seem reasonable, providing incentives to governments to tighten economic monetary policies for the sake of proving that their (IMF) investment is and will remain secure while the country is moved toward austerity and international vulturism rather than altruism, which seems to be what weak countries, and they almost all are weak, want to believe when money reaches out its hand.

In an age of extreme cynicism, many people still believe that money can help all problems.

 The point is that even in the most optimistic scenario—which would require a global ecological revolution on the part of humanity to be achieved, leading to carbon emissions peaking halfway through this decade and net zero emissions being achieved by 2050—the overall climate catastrophe facing humanity will be extremely dire.

The second most optimistic scenario is one of staying below a 2°C increase (somewhere around 1.7°C). It too would require a global ecological revolution. The other three scenarios offered by the IPCC are basically unthinkable, for which the word apocalyptic is appropriate. In fact, we are currently headed toward the IPCC’s most apocalyptic scenario (SSP5-8.5), in which global average temperatures this century would, in the “best estimate,” rise by 4.4°C, which would, according to current scientific assessments, mean the collapse of industrial civilization, raising questions of human survival. In an ominous statement leaked from Part II of the Sixth Assessment Report, on “Impacts,” which will not be published until February, the IPCC says that if humanity is driven into extinction during the “sixth extinction” arising from anthropogenic causes, evolution will not bring the human species back.

Lets look at that for a moment. What it will take.

I can try and unwind anyone’s rendition and breakdown of what is wrong and what is to be done, but I'd be fooling myself as well as a few billion other people on earth. Our anthropologic scientists tell us that the weather was probably always a factor in determining what we should be afraid of. It couldn’t then and can’t now be fucked with, that is, we can predict what might happen on a weekly or so basis but that’s about it.

Why it happens, now, that’s another matter. No one wants to be caught in a blizzard or a hurricane but neither do farmers and others who depend on some regularity in nature want inconsistent rainfall or constantly wide-ranging seasonal changes.

We’ve built parts of our societies on certain truths and those truths have become entrenched in our beliefs, institutions, and trust in how the world works, our world, the natural world. That’s the spiritual side of the coin. What’s the other side? Well, we’ve come to believe that rather than us changing our demands, needs, and belief in our scientist’s exceptional ability to create technology to compensate for any problem, we have fallen on the sword of MONEY to resolve and solve any crisis. Look how we wage war-weapons, sanctions, technological advancement all supposedly make up for our real lack of imagination and humility.

Lets face it, the world is run by masculinity, patriarchy, and the irrational philosophy of right makes might and might makes men.

All of this is too subtle for me most of the time, yet at other times I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, which I hope doesn’t mean I’m going to die, right now.

It’s simple. Without everything I’ve learned through intelligent reading, conversation, experience, and just looking the fuck up out of my own belly button, I’ve concluded that I’m no different than the cowboygirl, the steelworker, truck driver, maid, dd, brothersister, 8 to 5er, swing and night shifters all over the world, maybe even the mad hatters and made haters.

We’ve all gotten so used to letting everyone else think about what needs to be done, the professional politician, scientists, and MONEYMAKERS, we’re willing to suffer, suffer, suffer without consent. Real Change happens from the bottom up and guess what, we are at the bottom of the heap.

MONEYMAKERS, MONEYCHANGERS< WEAPONS MAKERS. It’s a simple equation. If we allow the MONEY to control the politician, make the demands on us, decide, essentially, who lives, who dies, then we all deserve what we get. And believe me, we will GET WHAT WE DESERVE

 

So what does all this have to do with the IMF or Climate Change? Just one thing, one rule to live by. When your nation, your politicians, your police department, your banks, your armies all come knocking at your door, trying to sell you the same product, you’re being snookered, you’re being used.

It's as simple as that. JUST SAY NO!

According to Stephen Hawking...

According to Stephen Hawking, the purpose of science is to work toward a good theoretical description of how the universe works. The question of whether or not the universe was created by god is not left out because it may seem too fantastic or simplistic but is left there while the theories that can stand on their own are discovered and if, according to science, those theories support the creation principal without god, then so be it.

