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What Cure for Global Evil?
A doctor prescribes activism to save fragile civil society, and humanity.
Dr. James Orbinski tends a patient. Photo: Steve Simon.
"Suffering is Optional" declares a headline on the latest cover of Shared Vision, but that odd perspective is hard to square with the harrowing accounts of human suffering visited on the innocents of three continents in James Orbinski's An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-First Century.
Orbinski, the Canadian physician who served for more than a decade with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), took his darkest journey into the abyss of human suffering during the Rwandan genocide, when hundreds of victims overwhelmed his Kigali clinic.
It was there, as he desperately sought to staunch the wounds of a woman raped and then mutilated in the most unspeakable fashion, that he came closest to despair.
It was this patient who, holding his arm, said "ummera - sha" -- "courage, my friend" -- and sent him on to help other patients while she awaited death. Her quiet, selfless compassion guided him through many more horrific experiences.
Orbinski's patient had few options, but his outstanding book makes it clear that global society has many options -- most of which it refuses to exercise -- to reduce or even eliminate much of the war, famine and disease that cost hundreds of thousands of lives every year.
Humanity's ultimate challenge
By allowing us to see these catastrophes as he has, through the eyes of a physician, Orbinski forces us to consider the terrifying and widening gap between the values our society claims to uphold and our actions.
Hundreds of thousands died in Rwanda while UN diplomats haggled over the precise meaning of the word "genocide," delaying for weeks the arrival of military forces that could stop the slaughter.
Writing from ground zero, in Rwanda, Somalia and Afghanistan, Orbinski shows how individual men, women and children were uprooted, killed or starved by geopolitical or corporate considerations in countries they had probably never heard of.
Time and again, the United Nations proved unequal to the challenge, often because member countries undermined its effectiveness. It is a numbing record of negligence that raises profound questions about our ability to survive on this planet.
If united humanitarian action is so difficult in the face of genocide, how likely is it we will achieve a global consensus on the need for measures to stop global warming?
If international patent law trumps the need for generic antiretroviral drugs in many countries, as it did for many years, how likely is it that global action is possible to control the hunger created by spiraling global commodity prices?
Civil society's fragile promise
In this tautly written and absorbing story, Orbinski describes both the evolution of humanitarian responses to disaster and war, as well as the growing role of media exposure in triggering an international response.
Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the United States and its allies have increasingly used the moral shield of humanitarian action to justify military intervention, when it suits their purposes. The clearest example was the bombing of Serbia, which accelerated the ethnic cleansing it was ostensibly designed to end.
In Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, Western nations also found compelling reasons to unleash their armed forces, with or without UN sanction, with devastating consequences. Equally often, however, these same governments have found it easy to look the other way.
Orbinksi finds hope in recent victories at the global level. He is encouraged by the convention against land mines, the provision of generic AIDS medications to developing countries and the creation of the International War Crimes Tribunal, although some believe the threat of trial at the Hague is actually prolonging the resistance of some African insurgencies that otherwise could collapse.
Ultimately, however, Orbinski believes the only enduring solutions will emerge from the collective political action of committed individuals, "the force of a citizen's politics that openly debates the right use of power and the reasoned pursuit of justice."
This nascent global civil society, the proliferating non-governmental organizations that have doubled in number to almost 5,000 since the fall of the Berlin Wall, is the focus Critical Mass, the Emergence of Global Civil Society.
Where are the victories?
More text book than a call to action, this collection of academic essays documents the emergence of a world-wide network of dedicated activists and humanitarians who seek to represent the rest of us in global controversies.
Tracing the roots of their movement back to the 18th century campaigns that ended slavery, the global NGOs work on the margins of global economic summits, UN conferences and in gabfests as diverse as the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum.
Their campaign goals are admirable, but clear wins are hard to find. The International Monetary Fund, which must take the blame for untold misery, poverty and social dislocation, has proved utterly immune to external scrutiny designed to make its operations more accountable to the norms of international human rights. (The new government of Rwanda, for example, was required to pay the debts incurred by the genocidal administration that it replaced.)
If curbing the excesses of the IMF is difficult, then reining in multinational corporations that exploit the suffering of millions through patent and trade law is even more so.
Despite successful campaigns against certain corporations in certain countries for limited periods of time, there remains no global mechanism to regulate international business. The emerging new movement for "corporate social responsibility" remains more a public relations project than a coherent program to protect or advance human and social rights.
It is against these sober realities that Orbinski's book must be considered.
In a world in which "market solutions" are increasingly offered as the remedy for almost any violation of common decency or the public interest, Orbinski documents both how this laissez-faire attitude reinforces humanity's capacity for evil and the necessity of collective political action in response.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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- The Big Download Whacks Cities
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- Should We Subsidize Work?
