The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
The Truth About Poverty - it is deliberately maintained, and why imposing judgemental caricature of the impoverished as the mainstream narrative is so important.
"The silver lining in an otherwise grim landscape is that the disastrous right-wing grip on public policy has been shattered. Truss was right on one thing: it is an imperative the country breaks out of economic stagnation. The alternative to trickle-down economics is to raise public and private investment along with rising exports, the universal drivers of economic growth. Britain needs a step change upwards in public investment and it needs to recast its financial and ownership system to foster the great companies that innovate and invest."
Nothing about poverty, let alone the fact that poverty is deliberately inculcated, intentionally maintained, the impoverished constantly gaslighted, with great human harm as a consequence .... and as it happens, no - the neoliberal grip has not been shattered, they are flexing it, and there's more to come.
Middle Class myopia. Hope. Unfortunately, growth of the economy does not correlate with a robust, happy pulse of the health, welfare and safety of the population. It is not an accurate measure, taken on it's own.
The Observer headline for this rather dull witted passage: Patronising bollocks.
None of this is new, none of this poverty is necessary.
1914
The lived experience and the meaning of social mutual aid, and it's absence.
2008 - The Subprime Lending Fraud collapses, States bail out fraudulent system. Poverty increases, wealth accumulation increases. Austerity and Big Society, tiny state.
'The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better' was published in 2009.
"Written by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, the book highlights the "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption".
It shows that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries."
We see all around us, above us, besides us, below us - an institutional culture of deliberate judgemental paternalistic societally enforced snobbery, for profit.
People must be taught to see the poor as having only themselves to blame 'because people are flawed and selfish and lazy. Inferior.'
What of the 'advice' given to the poor from that perspective?
Pull up your socks?
Whereas the truth is much simpler - most people are decent, honest and caring. And most people are living with near intolerable levels of chronic stress.
Why so decent? Because it's so much healthier. That's just common sense. Food banks, local charities, applause for health care workers, raises for all workers, peace and a clean environment. No more than what we need for a genuinely healthy life. Decency. Humanity. Community. These are all real political forces if we truly understood their potency.
Rutger Bergman gets into the detail, in the video just above - it's a friendly chat.
Make a cup of team sit back, open the popcorn, switch off the phone, take it all in. This is healthy science meets social care as an economic commons at it's very best.
Given our general good nature, what's happened to our perception of one another?
This raises the question as to why the caricature of poverty and the theme of the selfish individual remain as existential assumptions within the narratives of the established political and economic system, irrespective of ideology, creed,
Hegemony
Maintaining the dominance of Corporations and Wealth over the people, as it is, is cruelty beyond imagination.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.
Amazon Warehouse in Mexico. He could have afforded to build decent housing for all the workers as part of the plan, around the warehouse, and still have billions to spare. He chose not to use his vast wealth for the benefit of workers.
This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.
"Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less." Oscar Wilde
This image is doing the rounds at the moment - for whose benefit is this being viralised?
How would you feel if someone advised you to eat less if you and your children were already eating less, due to poverty and speculation on necessary commodities driving prices up?
1. Asking people who, for the most part earn a low income (in order for corporations to pay high dividends to shareholders) to scrimp on Energy use in our homes, by 'raising consciousness' of the expense of daily use, with a tacit implication suggesting that if we made better 'informed' choices, we'd not face such intense bills is deliberate cruelty.
2. The price rises are entirely a matter of market speculation. UK generates 97% of it's own Energy needs. It has not become more expensive to drill, produce and ship oil. Speculation is all about using Wealth as an economic weapon.
Extreme inequality is a form of economic violence, where policies and political decisions that perpetuate the wealth and power of a privileged few result in direct harm to the vast majority of ordinary people across the world and the planet itself.
3. Where's the chart for the energy costs of Tanks, Jets, Missiles, AirCraft Carriers, Mars Missions, Moon Missions, Yachts and Palaces?
4. Where's the chart advising industry to be 'thrifty' with using energy?
Ordinary folk are responsible for at most, 25% of all Carbon emissions. USUK and EU populations are often presented as the biggest per capita Carbon emitters. Industry accounts for the most of carbon emission, with the US Military being the single biggest institutional carbon polluter on Earth. People point at China as the biggest polluter but ignore the population differences. If you combine Europe, UK and USA as one population it turns out that it is a population similar to that of China, and China's Per Capita Carbon Emissions are still below those of USUK and EU. Well below.
5. Carbon Footprint was initially designed as a tool to help us become more aware of the environmental costs of our day to day activity. Most ordinary carbon use is in getting to and from work, and in working for the Industrial Systems that refuse to pay the costs to prevent pollution and prevent environmental degradation. Because to do so would erase their profitability.
We little people were directed to obsess about our day to day use, so that BP, Shell, Exxon and their allies in Finance Markets could continue to obsess about Wealth Extraction in the 'most efficient' manner - by refusing to pay the costs of prevention of harm (pollution, disease casued by pollution and environmental degradation) and by speculating the price of energy fuels.
7. The Ukraine War is not causing Energy prices to rise - England produces 97% of it's energy needs from available domestic supplies.
"consumption and market exchange only represents a thin surface of our economy and its ecological consequences.
150 years ago, Karl Marx argued that the secret to profit, or what he called surplus value, laid in analyzing the “hidden abode” of production.
We need a similar project to understand climate accountability in our carbon-based society. Of course, the most obvious producers of climate change are the fossil fuel producers themselves.
A recent study suggests a mere 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions since 1988 (in this case, it is important to remember that half of total historical emissions since the industrial revolution have come since that year of 1988).
Yet, fossil fuel companies are not the only ones profiting off carbon emissions. Energy-intensive industries like steel, chemicals, cement, and aluminum consume ungodly amounts of fossil fuels to power and materially feed their production.
The cement industry alone is responsible for 5% of global carbon emissions. Fertilizer uses natural gas as a source of hydrogen to combine with atmospheric nitrogen to form ammonia (NH3). When they extract that hydrogen from methane (CH4) carbon dioxide is the main byproduct.
A fertilizer plant I visited in southern Louisiana claimed to consume a staggering 9% of natural gas consumption in the entire state (a state that already hosts an enormous industry of natural gas consuming chemical factories).
This single fertilizer plant has the highest carbon emissions in the entire chemical sector of the United States."
8. Calls to tax these companies are largely a way to distract attention from the hidden roots of all industrial profitability - the deep roots of Externalised Costs as the very foundation of industrial wealth extraction.