Right now, I'm reading A Brief History of Time by Hawkings. Getting the opportunity to apply my skeptical, but unscientific mind to his philosophy is a pleasure and so right off, within a few brief pages, I've already discovered a flaw. Not a flaw in his reasoning but a flaw in the a priori assumption that whatever he says there is an element he assumes to exist and like time, is the basis for our attempt at understanding anything. That is consciousness. Consciousness is similar to time, in that its existence or origins or the environment it is connected to, cannot be determined and thus has to be left out like the god created universe theology should be.

So yes, Mr Hawkings does address the notion that we may be just discovering ourselves or other things that we are a part of and more importantly, it isn't clear whether or not what discoveries we encounter will have anything to do with whether or not we survive as a species or not. Still, other animals have become extinct, and it could be concluded that our unique "consciousness" and ability to transfer knowledge by communication written in a book, makes us worthy of a theory in itself for the simple reason that pre-destiny maintains the universe requires a unified theory because we are, or assume we are the end result of billions of years of chaotic, neutral, and random physical reactions, making us erroneously conclude we are the center of the universe again.

Objects nearing the speed of light increase their mass until at the speed of light it takes an infinite amount of energy to propel an infinite mass, thus no object can go over the speed of light.

Before I go on, my first impression is this. Can science, which seems more like getting a ship in a bottle, see anything outside of what it has determined “exists”. They already know there are universes of mathematical space between particles of atoms, molecules, and stars, thus room for much error.

Yet, that does not seem to deter us.

It’s my contention that we rely way too much on authoritative science and behaviorists to tell us way more than what we “naturally” perceive to be true. Do we accept all this progress because we still have all the religious fears implanted in our social and physical upbringings that we are really nothing except gifted animals, and maybe not really that necessary for the world, much less the universe, from going on. I believe that’s called doubt.

In other words, will our extinction be a failed genetic exercise, much like the dinosaurs or any other dominant species/genre that at one time held special significance for a certain period.

Like I said, we are unique on this earth anyway, being entities that “believe" we are earth’s destiny, unlike the dinosaurs or any other animal which certainly influenced its immediate environment but as far as we know, held no erroneous or unproven consciousness that they were indispensable. Since every other earthly mass extinction, except this one, the sixth extinction, did not hold any special significance to our self- interest, whatever outcome it may have engendered that made it more conducive for our emergence as the “supreme” life form we are, precluding religious directed “creationism”.

Allred’s I Love America

I’ve almost forgotten that America is a highly sophisticated security state. I get the feeling, maybe it’s just deja vue, that we’re living in the fifties again, giving birth to the sixties again. Does Joe bring that on? He’s acting as if America can and will fix all these problems if he had just come along a little sooner.

Just a hunch.

Did Copernicus or Galileo predict that the rise of the national security state would ultimately give rise to a worldwide crackdown on dissent, real democracy, and true equality? Probably not. But Maybe Tolstoy said it because he had such a shotgun type of mind that exposed everything he thought so, it’s possible he more than likely hit upon the concept that everything contrived by preachers and politicians couldn’t be good for anybody. Chomsky probably thinks so too because he also sees the external state of things as they really are and not what people want them to be, so he probably saw it too.

Since humans seem to want to contrive a superior being/species out of this wild process that has been around for billions of years, rather than 6-7000 years ago, we’ve kind of taken the fun out of really discovering how the system works. As long as we want to, or have to believe that somehow, someway we are “god’s little children,” we’ll never pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and tap in to what may be out there ( outside our consciousness or knowledge) to save us. I can surmise that if anyone ever found the fountain of youth, they will be killed but not before becoming a billionaire.

2024 Road to the Future

2024 Road to the Future

Prologue

In 2024 the nation will elect or reelect its president. It may seem a long way off but the midterms of 2022 are right around the corner and they may set the tone of the general election to come.

Although sometimes it may seem like the nation is in trouble, sometimes not so much, however when we look at the world at large, and not "through a soda straw" as Donald Rumsfeld was apt to say, we can see the large picture the USA pretends does not exist or the picture it merely gives lip service to.