- 'The Dictator'
58
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ME2
3 years ago
Disappointed - again.
the header for this article promises insight into how NGOs, etc might "turn the tide" :
"A doctor prescribes activism to save fragile civil society, and humanity"
Instead, we read another account of a doctor coping with enormous difficulties, and yet another recounting of the lack of any real concern on the part of Corporations and their paid-for politicians. All of which we've been told about a hundred times before.
And so after reading this, and instead of coming away with some new slant on how to help or speed up the NGO process, all we're left with is even more despair.
So I'm forced to ask "Why does the Tyee even bother to keep offering such stuff?" " Do the editors think we're so unaware that we need more indoctrination?"
Fiat lux
3 years ago
I repeat for the umpteenth
I repeat for the umpteenth time: Wealth can not be created, only taken from other sectors, the environment and the future.
The above story, and human history in general, are the clear proofs of the simple and long known Laws of Thermodynamics. In short, I didn't invent this, we all learn it in highschools around the world, then spend years in universities , being brainwashed to ignore it.
The NAFTA, WTO, IMF and generally the stock and money markets are criminal organizations designed for "wealth taking" and the destruction of all and any local decision making powers, the main purpose of all empires, ideologies and economic theories.
There's no real causes for food food shortages and hunger around the world, other than the control of food production collectivized in the hands of the few of the multinational corporate mafia, with the universities and pimp governments sanctioning and enforcing their criminal actions in the name of "economic efficiency", which means unlimited profits in the hands of a few and to hell with everybody else.
Ed Deak.
RickW
3 years ago
Follow the Philosophies Gehind Most Religions...
...and we will indeed experience "world peace". The fact that we do not have world peace, shows equally well our mutual global hypocricy in such matters.
Perhaps if we fired all the bishops, imams, rabbis, and other shamanic fraudsters.....?
Jeffrey J.
3 years ago
There is Hope
Articles like these are why democracy was invented. To keep informing our citizens so that they can be inspired to do better. Which is why you won't see this excellent piece on Canada's media monopoly. Yet because of the Tyee, Rabble, CCPA, deSmogBlog and many more, alternative media is growing and media monopoly is shrinking. The next step is to do more.
Mr. Orbinski is an inspiration. Along with Canada's own Romeo Dellaire.
http://www.romeodallaire.com/
Thank you Geoff Meggs and the Tyee for keeping society functioning at a higher level.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
Don't forget the economics
Don't forget the economics professors at the mental levels of Alfred Rosenberg's racial theories.
Capitalism has now become a worse form of enforced collectivization, killing more people than Stalin's kolkhozes, or Mao's Cultural Revolution.
The world will never have peace and reasonable living standards for everyone until it sheds all religions, ideologies and turns to physical laws based economic systems.
Ed Deak.
snert
3 years ago
So
Stalin and Mao were economic models or Capitalism is a person, which is it?
Economic models don't kill people. People do.
dorothy
3 years ago
Get them straight (the facts)
"Perhaps if we fired all the bishops, imams, rabbis, and other shamanic fraudsters.....?"
Bishops and imams, maybe. They are universalist in their thinking, and so help empire building. Rabbis, on the other hand, do not peddle religion, nor care what God(s) the next guy worships. They stand for peaceful coexistence. Shamans, where did you get the idea they are out to perpetrate 'fraud'? I respectfully request that you retract this derogation of a group [OFFENSIVE COMMENT DIRECTED AT ANOTHER COMMENTER REMOVED. YOU MADE YOUR POINT. NO NEED TO GET PERSONAL. -MODERATOR.]
ME2
3 years ago
Comments
Jeffrey, however well-intentioned or factual an article is, if it is formulaic and offers no new information, it becomes simple American-style propaganda.
Snert, Ed made his POV perfectly clear with the observation :
"Capitalism has now become a worse form of enforced collectivization...." (hiliting mine)
I agree entirely with him.
And Dorothy, Rabbis are just as agressive as any other clergy. One has only to view Israel's religious right to see the truth in that. And re shamanism, I doubt anyone but Suzuki would dare an opinion one way or the other.
What is for sure is that ALL Western religions mouthe peace while promoting war.
PeteL
3 years ago
Hi-Jack
Awful nice to hear Professor Micheal Byers intends to run in Vancouver Centre. Its going to take esteemed informed persons to bring rational thought back to our foreign affairs policy.
Micheal, you will have my support in this riding.
snert
3 years ago
"enforced collectivization"
Where?
cocean
3 years ago
Disagree with ME2
At least this time I do. The review above was well written and moved me to want to read both books.
Yes, I'm already an activist. But I'm also eager to discover more about the issues, particularly from a personal perspective such as Orbinski's. And if there are new ways I can help - such as supporting certain of those NGOs in some way - I want to know of them.
RickW
3 years ago
dorothy
Nope! I included them because they represent religion, and religion has led to the world being what it is today. Plain and simple!
