In February of 2009, Forbes Magazine published the article, “John Holdren, Ideological Environmentalist: a most dogmatic member of Obama’s Dream Team.” The article goes on to outline what, in recent days, has lit ablaze the online press: John Holdren, Obama’s “Science Czar”, is a major proponent of hard-line eugenics policies. Forbes’ labels Holdren a “fierce environmentalist.” [1]
According to Forbes, Holdren’s environmentalism has been celebrated over the years. He has been the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard’s Research Center and a past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Holdren partook as a member of The Limits to Growth club. In his 1971 Sierra Club book, Energy: A Crisis in Power, Holdren writes “it is fair to conclude that under almost any assumptions, the supplies of crude petroleum and natural gas are severely limited. The bulk of energy likely to flow from these sources may have been tapped within the lifetime of many of the present population.” The science supporting notions of peak oil, regardless of Holdren’s confidence, has been seriously scrutinized, giving credence to Forbes claim that Holdren holds serious dogmas.
From Forbes,
"In keeping with his dogmatic (my italicization) limits-to-growth convictions, Holdren joined his frequent co-author, eco-doomster Paul Ehrlich, in a famous bet against cornucopian economist Julian Simon.
In 1980, Holdren, Ehrlich and Stanford colleague John Harte picked a basket of five commodities--chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten--that they were sure were going to rise in price as they became increasingly scarce. They drew up a futures contract obligating Simon to sell Holdren, Ehrlich and Harte the same quantities of five metals that could be purchased for $1,000 10 years later at 1980 prices.
If the combined prices rose above $1,000, Simon would pay the difference. If they fell below $1,000, Ehrlich would pay Simon. Ehrlich mailed Simon a check for $576.07 in October 1990. Simply put, the combined real prices of the metals selected by Holdren and his colleagues fell by more than 50% during the 1980s, confirming cornucopian claims that the supply of resources over time becomes more abundant, not scarcer."
Holdren also held the view that, by 2040, the US population would reach 270 million, and that that would pose a “severe” problem. Today, in 2009, the population of the U.S. is about 304 million. In his 1975 The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Holdren slightly tinkered with his previous conceptions of limits to energy, writing that “civilization is not running out of energy; but it is running out of cheap energy.”
In his 1977 book Ecoscience, Holdren, Paul Ehrlich (head of science under Bush), and Anne Ehrlich write on page 837 that “Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society. Few today consider the situation in the United States serious enough to justify compulsion, however.”
Holdren also proposes “a comprehensive Planetary Regime (that) could control the development, administration and distribution of all natural resources…not only in the atmosphere and the oceans, but in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes.”
He states further, the “Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits…The Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.”
Some syndicated columnists argue the claims made by concerned citizens are moot points, for the tome Ecoscience was written more than thirty years ago. Maybe so, until one learns that some of the suggestions are already utilized by the U.S. government, as over 250 different pharmaceutical chemicals have been found in the drinking supply of the unsuspecting U.S. population. Many of these chemicals are attributed to hyper feminization in women and demasculinization in men. In one example, Holdren states his belief that under the current U.S. Constitution, adding sterilants to the nation’s water supply was probably a good thing:
"Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock."
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
if there is hope for today, take tomorrow: No Entities, No Establishments (or that movement to fit)
Telecommunications has rendered time and space yet more evasive than it naturally was. Thanks to the television, men and women and children were able to watch from the surface of the earth as three US citizens stepped foot on the moon, showing us for the first time images of our small, delicate world. Moreover, computers can store things nowhere and everywhere at the same time. As I sit and write this from my room now I know that, should it be needed, by simply sending the transcript to myself through e-mail I can access my attempt at composition from virtually any computer in the world. This is made possible, or so the authorities argue, by the nonexistence of such digital information in any place. The authorities have made use of this loophole, therefore interpreting it as not evasion of a citizen’s privacy, but, rather a justifiable anti-terror mechanism.
If there is hope for today, take tomorrow
Ninety-nine percent of all species that have ever existed on earth have gone extinct. If homo sapiens were to go extinct today—despite that we chose to call ourselves “the wise one” —we will have been, under our own scientific definitions, an index fossil: a widely distributed fossil, of narrow range in time, regarded as characteristic of a given geological formation. In fact, our species, two million years old, could exist for hundreds of millions of more years and still be considered fleeting by the standards of geological time.
*continued in comments
*continued in comments
Learning for Success; ahem—excuse me—for service.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of
civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
--Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816.