Fascist and authoritarian personalities have come to the forefront of both american and worldwide politics when discontent with the status quo from left and right is high. Ever since covid, the end of the war in afghanistan, the beginning of the war in ukraine (and the beginning of a new cold war), straining of the relationships between world powers, economic policies, global climate change warming as well as warnings, all give rise to a worldwide concern and fear of a dire future, not to mention the internal dynamics within nations regarding the rise of white supremacy, cultural, religious, ethnic divisions, gun violence.

This podcast would concentrate on the American political system's ability or inability to manage its own internal issues as well as its own self-defined leadership role in the world's political theater by using the 2024 general election as a backdrop for both progressive and regressive/fascist/reactionary development.

More on this later.

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The climate book by Greta Thunberg

The futility of intellect is one of the built in institutionalized limits on actual ideas bringing together change, especially social change.

Those smart people who write big tomes about race, such as Stamped from the Beginning or the Climate Change Book can't realize the almost impossibility of figuring out that there is no intellectual nor literary nor visual effect striking enough able to change anyone's mind, especially those who are racist or climate change deniers or whatever it is that holds them hostage.

It would take a particular type of person who can't imagine what the life of a slave could have been like, much less, read a book, such as Stamped from the Beginning, and not say, yes, it has always been that way. It would take another type of person who watches the crops being ruined by drought, or the rivers flood their home and just say, "but for the grace of god, go i" or just having a streak of bad luck, or not being able to see through smoke and fire more than a quarter mile away.

Yet, it’s those particular sorts of people who control the machinery, both mechanical and social, to resolve the issues that plague us. And speaking of plague, why is it the victims of such epidemics, must suffer the nonchalance of those who create the conditions for the disasters, because surely all we have to do is look around us and see that the worst consequences are reserved for those who, like penned sheep, have no control over what befalls them.

Back in the ice age 1990s when mobile exxon one of the largest warming producers discovered itself as a climate killer, reneged on its own responsibility and suggested that consumers reduce their own carbon footprint.

The left always seems so insulted that anyone except corporations bear responsibility for anything bad thats happening, as if obsessive consumerism (that is, the compulsive need to purchase based on advertising, enticements, or wealth, regardless of whether or not said purchases are detrimental in one way or another to a persons health, well-being, need, or conscience) is the only reason corporations provide them. In other words, no buy, no product. It has something to do with consciousness raising, which most people, black and white, rich or born, seem to be adverse to.

On the other hand, the right wants us to believe that we have every right or should have every right to complete individual freedoms and we humans are NOT a danger to ourselves because God, for whatever idiotic reason, loves us more than THEM. This adherence to individual rights does not include equal rights.

Why don't we? If climate change activists expect mobil and the other climate killers to do it on their own then it will never get done. Gretas book hopes to educate us, but the vast majority of consumers are practically non- literate rather than illiterate, but there is a big difference between the two. Hardly anyone who is unfamiliar with the travails of climate change will read it and be enlightened by it. The problem is all of us who consume, which really makes the solution easy. Don't consume mass quantities of everything. It's like we came out of the pleistocene starving and hating minimalism. Look at any homeless camp and you'll be looking at a reflection of mass consumption and mass accumulation syndrome, like a pack rat, but at least, with the rat which has been around through wilderness to industrial age, through thick and through age of reason, through the age of discovery, and through high tech, the rat never eats its entire savings while watching tv, ordering shit from amazon or driving to the grocery store two blocks away and while you're at it drive ten more miles to the mall.

Here's the thing. Without a revolution, nothing will change, period.

To rely on the awakening, wokeness, of any particular group of people powerful enough to create change without the benefit of profit is as insane as anything. Its capital suicide for the capitalists, and I'm not even sure if the people living high on the hog, feasting on the green pastures of plenty still remaining earth's resources, will even allow their master's to act in such a way. 

If you haven't noticed, the trend is toward fascism, almost everywhere, including here in the us. We, the people, are the only ones who can stop it, but we, have to give up something, so why do we wait for scarcity to force us when we could just shut down our stupid lawn mowers, leaf blowers, freeways, helter-skelter drives over the cliff like some harassed, unthinking bison herd.

Get out and walk around your neighborhood, talk to your neighbors, don't plot against each other, help each other, and buy only what you need, not what you think you wish for, like a child.