Anyone who insists that the human race is in any way above the laws of nature is peddling snake oil, and needs to be tarred-and-feathered, and run out of town on a rail.
RickW
3 years ago
snert
Any city.
ME2
3 years ago
Re "Where?"
We can see it on the Canadian and American Prairies, for example, where tax laws, subsidies etc,to agribusiness makes small farms and mixed farming "uneconomic". So, as small farmers are forced off their land, the land is bought up and assembled into huge, usually single-crop megafarms. In the USSR Russia they would have been called collectives - kolkhozes.
This is clearly driven and supported by politics and not "free enterprise" economics, and just as with state collectivation, has been done without reference to the will of the people.
The same thing is happening in Eastern Europe where as a condition of joining the EEC, those states have to allow the entry of subsidised European farm products, rendering tens of thousands of small family farms "uneconomical".
The logic for doing so is held to be the achieving of economies of scale. While the practice is favoured by our gov'ts mostly for geopolitical reasons, It is no accident that it also favours the Corporations.
That reasoning is precisely the same as was held by the Stalinist and Maoist regimes, and although in our case it is not called "collectivisation", the result is exactly the same, even though the mechanics are different.
I can recall reading extensively in the Cold War days why such megafarms were inefficient as compared to the prototypical free enterprise family farm, and now as we see this prostitution of that ethic via uncompetitive monopolies, we are watching the price of food spiralling up.
You can call it what you want, Snert, but it is still collectivisation.
"If it quacks like a duck........."
snert
3 years ago
So how many
millions of prairie farmers have been killed in this "collectivisation?"
RickW
3 years ago
Wow snert! Are you as dense
Wow snert! [PERSONAL COMMENT REMOVED. -MODERATOR.]
What's the difference between collectivization through armed force, and collectivization through bankruptcy?
ME2
3 years ago
Snert
The millions of farmers (between six and ten million) who died as a result of Soviet collectivisation, were mainly Ukrainians (80-90%) who starved during a drought in the region during 1932-33 - The Holodomor. (see Wiki)
The starvation was primarily the result of incredibly boneheaded bureaucratic mismanagenent driven by Stalin's desire to achieve "Five-year-Plan" crop production goals by any means possible. Typical of Stalin, concern for human life was utterly beyond his ken.
Collectivisation was not the cause of the deaths, but rather, how it was managed.
But continuing with the parallels I drew above, while our Corporations do not visit physical violence upon our small farmers, that doesn't make the results of the far more subtle economic violence any less real.
And more than just coincidently, a genuinely effective means of fighting these thieves is to buy from local farmers.
ME2
3 years ago
Another thought
For perhaps the majority of the farmers who were collectivised, the loss of freedom was as great as the loss of land.
And so too with our own farmers forced off their land here. But then, they can go find a job in a factory, just like so many Kulaks did.... Right?
So what's the problem, eh Snert?
RickW
3 years ago
ME2
Of course, today it would be "burger-fliping", thanks to the inane Liberal and Conservative practices of eliminating manufacturing............
Fiat lux
3 years ago
Thousands of farmers, forced
Thousands of farmers, forced off their lands around the world, have committed suicide. India is one of the worst cases. In the USA approx 2/3 of farmers have been forced off the land within the past 30, or so years through the monetary manipulation of prices by middlemen.
Millions of Mexicans forced off by NAFTA and into mega city paperbox slums, where their children are now starving. At least before they had something to eat. 70% of Mexicans now below poverty levels, thanks to NAFTA.
Basically the same here in Canada, where approx. 10% of the total number of farmers are forced off every year, communities are destroyed, children bused to schools for hours every day.
Yet, it can be and has been proven time after time that small farms are far more efficient, but are forced out by the price fixing of middlemen, while raising prices in the stores. This is called "economic efficiency" by brainwashed economists and bought politicians.
Big companies are big donors to the "right" political parties, small farmers aren't.
E.g. The present prices paid for calves are about half of what they were 10 years ago, while store meat prices have gone way up. Thanks to the control of the collectivized Canadian meat markets into the hands of foreign outfits, like Cargill, making billions in profits, stolen from producers and consumers.
In other words the intention is world food and with it the dictatorial control of humanity by mega corporations.
Communism under another flag.
Ed Deak.
snert
3 years ago
Which is it, Rick W?
Mass killings or flipping burgers?
The problem, Me2, is that an allusion was made to mass killings attributed to current "enforced collectivisation." Now correct me if I'm wrong but you supported Ed's remark, did you not?
I'm just trying to find out where these killings, excluding genocide, occurred and which country is currently using "enforced collectivisation" to achieve it's goals.
I feel part of the problem here is that that the term collectivisation is being confused with amalgamation and by doing so people are likely to turn to the wrong solutions to resolve any issues that may be required to enhance a 'system' that now feeds more people than at any other time.