When Thomas Jefferson refers to a state of civilization, one assumes he has his own in mind; that is western civilization, of course. Why, then, should an ignorant nation never expect to know freedom? Perhaps, as he penned this letter to Charles Yancey, Jefferson had in the back of his head the approximately 6,000 years of scorched earth policies that, within this state, were perpetrated by and for the vector of western progress. The institutions comprising western civilization, he concluded, predisposed agents of history to depravity and conquest. Therefore, it must be so, that the people enjoy the fruits of access to the voluminous amount of data available during any given epoch. Abraham Lincoln, while in office, echoed his forbearer, saying “let the people know the truth and the country is safe.” Like never before do the masses have access to a wealth of information. Many key players in the political and corporate arenas, recognizing this, are positioning themselves and events so as to make a case for further restriction of the internet, while increased supervision in the classroom is on the agenda under Obama.
continued in comments
civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
--Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816.
When Thomas Jefferson refers to a state of civilization, one assumes he has his own in mind; that is western civilization, of course. Why, then, should an ignorant nation never expect to know freedom? Perhaps, as he penned this letter to Charles Yancey, Jefferson had in the back of his head the approximately 6,000 years of scorched earth policies that, within this state, were perpetrated by and for the vector of western progress. The institutions comprising western civilization, he concluded, predisposed agents of history to depravity and conquest. Therefore, it must be so, that the people enjoy the fruits of access to the voluminous amount of data available during any given epoch. Abraham Lincoln, while in office, echoed his forbearer, saying “let the people know the truth and the country is safe.” Like never before do the masses have access to a wealth of information. Many key players in the political and corporate arenas, recognizing this, are positioning themselves and events so as to make a case for further restriction of the internet, while increased supervision in the classroom is on the agenda under Obama.
continued in comments
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Naomi Klein Interview
Naomi Klein: 'The Wall Street Bailout Is the Greatest Heist in Monetary History'
By Joan Juliet Buck RSS
Alert me to Joan Juliet's new posts
Naomi Klein © Ed Kashi
Editor’s Note: Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of the international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. She writes a regular column for The Nation magazine and The Guardian newspaper that is syndicated internationally by The New York Times Syndicate. Her articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. She wrote and co-produced “The Take,” an award-winning feature documentary about Argentina’s occupied factory movement.
As all the pieces of all the world’s economy started crashing around our heads, I realized that the person I most wanted to ask about it all was Naomi Klein, whom I had met briefly last year when Laurie Anderson put together a protest evening at St. Anne’s. Naomi Klein’s books, No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, examined the roots of what is happening now. Here’s what she had to say about the present crisis. -JJB
JOAN JULIET BUCK: You must be having some very intense reactions to everything that’s happening right now.
NAOMI KLEIN: It’s an adventure reading the paper every morning.
JOAN: Where does that leave the end of history?
NAOMI: So many of the debates that we were told are over are reemerging. That’s the good part of what’s going on right now. There were so many attempts to arbitrarily claim that ideas about social justice, about economic justice, were finished, and there’s only one model. In The Shock Doctrine I quote Larry Summers, from back in 1991 when he was a honcho at the World Bank. He was talking about the World Bank policies that used to be called The Washington Consensus. And he said, “Spread the truth — the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” It was all about deregulation, privatization, the market is always best, the market’s always supreme. And there was the feeling of certainty — that we had figured everything out. Summers even said a couple of years later that there are many basic economic ideas that are “passé” — no longer worthy of debate. One of the issues that he listed as over was the idea that government could invest in programs to stimulate the economy. And here he is … right!
JOAN: What does the present moment mean?
NAOMI: It’s created space; there’s new oxygen to propose alternatives. One of the things that I try to show in my book is that these debates were not won on their own merits. They were often won using violence, by actually eliminating the left, in countries in Latin America, and then declaring ideological victory.
JOAN: In The New Yorker, you’re quoted as saying, “This is a progressive moment. It’s ours to lose.” What did you mean?
NAOMI: Capitalism is on trial. And you have an organic, grassroots, sort of spontaneous revolt against the elite – which is actually what we’re hearing with this rage at CEOs, and bonuses and government collusion with the elites. Rage is an opportunity. The rage is there, and the country is seething, the world is seething with rage. The question is, where is it going to be directed? I feel there’s a moral responsibility for the Left and for progressives to provide an alternative in this moment that is moral, that is principled, that is just, that is hopeful, because if we don’t, then that anger is so easily directed at “those damn Mexican immigrants,” at “the first African American president.” So I feel a tremendous sense of urgency. It’s not just, “Hey, our time has come.” It’s, “We’d better get our act together because this anger is going somewhere.”
JOAN: Now, who would the leaders of this Left be?