9. Nationalisation is a way to 'take back control' and set pricing according to the needs of the population, us little people, whose need for the utility of energy, water, transit systems, health care systems, education systems ect is a life need, it is not a luxury. Such a move would massively help to alleviate general poverty, and for that reason alone it must be done.
It is important to understand that such a policy is designed to not touch the sides of Externalised Costs.
10. Cost externalizing is a socioeconomic term describing how a business maximizes its profits by off-loading indirect costs and forcing negative effects to a third party. An externalized cost is known to economists as a negative externality.
"The corporation is an externalizing machine (moving its operating costs and risks to external organizations and people), in the same way that a shark is a killing machine." - Robert Monks (2003) Republican candidate for Senate from Maine and corporate governance adviser in the film "The Corporation". Moving industries to where cheaper workers can be sourced is an externalising procedure. It's sole purpose is wealth extraction efficiency.
What we need. Starting now.
In my opinion Nationalisation must be followed by legislation that demands that industry prevents harm, pays the costs they have externalised from the beginnings of the Industrial 'Revolution' - from material sourcing through processing, manufacturing, distribution through to point of sale, use, consumption and end of life disposal - as the most basic measure of industrial health and legitimacy.
We must challenge every attempt to place the burden for such deep change upon us little people, many of us on low incomes, many more well paid yet trapped in mortgage debt; diligent workers and so-called 'scroungers' struggling to stay financially afloat are not the problem here.
We must not pass our life jackets to the Industrial Giants who are throwing us off the ship, as they sail towards the destination of continued, maximised Wealth Extraction.
We must mutiny, we must peacably take the ship over, be the majority in our legislatures that we fund, and we must plot a new course towards a nurturant industrial economic system that abolishes poverty, regulates industry well, eschews warfare as a a tool, prevents pollution and nurtures human and environment as one. and is honest and transparent.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog.
"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."
This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.
Making Sense, Looking at what happens: The War Against Democratic Regulation of Toxic Industrial Practices by Extractive Industrial Political Power. The Power Wealth vs Healthy Societies.
Ordinary people, especially the low income workers, make most of the real wealth through daily toil, and the largest proportion of the wealth they generate is extracted and accumulated. The poor are a permanent externalised cost.
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century."― Aneurin Bevan
Freedom is not the absence of limits. What I have sought always is to live the tension, the contradiction, between authority and freedom so as to maintain respect for both. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom
Everyone knows we're in serious, serious trouble. And there's no need to panic. Really. We've got this.
Let me take you through my world view, in which the future is always unfinished, not least because I, as a human being living with this culture which conditions me, becoming aware of that situation I come to the realisation that I have options to undo that conditioning. In other words I become aware that I am unfinished, I can change and grow. It doesn't have to be this way.
Fatalism is a lie the ruling class, the neoliberals and the bullies inculcate in those they hold power over. Because fatalism blocks growth, inhibits hope, limits one's perception of the future.
Destiny is an illusion. Nothing is over. The future is open to possibility.
Our world is on edge, yet not at a precipice.
The Scene
The Extractive Industries : Oil, Gas, Meat, Plastics, Mining, Lumber, Fishing and all those other organised extractive activities - extracting raw materials from the natural domain - that cause pollution, environmental degradation, climate change and poverty (industries that rely on cheap labour are a leading cause of poverty, and low wages is all about maximising wealth extraction).
These industries, their owners and activist operators extract wealth from natural resources, and from human resources. They accumulate their wealth, and hoard it away from the rest of the population. They use that wealth as a political weapon.
These industrial groups, they engage in political corruption as part of their day to day operations.
Oligarchs and companies funding a think tank that lobbies politicians who are given funds - donations and sinecure jobs - by oligarchs and companies is inherently corrupt because it is buying influence, and intervenes unfairly in democratic deliberation. Politicians implementing policy papers designed by the oligarchs, for the oligarchs interests, beyond democratic examination and oversight is corrupt. If those policy papers were set for examination by the electorate, and the electorate given equal weight and power over the decision to adopt the policy, plus the ability to over see implementation and correct any errors or harms, then that would be democratic. That does not happen.
Then there's the producers, those who make things, and whose industries also cause pollution, environmental degradation, climate change and poverty and who engage in political corruption as they accumulate their wealth, and hoard it away from the rest of the population, and use it as a political weapon.
Then there's us the consumers, who use the products, who work in their industries and in our use and in our work, which we must do or we die from starvation, lack of shelter - we too cause pollution, environmental degradation, climate change, we accept poverty as long as it is other people, and we are profoundly influenced by political corruption and conditioning.
Then there's the end of use disposal. We fill our trash bins every week, we throw away old electric goods as new ones arrive, we cast aside so much material. We flush our excrement away.
Where does all the 'waste' go?
I like to be human because in my unfinishedness I know that I am conditioned. Yet conscious of such conditioning, I know that I can go beyond it, which is the essential difference between conditioned and determined existence. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom
The Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party
The Oligarchy, who are politically, economically, culturally and socially organised as The Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party, have all waged social, economic, political and cultural wars against those who point out the harms caused in the processes that generate that accumulated wealth, and who ask that the harms be reduced, or better still prevented, who dare suggest that reparations must be made for all the harms knowingly caused. How dare they?
The Accumulated Extracted Wealth, that pile of cash that is extracted via these industries and their sales, is accumulated and concentrated away from the rest of humanity and it sits as the treasury of a sleepless political hegemon, a political force that infiltrates and influences every political party of note. It is used to build institutions and networks, it is used to fund workers and activists, it is used to promote, propagandise, manipulate, persuade and influence the populations from which that wealth is also extracted. War is an expensive business.
The reach of Accumulated Extracted Wealth as a political agency is immense and beyond the capability of the average electorate to counter. The asymmetry of power is real.
Therefore taxing Accumulated Extracted Wealth - a slogan that has gained some traction in recent times - is already too late in that it faces the Sisyphean difficulty that by the time that much Wealth is accumulated it has become a political hegemon, a political party within and without all other political parties, groups, think tanks and movements that can and does counter any and every move to rein that power in, to address the harms caused and make just adjustments to the situation.
I repeat myself.
The point needs to be made, repeatedly. Unlike a lie, this does not become more true by repetition. Even if it was never expressed, it remains true. Repeating this is one way to shake off the dust of the prevailing fatalism. Accumulated Wealth is a Political Party.
Accumulated Extracted Wealth is a political force that is now in a position that it is stronger than many democratic States and it is currently stronger than electorates who do not understand that Accumulated Wealth is a political force.
It has to be said that there are some among the wealthy whose accumulated wealth is not party to the power struggle who make some efforts to rebalance the situation, and that in confronting this we must be careful to pay due attention to the detail and avoid generics. Slogans cannot take the place of detailed and fair analysis.