Hmmmm? Doesn't that kinda support what I said previously?
"Economic models don't kill people. People do."
So where are all these deaths occurring and just who is the current Mao or Stalin?
Fiat lux
3 years ago
snert, you seem to be one of
snert, you seem to be [PERSONAL COMMENT REMOVED. -MODERATOR.] picking on words, and trying to divert attention from the facts.
The fact that you area hiding behind plum names immediately questions you intentions and actions. I still don't know why this is permitted by Tyee etc. ? Nobody can write letters to papers any more with phoney names, with well reasoned exceptions, so why are people permitted to use several on these blogs, pretending to be a multitude?
The word "killing" can be used in many ways and concepts, and doesn't necessarily have to mean actual "killing" of people. In many cases when people are forced off their chosen lifepaths they might as well be dead and many, soon are.
Amalgamation is still collectivization, whether it is done with bayonets or the perceived power of imaginary capital, created from the air by some bank.
What is your farming, or gardening experience?
I've been in farming, starting with the Green Revolution fraud in 1948, and in organics since 1979, and can assure and prove it to you that if there hadn't been a forced collectivization of farming into the agribiz crime wave, there wouldn't be any food shortages and hunger in the world today.
People are starving. because they're not permitted to become self sufficient to a great degree and the food is stolen from the mouths of their children by miseducated economists and crooked politicians paid off by the multinational corporate mafia, you either admire, or work for.
Ed Deak.
zalm
3 years ago
ME2
Very educational, a most apt analogy, and very, very well done.
zalm
3 years ago
Bananas
...from Ecuador are mostly grown on corporate farms that were formerly land seized by confiscations or evictions by the local or state governments at the behest of corporate owners. When the concept of modern land title was introduced by corporate notions of property ownership, the villagers formerly resident through history on the land were unable to prove same, local governments often refused to provide title (even were the villagers to know to ask for it), which led to the illegal land seizures.
Having been turned over at no cost to the corporate giants, small family plots were amalgamated into plantations and the people hired back at substandard wages and conditions to work them. Having no connections to land or assets anywhere else, villagers became notionally tied to the plantations by virtue of their landlessness. Attempts to look after their interests through politicization or unionization were defeated, often violently using extra-judicial killings or trumped up charges of trespass or assault, and now the families themselves are mostly unemployed and in ill health, except for their children, who are often employed and in ill health. Life expectancy on plantations is less than 30 years.
I'm not condemning property ownership - no corporation would "invest" without some guarantee of it - just the way in which it was accomplished, in a milieu which put corporate privilege and wealth under the rubric of "capitalism" ahead of both human rights and human life. Sometimes economic models kill people, and "The Banana Wars" in Columbia make clear how this was official government policy of the time.
Thanks goodness things are more civilized now, eh?
ME2
3 years ago
Just bigger bananas
What Snert and the other neocons believe, is that civilisation works best when it reverts to "the law of the jungle" - aka "The Market".
That the Corporation becomes the "Lion" - the King of the Jungle - in this scheme is only normal and natural.
Right, Snert?
KWD
3 years ago
ME2
A bit late getting into this one but what the heck ...
In order “to put new slant on how to help or speed up the NGO process” assumes we know what “help” actually means. It also assumes the collective “we” knows what must be changed.
Unfortunately, human history so far provides overwhelming evidence that we’re moving further and further away from knowing what help is, as well as further and further away from being proactive and more and more reactive.
The reasons are simple. As Ed continues to point out, the evolutionary forces and physical laws of nature that shape us, and the world around us, are inescapable. The individual, and society, change in response to changes in the environment. The depth of our ability to analyze and cope with those changes is determined partly by our genetic history, but mostly by the religious, political and economic dogmas that we have evolved with.
Unfortunately, just knowing and understanding the laws of thermodynamics isn’t enough to see through the distortional thinking that guides religious, political and economic evolution. What Ed talks about is actually thermoeconomics. It’s been around since the 18th century and most folks consider the theory to have little intellectual value.
If we are to “help”, we first need to expose the destructive thinking that lies at the heart of those dogmas. Most folks actually believe good, bad, right, wrong, honest, dishonest, smart, dumb and pride (just a few of the endless list of green and red labels we have been trained to believe in) are real. They aren’t; they’re judgments and they not only distort how we interact with the rest of humanity, they distort our worldview.
Until we seriously examine how we are trained, and what motivates our use of those labels, and how those labels are nothing more than an expression of pain and/or pleasure, the future survival of human life on this planet will be purely accidental.
You can debate from a left or right leaning slant until you are blue in the face … but when it comes to human behaviour nothing of significance will change. NDP or Liberal or Conservative or Communist, it matters not a wit, when it comes to self-interest they’re all the same.
snert
3 years ago
That's right
Change the subject.