NAOMI: That is a very complicated question in the United States right now. Pretty much everywhere else in the world, besides maybe North Korea, there’s a really healthy distrust of those in power. You know, people are in the streets in this moment, as well they should be – whether it’s in France or whether it’s in Britain or Iceland. They may have a left-leaning government, like the government of Gordon Brown. But that doesn’t mean they’re giving him a pass. In Britain the choice is very clear. The anger is either going to be directed at the banks or it’s going to be directed at immigrants. I’m not afraid of it being directed at the banks. I’m appalled at news that there’s a 17-year-old girl who is facing jail time for having a few beers and breaking a window at the RBS Bank during the G-20 protests, when not a single banker is going to jail for burning down the global economy. What kind of a system is that? I think we should rally to this young woman’s defense. What you see again and again in Europe is that, in this critical moment, there is an opposition that is organizing with this healthy distrust of power. In the U.S., Obama mania complicates this.
JOAN: You said, talking about the Obama video "Yes We Can," "Now, finally, a politician is making ads that are as good as Nike."
http://www.wowowow.com/politics/naomi-klein-no-logo-shock-doctrine-wall-street-bailout-greatest-heist-monetary-history-278740?page=1%2C1#comments
By Joan Juliet Buck RSS
Alert me to Joan Juliet's new posts
Naomi Klein © Ed Kashi
Editor’s Note: Naomi Klein is the award-winning author of the international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. She writes a regular column for The Nation magazine and The Guardian newspaper that is syndicated internationally by The New York Times Syndicate. Her articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. She wrote and co-produced “The Take,” an award-winning feature documentary about Argentina’s occupied factory movement.
As all the pieces of all the world’s economy started crashing around our heads, I realized that the person I most wanted to ask about it all was Naomi Klein, whom I had met briefly last year when Laurie Anderson put together a protest evening at St. Anne’s. Naomi Klein’s books, No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, examined the roots of what is happening now. Here’s what she had to say about the present crisis. -JJB
JOAN JULIET BUCK: You must be having some very intense reactions to everything that’s happening right now.
NAOMI KLEIN: It’s an adventure reading the paper every morning.
JOAN: Where does that leave the end of history?
NAOMI: So many of the debates that we were told are over are reemerging. That’s the good part of what’s going on right now. There were so many attempts to arbitrarily claim that ideas about social justice, about economic justice, were finished, and there’s only one model. In The Shock Doctrine I quote Larry Summers, from back in 1991 when he was a honcho at the World Bank. He was talking about the World Bank policies that used to be called The Washington Consensus. And he said, “Spread the truth — the laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” It was all about deregulation, privatization, the market is always best, the market’s always supreme. And there was the feeling of certainty — that we had figured everything out. Summers even said a couple of years later that there are many basic economic ideas that are “passé” — no longer worthy of debate. One of the issues that he listed as over was the idea that government could invest in programs to stimulate the economy. And here he is … right!
JOAN: What does the present moment mean?
NAOMI: It’s created space; there’s new oxygen to propose alternatives. One of the things that I try to show in my book is that these debates were not won on their own merits. They were often won using violence, by actually eliminating the left, in countries in Latin America, and then declaring ideological victory.
JOAN: In The New Yorker, you’re quoted as saying, “This is a progressive moment. It’s ours to lose.” What did you mean?
NAOMI: Capitalism is on trial. And you have an organic, grassroots, sort of spontaneous revolt against the elite – which is actually what we’re hearing with this rage at CEOs, and bonuses and government collusion with the elites. Rage is an opportunity. The rage is there, and the country is seething, the world is seething with rage. The question is, where is it going to be directed? I feel there’s a moral responsibility for the Left and for progressives to provide an alternative in this moment that is moral, that is principled, that is just, that is hopeful, because if we don’t, then that anger is so easily directed at “those damn Mexican immigrants,” at “the first African American president.” So I feel a tremendous sense of urgency. It’s not just, “Hey, our time has come.” It’s, “We’d better get our act together because this anger is going somewhere.”
JOAN: Now, who would the leaders of this Left be?
NAOMI: That is a very complicated question in the United States right now. Pretty much everywhere else in the world, besides maybe North Korea, there’s a really healthy distrust of those in power. You know, people are in the streets in this moment, as well they should be – whether it’s in France or whether it’s in Britain or Iceland. They may have a left-leaning government, like the government of Gordon Brown. But that doesn’t mean they’re giving him a pass. In Britain the choice is very clear. The anger is either going to be directed at the banks or it’s going to be directed at immigrants. I’m not afraid of it being directed at the banks. I’m appalled at news that there’s a 17-year-old girl who is facing jail time for having a few beers and breaking a window at the RBS Bank during the G-20 protests, when not a single banker is going to jail for burning down the global economy. What kind of a system is that? I think we should rally to this young woman’s defense. What you see again and again in Europe is that, in this critical moment, there is an opposition that is organizing with this healthy distrust of power. In the U.S., Obama mania complicates this.