Hope is not just a question of grit or courage. It's an ontological dimension of our human condition. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom
Taxing the Rich is too late.
We need to get in before that Wealth is extracted and accumulated as a political force. AOC and her dress have a point, of course. There is something deeply unfair in the way taxation operates, and there is something profoundly ugly in the maintenance of poverty, in such a wealthy country, where close to 10% of US population cannot meet their most basic needs because they simply do not have the money to pay for those most basic needs. She's not 'wrong', she's just too late.
Taxing the really rich, the Accumulated Extracted Hoard of Wealth. does not deal with the externalised costs, and therefore it lets them off the hook, and for very little in return, in social material terms.
Externalised Costs
I don't know if you know this : the top 20 Industries would all be unprofitable if they paid all their externalised costs. You might want to pause and just let that sink in. Where does the profitability come from?
Who, then, pays the price of all the externalised costs?
What are all those externalised costs?
Climate Change, Environmental Damage, Air Pollution, Poverty, Low Wages. Warfare, Racism and Misogyny are all part of the externalised costs domain, in one way or another.
How can we address this problem set?
A brief outline.
Here I present a very brief, simplistic line out of I think what needs to be done. I am, of course, well aware that achieving these is both complex (there are many needs to be met, and balances to be crafted between different needs, to do all of this safely for everyone involved) and it will be complicated (the addiction to power and status will get in the way of every possible action taken to solve the problems we face, and that addiction to power and status and wealth will be a point of friction, a force of resistance, a source of recalcitrance, presenting as sulky passive aggressive reactionary behaviours by the addicts and their supporters).
The Environment. - we must clean up how industry operates, repair damage done, prevent further damage. This is all eminently possible, it will mean less profits for shareholders, etc as more investment is put into the clean up and prevention dynamics.
The Low Wage Workers. - make lowest possible wage well above any measurable poverty line, globally. Again absolutely feasible. And again, reduced profits to shareholders as we invest in happy workers who are no longer struggling, stressed out because they lack money.
The Vulnerable Poor - Abolish poverty and destitution, look after the vulnerable. That's a factor of State and currency, and can be done irrespective of day to day taxation. By investing in care systems where care professionals are well trained, well paid and well resourced, Governments will be injecting currency into the economy and increasing happiness, decreasing chronic stress.
If after that, wealth is accumulated, then tax it fairly.
Bearing in mind that taxation no longer funds day to day business of any Government that operates within a State that has a central bank that issues that States currency. So there's no pressure, right?
Some Democratic governments are taking steps to confront the Extractive Industries and the Accumulated Wealth Party to regulate them so as to stop further harm and setting up processes to ensure that they pay something for the harms already caused.
Everyone knows we're in serious, serious trouble.
To recap : The Extractive Industry owners are a political party called Wealth. Their vast Wealth is what gives them political power - they can fund think tanks, news papers, TV stations and online misinformation with which they can and do influence voters; they can 'donate' money to politicians and they can hire psychologists and other mercenaries, and they do. They do this to protect their ability to amass wealth which they need to be able to maintain and exercise the political power to protect their interests.
For the Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party, this is indeed a vicious cycle. They are addicted, and only a united electorate, a grass roots grounded in evidence and solidarity, has the capability to help them end their addiction, by regulating their behaviour through the agency of Democratic Legislatures taking due responsibility.
The Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party get their wealth by externalising costs, by paying low wages, by thrashing the environment, by refusing to devote the resources needed to prevent the harms associated with their industries, from acquisition of raw material to end of life disposal, and everything in between. This is causing immense avoidable harm. That is not acceptable on any level.
If they are forced, or helped, nurtured and regulated by democratic Governments directed by evidence led caring adult electorates to pay the costs, their industry's would under current measures barely break even, and they would lose their political power. It is the loss of power that keeps them awake a night. That is their biggest fear - without their power they would become ordinary citizens. People just like you and I.
Beautiful People no more - oh dear.
But actually, they could and would become far more beautiful in depth and humanity than their current imaginations could possible envision. Yes I know someone like Trump or Johnson has no interest in that at all.
To be truly humane is to eschew the leverage of power over others for it's own sake, for egoic satisfaction or for personal gain, to fully share the power to nurture one another, as a conscious choice, knowing one could choose otherwise. Being ethical is as much as possibility as being unethical is. It is that choice, to be ethical, knowing you could just as easily not, that makes for profound humane beauty.
Empathic Civilisation.
Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, : "It takes strength to be an empathetic leader."
Jose Mujica, President of Uruguay : "If we lived within our means - by being prudent - the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction. But we think as people and countries, not as a species.."
Jeremy Corbyn : “Life is life. Some of the wisest people you meet are sweeping our streets" and "We are one of the richest countries in the world, and there is absolutely no reason why anyone should have to live in poverty.”
Ghandi : "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice."
The hierarchy of power and violence cult prefers to inculcate a fatalistic world view in the population it presides over. But that is a lie. We are naturally a learning species. These leaders chose to learn and grow, and lead as student and teacher.
I recognise that being born into where I was born, I was exposed to a certain social and experiential conditioning that implanted values which I then internalised. Yet those values are not who I am. They do not define me. Who I am is up to me to define and decide, and I have found that being an ethical humane being, I instinctively choose the path of growth, the way of learning, the life of ethical behaviour, the behaviour of nurture. That is who I am, imperfect as I know myself to be, aspiring towards an unknowable future that is grounded in ethical behaviour in the present, ethical action and the ever present intention for a nurturant outcome
If I am a pure product of genetic, cultural, or class determination, I have no responsibility for my action in the world and, therefore, it is not possible for me to speak of ethics. Of course, this assumption of responsibility does not mean that we are not conditioned genetically, culturally, and socially. It means that we know ourselves to be conditioned but not determined. ~ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom
This is a war
And yes, they - whoever they are - the Accumulated Extracted Wealth Party are waging a war. They see this as a struggle, a fight, a war to protect their entitlement and dominance.
Each of us must face this, as disturbing as it might seem, None of this will be easy. The effort required is immense. The cost of not making that effort and of not obstinately pushing through with it until we succeed to build a nurturing culture and economy, within a healthy polity will be much, much more than immense, it is likely to bring more trauma, more pain, more distress for billions of lovely human beings, and it might possibly be terminal at the species level.
What to do?
Here's an interesting video that tries to take a bigger picture look at systemic change given the problems outlined above. It goes through the various elements and suggests we need, as citizens, to elect legislators who will regulate the accumulated wealth structures so we can reduce harms, repair damages, build in nurturing processes going forwards.