FWIW One should not care who the writer is only if the ideas put forth are valid or not.
I challenged this notion of yours....
and now we wind up with the following explanation.
What to think, Ed? Is that a cop-out?
There's a good chance that some people are starving because of the reasons you list but whether or not that is a significant portion of the actual number of starving peoples is debatable. How many people are not starving because we are now capable of producing and distributing far more food per capita than at any time in the past?
BTW Ed my job relies heavily on agri-business. The more fertilizer and grain we ship the more people get fed. I wonder how many people would starve if we stopped?
ME2: Wrong. However, there is always a "King of the Jungle."
RickW
3 years ago
zalm
No, Zalm! It wasn't 'seized' or 'confiscated' -- it was 'amalgamated'.....
ME2
3 years ago
KWD
KWD writes :
"The evolutionary forces and physical laws of nature that shape us, and the world around us, are inescapable. The individual, and society, change in response to changes in the environment."
Wrong, KWD, MODERN humans - in the sense I think you mean - are entirely the products of their cultures.
So-called primitive cultures, such as aboriginals and remote villages in the Andes and the Balkans, all isolated for millennia from infusions of new ideas and technologies, had indeed been shaped by their environnments and had perfectly adapted to them. That is, they modified their lifestyles and customs to fit resource availability. However, that was simply the result of a lack of better technology.
However, when the technologies offering a better lifestyle became avaiable in modern times, they have been beset with the same problems of overuse as the rest of us.
An example of this (and here are others) happened with FN trappers in the North. Prior to the advent of snowmoiles, etc, game abundance and trapping effort was in balance through limited technology. But when the new tools became available, the effort doubled and tripled, driven in part by the cost of buying and fuelling the new machines, and in part by the desire to purchase modern consumables.
In short order, the fur resource began collapsing, and the Federal Wildlife Service had to send in people to teach modern methods of conservation.
On the other hand, our own unsustainable habits, replayed again and again throughout time, are also the direct result of our technologies - aka known as "God" - brought to us through the development and sharing between thousands of previous civilisations / cultures.
That constant technological prowess has always found us yet another resource to exploit, freeing us from the spectre of unending starvation, ("God will provide") Now, ironically enough, that very same prowess now informs us that we have very nearly reached the limits of both God and the environment to provide.
The answers are clear enough, and simply said, involve the three Rs environmentally, and Socialism politically. What is lacking is leadership from our power elites who in their own selfish interests, want us to
follow the same path of greedy exploitation and collapse they have always offered in the past and for which we have always paid the most dearly.
KWD
3 years ago
Sorry for the confusion ME2.
Perhaps I should have made clear what I assumed is self-evident: (culture) our religious, political and economic dogmas are part of the environment. And, those parts of the environment are also subject to evolution.
The problem is, they are evolving in ways that are overwhelmingly destructive not beneficial.
You claim that leadership is “lacking”, and that maybe true, but unfortunately, in order to “involve the three Rs environmentally, and Socialism politically” we first have to look at what you call “selfish interests” and “greedy exploitation”.
The terms selfish and greedy are part of the red and green judgmental label collection. Their use should inform us about what the user (in this case, you) believes is a source of pain or pleasure.
Unfortunately, folks are fooled into believing the judgments are reality. Their use simply confuses our perception of the world around us and diverts attention away from looking at the underlying issues: specifically, what guides our behaviiour.
Simply switching environmental or political ideologies will not solve our “problems”.
ME2
3 years ago
KWD
"Cultures" are human-derived, and are NOT part of what we normally call "The Environment", nor are we today driven by it.
Since of necessity we subjectively "label" most everything, with what would you replace labelling?
Since an ideology usually incorporates a plan of action, how else would you facilitate group action?
snert
3 years ago
Cultures & Petri Dishes
Cultures occur in Petri dishes and wherever critters, including humans, collect in groups.
My take on KWD's comments are that you can't replace labelling but you can be aware of just when you are doing it.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
kwd....Of course, you're
kwd....Of course, you're correct about thermodynamics. I've only been writing about "thermodynamic efficiency" applied to economics for 23 years, so it is no wonder I screwed up !
Always in a hurry, on the run and can only spend a few mins on this machine at a time.
Thanks for the correction!
Snert: The more fertilizer we ship the more land and health we ruin. It is nothing more than the drugging of the land and people for "higher performances". Outlawed for racehorses and olympics, but encouraged for foods? Makes sense.
I was in that Green Revolution racket for 7 years and have seen the results. It killed many of my friends and I was paralyzed for months. That's why we've been organic for 29 years and can show the excellent results.
Now, when we're forced to buy supermarket greens in the winter, often we can't eat it, because they taste like chemicals. No wonder the cancer rate was 2% , 50 years ago, but now we have 30-40 % overall, including small kids who never had cancers years ago. Never heard of leukemia etc. when we were young.