JOAN: You said, talking about the Obama video "Yes We Can," "Now, finally, a politician is making ads that are as good as Nike."
http://www.wowowow.com/politics/naomi-klein-no-logo-shock-doctrine-wall-street-bailout-greatest-heist-monetary-history-278740?page=1%2C1#comments
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Republicans For Sale?
The Republican Party is tottering on the brink of extinction, with scant a third party waiting in their midsts to fill the vacuum, despite that Ron Paul enjoys an underestimated, and perhaps broad, base of support. The topsy-turvy roller coaster of the Bush Administration tarnished severely the party worldwide, sending scores of voters to the Obama-Biden ticket. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Sector switched parties, shifting the balance in the White House’s favor. Moreover, participants of the tea parties have been slandered by pundits in the media, whilst the historical significance of the act goes unmentioned, betrayed. For, as a panoply of US Presidents have noticed, the American Revolution had as much to do with power of the money press, as it did with taxes. With polls claiming Obama has the support of 68% of the nation, a mossy rolling stone, indeed, it is crucial that the American public is justly informed on the policies of his administration.
Arlen Sector story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090428/us_time/08599189439400
Timothy Geithner, charged with the task of solving the financial crisis, has not pushed through an agenda drafted, in large part, by partners of what the New York Times euphemistically refers to as “the Finance Club.” Sector’s crossover seems to be a viable solution to that impediment in a congress that was, quite recently, threatened with martial law, should it have failed to pass the T.A.R.P bailout.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=brad+sherman+martial+law&hl=en&emb=0&aq=0&oq=brad+sherman#
The economic policies of the Bush administration have been expounded by the Obama administration; that is, large handouts to financial institutions, devoid of real discussion of the direction of the manufacturing sector in the United States. In order to move forward, the United States must first develop a large scale mobilization of its resource base. Solar, wind and geothermal technologies, many of which do not face impediments in technology, offer promising futures, as does a full-fledged mobilization for a green transportation system. Without such plans, it would only take a further unraveling of Chimerica for the production capacity of the United States to contract significantly. Further, our attitudes, not only our policies, about resource use must evolve with our technologies, until society listens to man’s natural emotions so as to gauge right and wrong. Such adaptations would promote survival. Since wind turbines must be placed 1,000 feet apart from one another on wind farms, hemp presents itself as a practical export possibility; a task, perhaps, for a desperate Republican party, thereby completing the forty-year-party-shift for which we were due this past election.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13334
We must, as a way of beginning a push to foment communities in our towns and cities, take our solutions, perspectives and helping hands to the analog world, where we are all in serious demand.
Arlen Sector story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090428/us_time/08599189439400
Timothy Geithner, charged with the task of solving the financial crisis, has not pushed through an agenda drafted, in large part, by partners of what the New York Times euphemistically refers to as “the Finance Club.” Sector’s crossover seems to be a viable solution to that impediment in a congress that was, quite recently, threatened with martial law, should it have failed to pass the T.A.R.P bailout.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=brad+sherman+martial+law&hl=en&emb=0&aq=0&oq=brad+sherman#
The economic policies of the Bush administration have been expounded by the Obama administration; that is, large handouts to financial institutions, devoid of real discussion of the direction of the manufacturing sector in the United States. In order to move forward, the United States must first develop a large scale mobilization of its resource base. Solar, wind and geothermal technologies, many of which do not face impediments in technology, offer promising futures, as does a full-fledged mobilization for a green transportation system. Without such plans, it would only take a further unraveling of Chimerica for the production capacity of the United States to contract significantly. Further, our attitudes, not only our policies, about resource use must evolve with our technologies, until society listens to man’s natural emotions so as to gauge right and wrong. Such adaptations would promote survival. Since wind turbines must be placed 1,000 feet apart from one another on wind farms, hemp presents itself as a practical export possibility; a task, perhaps, for a desperate Republican party, thereby completing the forty-year-party-shift for which we were due this past election.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13334
We must, as a way of beginning a push to foment communities in our towns and cities, take our solutions, perspectives and helping hands to the analog world, where we are all in serious demand.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Bill Moyers investigates criminal fraud and banking deception with william blake
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html
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