If this work to make our culture a genuinely nurturing industrial economic culture was done and done really well, the owners would likely break even, they could remain in their exalted positions of relative luxury, and they would probably generate three profits - the larger profit would be a healthier system that does minimal damage which it repairs; the day to profit would be a small return to reward their efforts, justly shared across the population and the lasting social and historical profit would the the kudos they'd receive for being eminently reasonable and sensible about the whole thing.
Could a character like Koch or Johnson or Xi imagine being written about in future histories as one who helped the culture retreat from harm causation to engage in a nurturant culture?
I know that right now, given the current narrative of the Establishment, this looks seriously unlikely.
However we are all unfinished beings and the future is likewise unfinished. Hope springs eternal. The well of evolutionary mutual aid is deeper than civilisation, older than the human species. We can do this, and we must.
Ordinary people, people like you and I, and especially the low income workers, who make most of the real wealth in this world, through daily toil: every hour of our lives is equally precious. And yet the largest proportion of the wealth we generate is extracted and accumulated and used as a tool to dominate us. The poor are a permanent externalised cost of that extraction process. I think of that as a fundamental and abominable insult to the very gift of life itself.
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century."― Aneurin Bevan
The story of how life moved from bacteria to plants, to animals, to forests and plains full of living creatures, all the way to people singing songs, laughing with children as we play and learn together, crying when we hurt, seeing, tasting, hearing, running and sleeping to awaken again, and everything else that emerges from being alive and human and loving and sensitive. How lovely it is to be a warm friendly, loving sensitive humane being! No machine, no invention can ever match that!
Humour me, and stop right now - gaze at your hand, close it as you take a gentle breath in and as you exhale feel your hand and fingers, breathe into your hand and fingers. Do this again, and close your eyes, and then move, move your fingers gently, and feel how utterly strangely wonderful this ability to use a hand really is. Then grip something tightly, with all your strength and relax to hold it ever so gently, finding your lightest touch possible. Such a range of capability, such potential for finesse.
Isn't it amazing?
I do this and I think of the millions of years of evolution that went it to making this possible and I am filled with awe and gratitude. I am excited by this thought, this feeling. I think I did nothing to make this possible. How did I, this consciousness, arrive with this incredible set of capabilities? How lucky am I to be so gifted? Are we not truly blessed?
I am more often than not quietly in awe and gratitude for being alive, even though some days I am deeply depressed, or insanely angry, or confused or frightened, or just meh! A toothache is horrible and there are many other pains that are harder to bear, that take the delight out of the moment.
Justice is rooted in sensitivity
Nonetheless, I know that this thing of being alive is oh so precious, for me and for you and for every baby born, for every person who lives, every being that lives - and this, this feeling is why I detest the bully cult so much - how dare they (whoever they are) intrude upon that feeling, impinge on that sensitive life in others, and disturb it, taint it, trample all over it for their power, wealth and pomp. How dare they! That is the seat of my feeling of injustice, at it's most visceral. Before words, the feeling. Babies know this. Infants and toddlers know this. All young children know this. Innate.
The symptoms of chronic trauma are not a disorder.
People who cause trauma, who deliberately expose others to avoidable harms, are a disorder. People who expose others to chronic stress in order to accumulate wealth and power are a disorder.
Social systems that deny these simple truths are disordered. The symptoms presenting in people who have been harmed are not a disorder. They are symptoms, understandable symptoms.
George Bush and Tony Blair are disordered. As leaders or presenters or spokespersons of the institutions of competing militarised powers, they are a disorder. They are a dysfunctional psychology in action.
If they were indicted and put on trial, that would probably go a long way to helping all those harmed by their actions come to better terms with their lived experience, especially if the outcome was to prevent future wars. Most survivors do not want what happened to them to happen to anyone else, ever.
And for me it's not about punishing Blair and Bush et al. although I understand that drive, to hit back, to see that the person who has harmed shares the pain in some way - for me it primarily is about preventing future harms by showing that we, the grass roots, are willing to intervene and forcibly impede those who would initiate and prosecute war or harm causation. Holding them to account and putting them in prison is a matter of health and safety more than it is a matter of punishment. A warning. Don't you dare even think about initiating such action!
It is also true that to indict Bush and Blair is, for so many people, already too late. The vast harm they and those institutions they were embedded has caused is already done, and cannot be undone. Millions are suffering, un-necessarily. Their precious lives have been trampled upon and desecrated. How do we face that? What do we need to do to ease all that suffering?
The past is finished, the future is always unfinished.
How we move in the present matters because here is where we determine the potential of the future. That we recognise what happened in the past and confront it matters in the present because it must be done in the present, it cannot be put off until tomorrow, or the day after, or next week, next month. It must be done in the present.
Part of the difficulty is a general sense of fatalism. Part of the difficulty is that few, if any, will acknowledge that we live within a violent hierarchy cult that has caused millennia of harm, that is causing immense harm today, that appears to be on a trajectory of more harm into the future, we are led to believe by it's size and ubiquity that it is indeed inevitable, there's a deterministic attitude associated with how this history is regarded, how it is understood. Understandable, from the individual perspective. How can I an impotent single human do anything about this?
In spite of all that it does not have to be this way, at all. It is this way, yet it does not have to be, into the future. The future is unfinished. There are more of the decent folk than there are bullies and barbarians. With solidarity the odds are in our favour.
Who pays the price?
1. Externalised costs means that ALL accumulated wealth from industrial culture is toxic, without exception. In war, who pays the price?
3. Governance of the shared commons implies duty of care which in turn demands an evidence based approach to all activity and policy that affects the shared commons.
Any activist that is not integrating these three elements is failing to address reality as it really is.
Poverty is a weapon system.
It’s an open secret that a lot of people in work mostly think poor people are poor because they are inferior. This is a core component of Industrial Social Conditioning.
"The Poor Will Always Be With Us."
That is a lie upon which concentrated wealth and power is founded.
It is also built into every hierarchy religion, it is a lie built into mainstream psychiatry, mainstream psychology and mainstream marketing. The only reason 'the poor will always be with us' is because the system mandates that poverty must be maintained as a whip that is used to keep workers working for industries that cause harm as they operate to accumulate wealth and power into the hands of a hegemonic class, the Ruling Class.
And for those of us who are poor we are made to feel a cloud of shame while the others are destroying the environment and looking down on us.
So the problem is clearly laid out.
Life is utterly amazing and precious, bullies undermine that at every turn, it doesn't have to be this way.