Ed Deak.
ME2
3 years ago
Snert
Touche Snert :- ) But other than a "culture", and using only one word, what else would you call it?
I would argue that POV's on various labellings is mostly what these Tyee threads are all about.
ME2
3 years ago
Ed Deak
Quite a few years back, I read that inner-city Black children suffered a disproportionate rate of asthma and ADD disorders. That was attributed to constantly breathing traffic pollution.
I've also read that one hour on a busy freeway is the equivalent of smoking a package of cigarettes.
Now with all the chemicals we're getting with our food, cancer rates - in fact all such diseases - are going up.
I suspect what we are seeing now are the synergistic effects of these combinations.
G West
3 years ago
Not just inner city Black kids anymore ME2
Have a look at this:
http://www.pediatricianssandiego.com/news.cfm/Article/38596/Childhood-Asthma-Epidemic.html
snert
3 years ago
Life expectancy
With the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa life expectancy is increasing on a global basis. Certainly the rates of increase will peak but the whole world is getting dragged up by it's bootstraps and there is reason to believe that the gaps including that in Sub-Saharan Africa will be reduced in the future.
People get old and die. Now more are dying from old peoples diseases than at any time in the past. More are also living long enough to get cancers that would normally show up at a later stage in life.
Ed: There is nothing wrong with being alert to the problems you mention but the numbers currently fly in the face of what you are saying. That can change but so can a lot of things.
ME2: I won't try to put a strain on some peoples brains by coming up with any number of 'labels' that might fit. I will just add that I believe that 'culture' is innate in human beings. However, unlike all the other creatures on the planet humans are just more cerebral in how we deal with.
Oh, and I forgot yogurt and those hoity toity pearls.
Fiat lux
3 years ago
ME........My wife is a very
ME........My wife is a very healthy woman, out in the garden all the time, we work 7 days a week, never have holidays and are very happy to be active, thinking and working as long as we can lift a finger.
She started developing allergies when we were still in Vancouver, over 30 years ago and they've since grown worse. She can't wear any metal objects, only gold, can't drink from a can, and we haven't been able to eat in restaurants, except the odd pizza and at Tim Horton, for years, without her becoming violently sick.
Now if the chemicals in foods and plants effect her, and millions of others, as we've found out, they must be effecting everybody else, even if there're no immediate symptoms and reactions.
E.g. The wife of our computer guy, a young lady, can only eat our organic beef, as she gets very sick from the supermarket stuff.
Yet, governments are suing the EU under WTO rules, to force the importation of chemically/corn fed North American beef on them, even if they don't want it.
The same for GM foods, the most idiotic crime, apart from the neoclassical theory, without any benefits whatsoever, only a profit racket.
The miracle is that not more people are sick, but give our rulers time and they'll accomplish it.
There was a newsclip on BCTV some weeks ago, about 1 in 42,000 children born autistic in 1942, when the first records were taken, but now the figure is approaching 1 in 12 and could become 1 in 7.
Yet, nobody can figure out the reasons, when everything is saturated with chemicals ?
So much for hi tech "wealth creation".
Ed Deak.
ME2
3 years ago
Asthma, etc.
As far as I know, Snert, life expectancy rates in the Third World are dramaticly rising primarily as a result of fewer deaths at birth and at very early age. Three factors seem most important, the first being improved health care for expectant mothers and at birthing. The next is fewer children as a result of contraception, etc, and the third, childhood vaccinations.
Ivan Illich claims that our increased life expectancy in the Western World is almost entirely due to the provision of our wide range of Socialistic Public Health Services, which includes our taken-for-granted public water and sewer systems. He claims, and I agree, newer medicines, etc, have added little to the increase.
Re the increased rate of disease supposedly as a result of larger numbers of senior citizens, I've read that this is bunkum, but perhaps someone else here has the actual data, pro or con.
GWest's site says little about causes of childhood disease such as the current epidemic of Asthma, ADD and such, except to note :
"Research points to several possible reasons for this, including: less access to quality health care; genetic factors; and higher exposure to environmental factors such as tobacco smoke, dust mites, and cockroaches."
In common with all of our MSM, mention of traffic pollution is not noted as a cause, perhaps so as not to cause alarm over a virtually inescapable modern problem, but the articles I've read state that amongst the noxious aerosols found in that blue haze in which freeway motorists are enveloped, are also found particles of asbestos from brakes, along with particles of synthetic rubber as a result of tire wear.
Sure, the biggest cause is second-hand smoke, alright, and we can "DO Something" about that and feel good about it. Right?