We're a nation of conformists, mindless sheep, penned up by the wolves of the world. Theres far more of us than the murderers, rapists, man-woman haters, weapons dealers, politicians, criminals who all are someone's sons and daughters, and everyone turns a blind eye.

Read the book but don't think Greta said any of what I just said. But maybe she's thinking it.

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Election of 2012

Election of 2012 

There are only a few

Recorded -blogThere  are only a few actual issues in the world that are repeated often enough, over and over, throughout history, it seems to anyone in the present, wherever that present may be, disguised as something new by modern technolgy and conventional wisdom, it may all seem new. Because History doesnt reflect reality of the historical moment, being built on whoever is in power and managing the interpretation of the moment, reality always seems to contain a strong element of unresolved, complicated nuances. This is, mainly, because over the course of centuries, men have controlled the narrative through their religions and insistence that nations, governments are the most ordinate of authority, next to god. In the rare occurance when a woman or man who understands what limits power inherantly has, that it normally corrupts, these have been unable to do little to change the discourse to a more real relationship between government and governed.

They are, first, the main elephant of the room being SEX. Then there is FEAR, and the icing is CONTROL.or Authority..

Almost all law, all traditions, all hierarchies, all nation states base their continued existence on the ability to manage the general public's ability or inability to handle basic and universal survival, which governs work, value, economic, both at the simplest exchange level and at the heightened reality of control of resources and principles of ownership set by the authorities managing money, time, and debt.

Survival is not just a tv show where people live by their wits off the land, but day to day living in any nation on earth. As modern nation states, all rely on the three themes mentioned above to manage each persons ability to survive. The main aspect of Control is Division.

Divide and conquer is an old adage, but true, nevertheless.

Its hard for anyone to imagine that at some time in human world history that life in a social, communal environment was far less problematic. This isnt to say that life was problem free. Weather, climate change, and other uncontrollable forces played a part in making,life not perfect. 

All the problems of modern life and the change in perspective are illustrated in all the early stories, mythologies, magical thinking religions, old and new testaments, chronologies, some of which continue today. The gods were humans and have alway contained in a human personality with all its foibles, strengths, and excessive power. Interestingly, the women gods eventually fell to the wayside  as the so called modern religions and customs focused that power unto men and, and in rhe case of the main modern gods or their messengers, male personalities. Most of these gods, if not, their followers, are as fucked up as their faithful believers, filled up with hate, revenge, ethniccentric, magical thinking blather about make believe heaven and hells. Punishment is a big thing in religion as it is in all nations services to the people. Unfortunately, if one is to believe christian belief in the love of jesus christ, few christians rely on their charity to get themselves to heaven or paradise. They're too busy making worldwide mischief, creating irreconcilable notions about women, sex, race, ethnicity, other religions, and their neighbor.

One example of all this is the current situation in Old Palestine or New Israel, however you want to call it. Prior to the twentieth century, palestinians and jews lived pretty peacefully together for centuries. Then the british, french and a host of arab princes came and began fostering ideas of liberation or acquiescence to a colonial power.

People were forced to take sides, allegiances.

 Today we might say life was harder then, but that notion is only an evolution of a false claim that authorities new, modern for the times ideas of capital, resource control, and ownership, the triumvirate of chaos, became the order of the day. They were indispensible in establishing security and safety in the chaotic system they created.

The modern age has brought us more and more sophisticated methods of control. No longer the whip, the sword, control of media, thus knowledge has become the subtle weapon of choice. This method of choice is clearly anti-democratic, that is if democratic means that the general population  shares certain acknowledgement of egalitarian values. Common sense values.

Common sense values. Not based in fear. If a mother is fearful of a gay person who teaches school is a fear not based in any real circumstance anymore than the belief in the previous centuries that jews kidnapped children and desecrated their bodies in some way.

The elephant in the room is always sex.

All religions are based in it, drowning in it. 

All personal relationships are swimming in it.

All

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Critique on the Revolutions Reported or Be Careful What You Ask For.