We understand it and thus the next question is how do we resolve the problem?
The only way for the English people, the adults in the country, to start to repair the damage of the past 20 years (and more) of war mongering by the English Establishment, the Ruling Class who direct these wars, is to indict Blair and to indict all those who prosecuted the War of Aggression against Iraq.
The lies about WMD and the grooming promise of Democracy vs the solemn oath that British Combat Troops make, which was exploited at their expense.
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century.” Aneurin Bevan
We need to be ruthlessly politically ethical and honest about all that flowed from that.
Ordinary people, people like you and I, and especially the low income workers, who make most of the real wealth in this world, through daily toil: every hour of our lives is equally precious. And yet the largest proportion of the wealth we generate is extracted and accumulated and used as a tool to dominate us. The poor are a permanent externalised cost of that extraction process. I think of that as a fundamental and abominable insult to the very gift of life itself.
And yes, I know. I know. That's not going to happen any time soon. The Establishment will oppose and resist that, of course they will. Criminals do not voluntarily walk into the dock. That does not change the facts - the resolution of the problem remains the same. Indict our own war criminals if we want to encourage world peace. Lead by example.
If we want Peace, then we must at least prevent war. Chucking a few war criminals into jail would be a good move in that direction. 'Just saying!'
Look at him: he is guilty, he is culpable and responsible for so much avoidable harm and he knows it. We all know it. He's not the only one. They all need to be held to account, and we all need to understand how we let this happen, collectively. How do we become so politically weak that we cannot impede our government when they are about to commit the worst possible crimes a state can commit? What does this say about the health of our polity?
"Sitting in the dock at The Hague"?
Some day, it must happen.
Peace is more than the absence of war.
How better to help the people of Afghanistan than to indict Blair, to own up to the awful crime that the English State perpetrated upon the Afghani people and to make appropriate reparations to the Afghani people for the damage our political class have inflicted upon them?
It is also, given the days we are living in, absolutely critical to understand that there is no way to generate the international co-operation necessary to meet the challenges of Climate, Environment, Racism, Misogyny and Poverty without confronting war making and bringing it to an end. That means we must account for the harms caused and make it very, very clear that we will prevent further abuses of that nature into the future. It means we must demonstrate the ability to wage justice as a co-operative action.
This task will not be taken up by the Ruling Class who see war as a political utility and a cash cow - it must be us, you and I, and our neighbours, our brothers and sisters across the Earth.
Peace is more than the absence of war
It must be us, the people who are always caught in the crossfire, who always pay the price who extract the price of accountability from the abusers.
It must be us, the people working together as a humane polity, who unite in solidarity for our children, for their children and for all their futures as much as we would do it for our own present.
It must be us who take the democratic legislatures and our judiciaries back from the oligarchy and it must be us who set those institutions and the various arms of the State to serve our people's needs - to build peace, to establish stability, to start the repair of the damage done and to alter our systems of production and consumption systems so that they facilitate the prevention of further harm, be it preventing war or adapting to climate change, cleaning up pollution, repairing degraded environments, enriching our soils, cleaning our rivers, abolishing poverty and destitution and caring for all our vulnerable people as their needs dictate.
Peace is more than the absence of war
The prevailing profit system is built on deceit and externalised costs. WMD lies, and the costs born by the civilians whose cities, towns and villages have been made into combat zones. They did not invite the war, it came to them, unbidden. They paid the price. The cost in horrific deaths, disgusting maimings, devastating displacement, mass trauma and deep psychological distress is beyond all measure - the externalised costs associated with the profits of war supply logistic industrial production and consumption.
The War Against Terror shovelled vast wealth into the hands of a minority, who dominate our polities, and who continue to accrue wealth and power at our expense. Obviously they do not want us to hold them to account.
Peace is more than the absence of war
Enough already!
We all understand the grasp the oligarchy and the powerful have on the news media, on the current economic settings, on our democracies, our institutions and our public spaces. They mean business, and their business is mean, the inhumane desire to grasp power and exclude us from sharing it to improve all our lives. At times their ubiquity, size and aggressive resistance to healthy change suggests a fatalistic appraisal - they are too big to challenge, they have been around for too long, we cannot change them. All of this is true.
We cannot change them. They will not volunteer to change. We can, however, disempower them. That we certainly can do when we work together, and they know this - that is why they devote so much energy to division within our grass roots population. The future is always unfinished. Fatalism about the future is an error of judgement, and a logical fallacy.
And that is precisely why we must work ahead, and work together, from an evidence base. We must take up the work of confronting this situation in spite of their degree of control and influence, we must press ahead without their co-operation.
I think that to do that we must better understand the dark arts of political grooming, economic sabotage, political corruption and manipulation as they present at every level, from the personal to the institutional.
Neoliberals, bullies, authoritarians and dictatorships rely upon fatalism and logical fallacy narratives as psychological weapons that dissuade an oppressed and exhausted yet potentially active population from taking the necessary steps to build social and political solidarity.
Peace is more than the absence of war
We must erase that fatalism with the awareness that our unfinished futures are indeed opportunities, that we can change the situation by our collective efforts precisely because the future is unfinished. Nothing is set in stone, other than stone itself and even stone is weathered to become sand and soil.
The power of the oligarchy, their normalisation of war, their ubiquitous wealth and their interference in our democracies are not inevitable, immutable, immovable. That power is not carved from the rock. That power is not mountains high nor is it oceans deep. That power is human artifice. That power is temporary. That power is not eternal. The power structures do not define the human species and they do not illustrate the human condition, even though they do mark out this cult that claims to be a culture.
Peace is more than the absence of war
We can set them aside. We must. That is our vocation as humane beings, as parents to the next generation, this is our true vocation as neighbours, as friends and family and as a species. To craft a peaceful civilisation worthy of the gift of life.
The future for all our children is way, way, way bigger than the ruling class and the old, sordid bully cult.
It is for the citizens of each and every state to do this work within their own polities, as the first step.
Clean our houses, put them in order. We started to discuss this within England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with diligence, hope and seriousness back in 2006, within The Power Inquiry.
"After eighteen months of investigation, the final report of The Power Inquiry is a devastating critique of the state of formal democracy in Britain. Many of us actively support campaigns such as Greenpeace or the Countryside Alliance. And millions more take part in charity or community work. But political parties and elections have been a growing turn-off for years.
The cause is not apathy. The problem is that we don't feel we have real influence over the decisions made in our name. The need for a solution is urgent. And that solution is radical. Nothing less than a major programme of reform to give power back to the people of Britain..."
"You say you hear us, and that you understand the urgency... if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil, and that I refuse to believe."