And concerning chemicals in our food, Snert, perhaps you're unaware of endocrine imbalances as a result of eating hormoned beef, or pesticides on lettuce? That list is long, fella.
snert
3 years ago
The list is long
but the life expectancy is still going up and regardless of the cause people still have to be fed. More people require more food and it is being supplied.
People are living longer and consequently are susceptible to a lot more diseases where they normally would have died long before those diseases manifested themselves.
This Wiki page covers some of the reasons things may appear worse than they are. The URL won't render properly so you will have to copy and paste into your browsers address bar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_(incidence)#Frequency
Here's a couple of links that deal with Asthma.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_strauss/20071101.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/29/1054177672747.html
ME2
3 years ago
Snert
Thanks for the sites, Snert. The first, however, dealt only with Autism, which I take to be quite different from ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder and its kin)
The second, I found quite interesting inasmuch as it reported mutually contradictory results from the many studies on the causes of asthma, once again hiliting the untrustabiliy of Meta-studies (the throwing of data from many related and unrelated studies into one big heap and then trying to tease selected info out of the pile). This is precisely how the bogus data on second-hand smoke was concocted, incidently.
The third site reported upon suspicions that exposure to Chlorine in swimming pools can initiate Athma. But nothing absolutely definite was claimed.
But both of these sites noted that Asthma in children is dramatically rising. What do YOU think has changed in the last 20 years or so?
Surely by now you don't automatically believe the self-congratulatory pronouncements regarding new findings and developments by the medical professionals?
As for me, I've lived long enough now to know these guys will tell us anything when promoting their next research grant, esp if they promote Gov't objectives.
zalm
3 years ago
RickW
land seized by confiscations or evictions by the local or state governments at the behest of corporate owners
No, Zalm! It wasn't 'seized' or 'confiscated' -- it was 'amalgamated'.....
Eh? Wha'd I do wrong?
RickW
3 years ago
zalm
You inhaled some of snert's rightista spin. Kinda of hard to avoid, considering it's all around us, belching forth like the emissions from smoke stacks, vehicles exhaunsts, and airplane leavings so beloved by the right............
RickW
3 years ago
Ooops! (zalm)
Shudda bin "You did NOT inhale some of snert's rightista spin, which is kinda........."
snert
3 years ago
I would say that
I would say that based on this Wiki page and personal experience that one would really be sticking one's neck out to champion one cause as being the major reason for the increase.
Who knows? It could even be a matter of the chickens coming home to roost. More people with the condition are surviving to pass this negative trait on to their children, maybe?
snert
3 years ago
Rick W
EDITED FOR PERSONAL INSULTS..
I'll reiterate what I said above. "FWIW One should not care who the writer is only if the ideas put forth are valid or not."
...AND MORE INSULTS -- TYEE MODERATOR
dorothy
3 years ago
Religion and such; reply to ME2
“And Dorothy, Rabbis are just as agressive as any other clergy. One has only to view Israel's religious right to see the truth in that. And re shamanism, I doubt anyone but Suzuki would dare an opinion one way or the other.
What is for sure is that ALL Western religions mouthe peace while promoting war.”
You were saying that getting rid of Rabbis, Imams, bishops, and ‘shamanic fraudsters’ would bring us peace. There it is important to draw a distinction, I think, because it’s not the religion that breaks the peace, it is the notion that everyone should adhere to YOUR religion, and you’re gonna make them, whatever that takes. It goes so nicely hand in hand with serving an empire-building effort: you are not stealing people’s turf and turning them into underlings, you are just ‘spreading the glad tidings’ of YOUR saviour.
This is why I think it is wrong to include rabbis and shamans, because I am not aware that any of those groups stand for proselytising. On the other hand, we know the colour of Islam and Christianity in this regard: Always of service to the conquistadores of their own ilk, always out to ‘conquer more souls for their God’.
Suzuki is an expert on Shamanism? And here I believed he was a scientist!
dorothy
3 years ago
more religon, reply to RickW
“I included them because they represent religion, and religion has led to the world being what it is today. Plain and simple!
Anyone who insists that the human race is in any way above the laws of nature is peddling snake oil, and needs to be tarred-and-feathered, and run out of town on a rail.”
First, I am surprised that the incitement to violence is not being edited here, are you asleep, Dave? If you read up on tarring and feathering, you will find out it spells not just a bit of humiliation, but a very painful death!
Religion is not a problem. Actual religion, that is. Religion means ‘that which ties again’. This denotes our reaffirmation of our connection to the rest of the cosmos, and is good for the soul. Far from ‘insisting that the human race is above the laws of nature’, true religions, particularly those connected to shamanic practices, stand in awe of the laws of nature and operate entirely within their scope.
The ‘universalist’ so-called religions, on the other hand, sending mankind into a crazy race of breeding way beyond the globe’s capacity, due to their competitive tendencies, have done more to wreck the peace than any other kind of institution, right in line with corporations. Corporations, however, are merely opportunistic, making use of the abundant substrate to turn a buck, but it was not they who made humans into a cheap commodity, you can thank the Imams and the bishops and other commanders of some God’s armies for that.
