Obviously there are enormous amounts of seemingly divergent issues at stake in Copenhagen --with climate change as their common denominator. These emergencies somehow need to be translated into action plans, new regulations, and long-term monetary commitments by the developed countries. Quite complex a process for it assumes that we will have the wisdom to evaluate everything from bleaching of coral reefs to Sub-Sahara food crisis or receding glaciers -- and weigh our choices from the point of view of Being One -- One apelike family that has gotten itself into a lot of trouble and now needs to find a way out. We will need to go way beyond the idea of nationalities (and.... by the way: that is not necessarily an argument for global governance and the specter of its repressive tools that are exercised by the very few --I want to get back to this later).
At this point in time, the path of survival for humanity is dependent upon how deeply we can identify with each other. We need to realize that we are on one cosmic boat charting the unknown..... together.
In a way we all know this -- what most of us don't understand is why our reality is so divergent with our ideals and common humanity. How come the US until recently thought it was appropriate to use 25% of the world's resources, and yet refuse to play a contructive role in any type of climate regulation?
It should be clear to everyone that this is ultimately a reflection of ruthless (super)power --to quote Mao, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
The capitalist economic model acquired a new level of predatory ruthlessness after it wed itself to the Rand corporation game theory model, which has now infected Wall Street, the military, and (sad to say) even our education system. This new synthesized theory and holds that billions of selfishly acting people can somehow create some kind of self-perpetuating (if unjust) equilibrium for all. Now, faced with its logical endpoint, a kind of predatory capitalism, based on control of the markets and the money supply is ruthlessly grabbing power and looks for new opportunities for inflated bubbles and frauds, while meanwhile busily unloading the previously punctured frauds onto the sleeping populous by way of a corrupt congress and weak presidency. It really is kind of a fascism, at least in the sense of Mussolini fascism, where corporate interests merge with the state while the population is marginalized into economic pions or worse: cannon fodder for the endless empire fights to control resources. How else can one explain that almost without a whimper 50 million people in the United States will suffer from food insecurity this year, including one in four children? And the strangest thing is that there is no outcry, no credible plan, no outstretched hand. Food insecurity? We should really call it for what it is....Hunger. "Hunger" is a visceral word and using that we connect with the people that suffer from it. Humans know about hunger in their genes, while food insecurity is just some concept dreamt up by some bureaucrat somewhere to obscure the reality.
I am sorry. I wish I wouldn't have to say this, and history may very well prove me wrong. I hope so. But I say this to my brothers and sisters in many countries all over the world -- because I know that you, like many of us here, projected your highest hopes and aspirations on an Obama presidency. So, since I know that many of you have limited access to the media, it is easy to get stuck with your highest ideals pinned on Obama. I have to caution you here.
The political legacy of the Obama administration so far is dismal and doesn't strike me as any "change" at all. And I don't say that as a conservative or a liberal, since I am neither. There is a change of the guard in Washington from the massive influence of oil and the Haliburton and Bechtel 'construction' companies under Bush, towards that of the financial and pharmaceutical sector under Obama: apparently it is 'their turn' to rape and pillage. These sort of tips of the corrupt government-corporate iceberg float on top of the constant drone of a hypnotized media-ized society, an 'underwater,' militarized, nuclearized, security state, that demands all resources to its disposal and forces its citizens into terrible debt in order to fight wars that are largely (but secretly) fought to secure economic gain (e.g. the control of the Iraqi oilfields as real motivation for that war) and force further monopolization of the money supply. The fact that most of the wars have gone badly, doesn't mean that enormous sums of money are being made, in all kinds of ways that perpetuate the wars. (Karzai brothers link: how we fund Taliban). That is the problem with corruption and the privatization of the war. What people are talking about in congress and the media is the 'military' involvement in the war, but what is largely unseen is the commitment the US government has made to private security companies such as Blackwater. Privatizing wars with corporate armies to hide them from the public eye, will very much complicate solutions to these wars, for throughout history mercenaries have always been the conduits of corruption on all levels (including a corruption of ethics).
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