I have to say, she'd better believe it. We all should, really.
It is not a negative approach to acknowledge harmful behaviour as harmful. It is, in fact, a hugely positive step as it is the first step towards resolving the problems caused by the harmful behaviour.
Our collective, cultural and individual refusal to admit, to acknowledge, to accept and integrate the evidence all around us, to understand what the corruption, the bloody wars, the environmental destruction really means - the evidence that our rulers and their sponsors are engaged in evil behaviours - is our weakest point.
We dare not go there.
We will not be able to generate the international co-operation needed to create and apply adaptive strategies that help meet the evolving dynamics of climate change, that cease harmful toxifying industrial and agricultural practice, that start the processes of repair and recovery until we confront and cease the war mongering. This is clear. All war is evil, all war is abuse of power.
We install eco-lightbulbs hoping that will be enough. We recycle, we re-use, fingers crossed. We hope and we pray. We drive a Tesla car. Faint hope. Delusion.
Everyday evil is not dramatic, it is banal. It wears a suit, a neatly ironed shirt, sports boyishly tousled hair, wears a charming smile to mask lying eyes. Evil is looking at a bank balance or a power advantage and judging that to have more value than a human life, than the environment, than the well being of others. That decision is evil. Adopting that stance and maintaining it is evil.
Evil is normalised.
Evil is normalised, so much so we do not see it. In order to see evil, we must know what it is.
Evil is consciously allowing, enabling or otherwise permitting avoidable un-necessary harm in order to maintain wealth advantage and power disparity over others. Externalised costs are the very definition of evil. Somebody else pays the price.
It is evil to test cosmetic formulations on captive animals in order to assess how much of the toxic compound can be used, or what toxicity levels one can get away with human use of the product.
There is no need whatsoever to use toxic chemical compounds in any products for use by any person, except for profit. Those tests are protecting future profits, rather than protecting human beings. The captive animals bear untold and intolerable suffering, for shareholder gain. That is evil behaviour.
Excellent, honest and insightful interview with MP Clive Lewis, an Afghan War veteran who shows more humane leadership in this segment, than Sir Keir Starmer has shown since he joined the Labour Party.
Twenty years of war upon Afghanistan, so much violence, nothing to show for it except the prospect of more violence.
Honest history in all our schools would go a long way towards preventing the grass roots population from being manipulated or groomed into accepting war as a tool of State policy, and would undoubtedly help to reduce Xenophobia, Racism and Misogyny.
Hypocrisy
Blair, a proven liar and war criminal walks free, on a generous state pension, whilst Julian Assange, an honest journalist, rots in a prison cell, held under false charges.
Afghanistan never needed the USUK or NATO to guide it's progress.
As Naomi Aldort wrote: "Our children do not need us to shape them, they need us to respond to who they are."
The same applies to sovereign countries. Conquest, NeoColonialism, and the urge to force other cultures to adopt the culture of a dominating State is a negative malign influence, and undermines global efforts at peace and co-operation.
The truth about the Establishments hatred of Corbyn is this : the evidence of the past 20 years implicates a significant cohort of the English Establishment, as war criminals, who prosecuted those awful horrific wars, and who knew what they were doing was both amoral and illegal, though it did enable a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary tax payers to already obscenely wealthy oligarchs who donated heavily to the politicians, buying influence. That is evil behaviour.
Lowkey has a spot on take here.
That is a dishonourable legacy.
Evil is human action, human behaviour, more, nothing less. That means it is tractable, it is something we can confront, challenge and impede, and indeed prevent. Here Rory Stewart lays out a perspective that criticises the action of one American president, without taking the whole into consideration. He even suggests maintaining a foreign military presence in other people's lands is a virtue. It is not a virtue.
"Biden can't say the Afghans are cowards. He left them behind."@RoryStewartUK tells @OliDugmore western leaders have only themselves to blame for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/qJEPY77no1
It is an evil. But Stewart's eloquence masks the evil, by pointing at just one aspect of the evil. He is correct that the way this withdrawal has been handled has exposed Afghanistan's civilian population and civil infrastructure to greater risk than need be - but he does not acknowledge that the USUK/NATO presence in Afghanistan is also a much greater evil.
The unexciting banality of everyday evil.
War is almost always about someone making a killing.
$10,000 of stock evenly divided among America’s top five defence contractors on September 18, 2001 — the day President George W. Bush signed the Authorization for Use of Military Force in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and faithfully reinvested all dividends, it would now be worth $97,295.
"Several commentators address this dynamic in the 2005 documentary “Why We Fight,” about a warning that President Dwight Eisenhower issued about the military-industrial complex. Former CIA contractor and academic Chalmers Johnson states, “I guarantee you, when war becomes that profitable, you’re going to see more of it."
Concentrated Wealth is the most powerful political collective among the developed nation states.
War is not cheap.
The political power of Concentrated Wealth is based upon externalising costs.
Somebody else pays the price. Leveraging power to dump the costs onto others is evil.
Boris Johnson's behaviour evil. Read a list of his decisions that burdened others with the cost of his egoic avarice.
Tony Blair's behaviour is evil. There were no WMD in Iraq, and even if there had been, the War of Aggression against Iraq would still have been amoral, and illegal.
Jacob Rees-Mogg behaviour is evil. Food banks are indeed graciousness, yet the policies that created the need were one's he pursued, with others for a decade. Uplifting indeed!
The behaviour of Taliban 1.0 was evil. Theocracy always is.
The behaviour of the Saudi Regime are evil. Theocracy always is. Others pay the price.
The behaviour of the Vatican is Evil. Theocracy as a political hegemon always is. They protect their power at immense cost.
The grooming of 'Incels' as a violent political misogynist movement is evil. Grooming always is.
behaviour of NATO is evil. War is dishonour on every measure. Nobody wins in war. War is a losers enterprise.
Nigel Farage's behaviour is evil. Grooming always is. Exploiting vulnerabilities in other people is evil.
Keir Starmer's behaviour is evil. Sending children into schools, to spread the virus, in spite of the available evidence proving that it was unsafe to do so. No ifs, no buts.
Jacinda Ardern's behaviour is not evil. She places empathy at the centre of her policy decision making.
Donald Trump's behaviour is evil. The art of the steal, the grift, the con, the grooming of vulnerable people.
Obama's behaviour as an American President prosecuting multiple wars is evil. Drone warfare expanded, killing more and more civilians. Funding violent militia in Libya and Syria. Supporting war against Yemen. And he is charming, urbane has a wide smile. So what?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's behaviour is not evil. Empathy for the vulnerable modulates her policy deliberations. She seeks to prevent harm.