 

I’ve been critical of the so called ‘revolutions’ taking place around the globe recently, including the Occupy movement of a couple of years ago. The so called social media revolutions because they were built on the availability of social media to engage many people that may not have ever been engaged. As we’ve seen the revolutions in Northern Africa slip from the news, the Occupy Movement slip from having any relevance at all, and Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, and other nation states, some newsworthy and some not, slip into and out of chaos, my criticism seems well founded.

I’m only critical of how all these mass movements became reported, analyzed, and prognosticated by the media which supposedly supported or reported on them. We have reached a point in our history where mass media (free press) has been accepted as the main stay of a free society, such as we like to describe ours, without any real criticism as to whether or not it is really free. The disclosures of Wikileaks and “whistleblowers” alike, ala Ed Snowden, have only put a dent in the public’s recognition of how important any one leak or disclosure is. In other words, we hear about the massive train wreck but not how it happened nor how to prevent it. We hear that there has been massive spying worldwide by all the powers that be, but we the public, really have no way to prevent it from happening or stop it from happening at all, so it’s seen as more of a form of entertainment with the now faceless citizenry which has become fascinated by its own self oppression. At some point, a true fascist society contributes to its own demise by valuing that belief that suppresses them.

The media will not tell you what’s wrong with the system, it simply exposes what it believes will tickle our fancy, both intellectually or culturally. And, if it gives us that rare glimpse into the inner workings of how or what the power structure is doing, we want to believe that it is an anomaly at worst so we do not have to fully accept its consequences.  The problem with the media and our relationship to it is that we are being given a recipe on how this particular democracy works and we don’t seem to care that it’s not the recipe we think we’ve been cooking up all these years so we don’t pay attention to it.

We’ve reached the point in our intellectual development where we think knowledge is a tool and is as relevant as we want to make it. Knowledge comes with a price, and that price is it so easy to become complacent. We can let others do our thinking for us, telling us what is true and what isn’t. Accepting authority until something seems not quite right, but by that point we can’t reverse what has already happened or go back down the path from whence we came which would be a perfectly natural thing to do if one is lost. And we are lost. We have allowed others to choose for us. We’ve become spoiled and arrogant by assuming that someone else will save us from ourselves or in many cases believing we don’t need saving. Yes, the sandwich board warning, “The World is Coming To An End” has been around for a long time, the Old Testament might have started it off, and the Plague and Invasions of Heathens during the Middle Ages and beyond certainly fed the prognosticators with reality. Of course, with all these temporary historical facts came the Solvers or Authorities who because they were around at the right time, right place said they were the reason things got better when everyone else thought they would not. They said they prayed to God who helped us or outright killed the nuisance, whether the nuisance was the Devil, the Witch, the People next door, or Over the Hills, or Behind the Sun, the Unbelievers.

So we went on. Accepted a new truth until a new virus, a new enemy came upon us. Democracy came along and now we believe we have choices, pick your poison, but you can’t opt out or try and find a solution outside the “chosen” one because it either costs too much or it’s not where the society is going. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not it does or doesn’t work, or “makes sense” enough to be considered.

Most of our technology has arisen out of the mental workings of ordinary working people putting their social heads together, helping to make their life easier until recent times.  The last couple of centuries much of what we’ve developed has extraneous uses, such as developing the war machine or enabling the ability to sell and consume by adopting economic conditions that cater to the whims of wealthy people who base their principals on ownership Our Freedom now is relegated to choosing colors, styles, things that have no relevance to what eventually will hurt us. Our science has created wonders to help prevent illness but it is limited by the availability of money in addition to the fact that much of what kills us or hurts us is originates from the same scientists and its collusion with politics. Science isn’t the innocent working for the helpless. Science and Industry have colluded in Weapons of Mass Destruction, creating high priced options, whether it be cars or medicine, that are unavailable to ordinary people. And we are ordinary people. Be Proud of it. The Salt of the Earth.

We forget that it is ordinary people who have been responsible for the increase in production and development of basic technologies that have been usurped by wealthy and greedy people and though some individuals have gotten credit for discoveries, most discoveries have been on the order of Columbus discovering America, I think you know what I mean there. From the containment of fire to the loom or plow, it’s been the people who live and survive where changes really come from, not from the mental musings of politicians, philosophers, priests, scientists, CEO’s, or celebrities.