Darren Grimes behaviour is evil. Grooming other people through their vulnerability always is.
Noam Chomsky's behaviour is not evil. He has always spoken truth to Power, properly researched and ruthlessly accurate, he has never faltered.
Katy Hopkins's behaviour is evil. Grooming always is.
Patrick Fagan's behaviour is evil. Grooming always is. A psychologist who misuses his knowledge to exploit vulnerable people.
Gabor Mate's behaviour is not evil. He presents the evidence of socially induced trauma's adverse affects on vulnerable folk, to raise awareness and suggest ways to recovery and prevention. He does this diligently.
Most ordinary folk, most of humankind are not evil.
Most of us ordinary folk are caught in the cross fire of systemic evil, and most of us are trying out very best to get by, doing the best we can by ourselves and their families. Most of us ordinary people are innocents thrust into this mess by accident of birth. There's also a significant cohort who are actively trying to counter evil, attenuate the impacts of evil, a constituency of helpers and protectors and healers and pragmatic activists.
And yes, there are evil folk among us too.
The US and UK Military Command (one could argue - all military commands) are, at best, at a rather long stretch, and I am being really, really generous here, decent enough people who are manipulated by evil people, if not evil in and of themselves.
If, at best, they are decent people manipulated by evil, then they are not that intelligent, they are not that brave, they are not really courageous nor are they worthy of their status. They enable the evil rather than challenge the evil. Whose freedoms do they wage war for?.
These people and these powerful hierarchy of violence organisations are all examples of liars and lies that are institutionalised to permit avoidable harms to happen, which do not prevent harm at source, which do so for their personal and institutional gain.
I do understand that for combat veterans this is a huge problem.
Imagine the trauma of extensive violent combat, tour after tour of shocking violence, carrying that, enduring that because you believe you were serving a decent cause? But it was a lie.
To admit that you were manipulated and groomed into performing the most horrific acts of violence, repeatedly, under the pretence that they were fighting for 'freedom' would be too much to bear, alone.
To turn to civilians who praise 'the sacrifice of our brave men and women' and say 'you are being misled by really evil people' who misled me and convinced me to do intolerable harm to others, my hands are bloodied, my spirit is tainted, my mind seared with agonising violence, my heart is broken.
To say to civilians, to those who love you, that your praise is a denial of what really happens, your concept of our bravery is a lie, your desire to believe in that lie no longer protects us - that is too much to bear.
For us civilians to hear that, to bear the burden with the combat veterans, to accept some shared responsibility for that immense sorrow, to admit that our brothers and sisters never fought for our freedoms, to admit we too were manipulated and exploited, and to understand that we too must sit with the trauma, the pain, the sorrow, the grief and then we must resolve to take action to prevent this from ever happening again.
That is courage above and beyond anything we know of.
There is immense grief here. Immense loss. Unspeakable pain and sorrow, masked by stoic perseverance and resilience, obscured by coping and mere survival - all of which is exploited wilfully by really evil people and really evil organisations.
If the Taliban are evil, they are no more or less so than the USUK and NATO organisations they have been waging war with for the past 20 years,
The only way to cease war is to wage peace, and peace is more than the absence of war.
Peace can only start with the absence of lies. We must face the truth, which is simple, complex and is also complicated. None of this will be easy. Doing nothing is not easy either.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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Johnson, and many of the people entrusted with the power to govern, are men who went to English Public Schools, all male boarding schools, where they learned early to behave in the way we are seeing them behave today. In such schools, the children are forced to learn to 'live with the un-natural situation' by denying their vulnerability. I know this from my own experience. 12 years of 'elite' Catholic Boarding Schools distorted my emotional and psychological being. It is not a normal, healthy environment for any child to grow up in.
This begs the question: are such men as they have become truly fit to Govern the shared commons for the entire population of the UK?
Boris Johnson, centre front, at Eton. Photograph: Richard Shymansky from News Syndication/Gillman & Soame UK Ltd / News Licensing
Richard Beard has written about that experience, because he too endured the English Boarding Public School system, and he has been writing about the psychological harms, all avoidable, caused in those schools and was instrumental in setting out the awareness of how this dynamic afflicts those who seek out the power to rule, and in turn how that afflicts us all.
Q: "Boris Johnson and David Cameron attended similar schools at a similar time. How do you think it shaped them?
A: (Beard) In so many ways. Almost every day I read the paper and think, yes, I recognise that. Recently, it’s the idea that you just have to live with stuff – with Covid, for example. Just as at school you just had to live with your parents leaving you behind, with the daily authoritarianism, with not going home for weeks at a time. This is a very private-school idea – you just have to live with social injustice."
The Bullingdon Club - Ruling Class Scions at Play?
In this video (see below) Prime Minister Johnson, of England publicly and brazenly implies that countries like New Zealand, Vietnam, China, Finland, Iceland and others were 'panicking' and taking 'medically irrational' action that would cause economic harm in the face of a global pandemic of the SARSCOV2 virus, and he rejects taking appropriate action. The outcome of his decision compares adversely with the outcomes in those other 'panicked' countries on every rational measure - in terms of public health, mental health, economics and civil liberties. The lack of empathy and concern for the vulnerability of the population, for whom he has taken responsibility, to this new virus is astonishing!
The evidence for this is incontrovertible. Johnsons brazen rejection of elimination of community transmission at that precise stage amounts to a deliberate, intentional conscious act of national, population level abuse. News Media has protected the Johnson misGovernment. Labour, under Starmer, has supported the Johnson misGovernment and ejected from Parliament the leading voices that might have voiced a more rational and honest opposition.
Are we learning to live with a culture of abuse. Habituation to distal power and powerlessness, poverty, war and corruption as 'part of the Human Condition', part of 'Human Nature'? Is this the 'new normal'?
Britain Is a Conquest Word.
Great always referred to the dominance of all of these Islands and their peoples by the English Ruling Oligarchy. Patriotism is an abomination, if there is poverty structured into the situation of that Nation. Patriots scream, they wail and cry' Freedom!' but they never, ever seek to abolish poverty within their territory.
The so-called United Kingdom was united by conquest, violence and guile, never by free choice of a free people. Unlike the EU. Which was chosen, by every country that joined, pretty much.
Thus it is logical the political inheritors of the conquerors, the asset owners who ruled the British Empire which conquered the Ottoman Empire during WWI and carved it up, badly, also supported the creation of the State of Israel, as a mother supports a child. Israel is a bastard child of the British Empire. Partition has long been a strategic policy imposed to impede others from making progress.
"There's horrible, horrible people floatin' about......"
Mhairi Black speaks about Westminster, the House of Commons, and the reality of what goes on in that building.
"People who you see, and ask how has no one evaluated you yet? - there's something seriously dark in that person's thinking."
Ayn Rand Fan Club?
People like Ayn Rand fan Sajid Javid who accuses people who care for others of 'cowering before the virus', people like Cyril Smith a known child molester, who remained unmolested by the Police throughout his odious reign oft terror, people like Tony Blair who lied and manipulated others to prosecute a number of lethal wars, people like George Osborne who used lies to push Austerity which caused deliberate harm to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people like Winston Churchill who ordered Greeks who collaborated with the German Nazi invaders to attack and murder other Greeks who had fought the Germans, who wanted a democratic Greece freed from Monarchy. Churchill even paid them to do this dirty, bloody job. People like that who cause harm to others in pursuit of personal power.
Venal, cruel, adept at grooming ordinary citizens into carrying out extraordinarily cruel behaviour and murderous action.
We citizens who live here in England are ruled by a culture of professional bullies who pose as democrats, who offered up a carefully engineered toxic mime of democracy to the people, the people who had no option other than to accept that offer or face violence (Peterloo, Orgreaves, Grenfell, COVID19) - violence can present in many ways, including deliberate negligence and harassment.
Perhaps in the midst of this deliberately mismanaged epidemic, more of the English people are seeing this, if only because the steel hand has shed the velvet glove at home and the most vulnerable are being thrown under various buses.
Freedom and Opinion
The Freedom Day, and the Freedom from Tyranny March where the attendees were encouraged to identity, locate and document Health Care Professionals who were compared to Nazi Medics indicted at Nuremburg, many who were hanged, the implication that HCPs should be executed. Incitement.
Exploiting emerging vulnerability
The English Government aka The English Ruling Class are adept at exploiting every emerging vulnerability within the population they Rule over, and they are so good at it, that they can enrol enough of the vulnerable into performing actions of collective self harm whilst believing the exact opposite, inciting the gullible to go further than what would be considered rational, to act in utter confusion and cause more damage to the welfare of the shared commons, and maintain the status quo.
Take for example the way they turned a peace oriented unemployed militant working class into foolhardy warriors who would die in their hundreds of thousands, by deft use of using propaganda, in just a few short months as The Great War loomed, is a fine example of this capability.
World War 1, as it has since been named, which was a European War, it was not really a 'World War' although the British drew in working class males from across the Empire to slog it out in the bloody, shit filled, gore dressed trenches.
Fighting for Freedom, inspired by the Rulers. Freedom Day!
Learning to live with all this.
"Learning to live with....." is a song of submission.
Learning to live with Misogyny.
Learning to live with Racism.
Learning to live with Poverty.
Learning to live with Warfare.
Learning to live with Pollution.
Learning to live with Conquest.
Learning to live with Bullying.
Learning to live with Occupation and Settlement.
Learning to live with 'The Virus'.
and why not
Learning to live without Misogyny.
Learning to live without Racism.
Learning to live without Poverty.
Learning to live without Warfare.
Learning to live without Pollution.
Learning to live without Conquest.
Learning to live without Bullying.
Learning to live without Occupation and Settlement.
Learning to live without 'The Virus'?
The shutting down of self empathy that being bullied all the time can induce reduces empathy for others. To merely survive by shutting down. Taking no preventative steps.
The habituation of survival of the fittest can lead to abandoning the more vulnerable as 'weaklings'. Open up, save 'the economy', save our 'mental health', give us back our 'Freedoms'?
The accommodation to Sexism leads to suppression of the true self which is more than the perception of one's sex, which is an accident of birth rather than something one chooses. One can choose gender, as gender is a cultural perception. Culture can and does change.
The acceptance that the poor will always be with us is submission to the unjust concentration of both Wealth and Power as 'normal' part of the human condition. It is no such thing.
And something within my being rejects all those submissions, all those accommodations even though I do understand that these are coping mechanisms, and they have some merit.
Even as I understand those useful forgetting's are the Emperors clothes that I wear, which I don to protect me from going crazy with despair and horror, something within bridles at every injustice, every act of exploitation and every selfish, immature, dehumanised action that undermines the shared commons, every piece of litter dropped that I see as I walk my local streets and parklands rankles yet still stimulates away at my humanity. I am not alone in this.
Learning to live with our national domestic abuser, learning to live with Johnson, Trump, Bolsonaro, Hitler, Cromwell, Saddam, Netanyahu is not at all learning to live well.
Sajid Javid accused those who wish to protect the vulnerable and the economy at the same Time as 'cowering' from the Virus.
Mr. Javid, a banker, who has zero expertise in Health Care Systems, who is now the political controller of the English Health Care System, is a man who was among those who organised the fraudulent CDO scam, which crashed investment banks and others who had bought the dodgy CDOs.
He personally profited hugely from all of that and paid none of the costs, he got away with it, he then entered politics, in 2010, and has been an ardent supporter of Austerity (ideological abuse of vulnerable people based on a deliberate lie) and today he demands we all learn to cease 'cowering' from the virus, he says we must learn to live with the virus' in order that we also continue to live with his fraudulent culture.
I refuse to 'learn to live with' that.
I will have to endure it all, for I am impotent. I am a tiny, weak individual citizen. But I will not submit, go silent, turn away, ignore the injustice or flee to the safety of myth, theory and selfishness. At least not today I won't.
I say our species knows already how to live well on this Earth - and that means to live as nurturing partners with all living systems, co-operating with life rather than trying to dominate and exploit. I say the Dominator Culture is the thing that blocks all such effort and intention to live well.
Culture change does not need to be a revolution or an evolution, just an awakening, a remembering of who we truly are, followed by daily action, individuals working as part of a collective, autonomy and sovereignty intact. The Egalitarian way lies ahead of us. Elimination of community transmission is a co-operative task, and where countries have managed to limit the virus and even eliminate it with their communities that co-operation is realised through daily effort.
Here the spreaders are also splitters. The divisive, argumentative, opinionated argy bargy 'culture wars' are designed to undermine the population that is co-operating, keeping the virus at bay, even as they are told to reach out for 'freedom' : and they are mostly failing, people's willingness to care for one another remains stable, strong, constant, and even though the splitters and spreaders have the biggest marketing budgets, the caring is holding strong, quietly resisting.
The Johnson Government claims kudos from the success of the NHS Vaccine rollout, the European and English collegiate development of the Vaccine, and rejects responsibility for the harms associated with rejecting elimination strategy has caused, and most people in England see right through that.
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