On the other hand, I have never been told to breed soldiers, for God or Allah or otherwise, by a shaman. In fact, no shaman has ever told me what to do at all. Therefore, I still would request that they not be included among those called breakers of the peace.
KWD
3 years ago
ME2
… my computer time over the next while will be somewhat limited. I will try to put something together (as brief as possible) that hopefully will generate some insight into what I’m trying to say.
If I don’t get back to you on this thread before it closes, we’ll no doubt meet on another … distortional thinking and judgmental labeling are pretty much universal stumbling blocks that interfere with effective communication and problem solving, and this "global evil" is not going away anytime soon.
If you are interested, the thinking that forms the basis of my take on judgmental labeling comes from folks like Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck … cognitive therapists.
Snert is partly correct …being aware of the use of judgmental labeling is important. But getting folks to understand the nature of the beast and is quite another.
dorothy
3 years ago
royal nonsense
'...there is always a "King of the Jungle".'
Actually, there may be a king of the people happening to currently be living in that jungle. Royal status and landownership being tied togeher, i.e. feudalism, was a new thing somewhere in the course of history and is not original...
RickW
3 years ago
dorothy
You got me on one point -- I should have said "organized religion". I do hereby qualify my assertions.
dorothy
3 years ago
yeah, you're right!
"I should have said "organized religion".
Good show, that IS the distinction that counts - I believe I took the long away around that...
ME2
3 years ago
Dorothy and Rick W
"Organised Religion" Dorothy? So Judaism is not an organised religion? And Rabbis are not the Priest / Imam equivalent for Judaism?
I have no particular quarrel with Judaism, since it acts no differently than the Christian faiths that purport to represent me.
The eye-opener for me has been the eye-for-an-eye reaction of Israel to the Muslims, and its chumming-up with the warmongering US, whose interest in that allegiance is primarily for geopolitical reasons.
I was among those who understood that Israel having nukes made sense from a MAD perspective, and so I now fail to understand why, if it also makes sense from a dozen other national perspectives, it suddenly becomes "proliferation" for Iran to even consider developing nukes when it is being publicly threatened with "tactical" nuclear strikes by both the US AND Israel.
Isn't all this REALLY only about oil and money?
When we start seeing Rabbis as a group pointing out all the hypocrisy, perhaps then I may agree with you that they are indeed different from our own witch-doctors.
And speaking of witch-doctors, FN shamans held a key positions in their society. In light of that fact, and if Suzuki is not an expert on Shamanism, but only a scientist, then where the hell is his credibilily for writing whole books on "The Wisdom of the Elders", and his many other glorifications of pre-contact native society?
Could it be that he used the same sources he's now learning from about CO2-induced GW and getting his addle-pated ideas on gas taxes and carbon credits?
snert
3 years ago
The latest risk factor for asthma
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/health/story.html?id=38e2783c-b7ea-42b9-b4b5-94b748e8853d
KWD
3 years ago
ME2
The points that follow contain some basic “givens”. It’s a list, that if clearly understood (it’s linkages and synergies), can lead to a process of exposing manufactured compliance in belief systems (illusions) that are leading individuals/societies away from cooperative, egalitarian life styles toward ever-increasing hostility and conflict.
Members of any group or society share common histories and beliefs. In order to continue to be accepted by the group, individuals must comply with those beliefs. Deviance has a cost.
Accelerating resource scarcity (such as we are witnessing with global oil supplies) is just one of many realities that can only serve to further entrench societal illusions and accelerate the process of manufacturing compliance.
I believe these points apply universally; and that they exist irrespective of literacy levels, economic status (impoverished or well-off), political and religious beliefs, and ethnicity. I also believe they provide a framework for understanding why no individual, society, country, state or regime (past, present and future) is immune to the social, economic, political and environmental “problems” we have witnessed and are presently witnessing. They form the basis for why we are where we are today, and why we are continuing to move further away from understanding societal illusions.
to be continued ...
KWD
3 years ago
ME2
contd from previous
1. Anger is an emotion and is part of a pain-driven natural survival response (NSR).
2. The alternative to the NSR is extinction.
3. The NRS is as follows: Pain leads to fear (emotion), leads to anger (emotion), leads to resentment (emotion) which leads to a need to react or retaliate (emotion) which leads to hostility, a behavioural response (acting out self-protective destructiveness), which ultimately leads to change.
4. Classical conditioning takes place when pain is linked with a secondary cue (judgment), and eventually the cue alone reactivates and reinforces painful memories that produce anger (much like Pavlov’s dogs were tricked into drooling). Anger is a natural, helpful response.
5. When anger is the response to the secondary cue (bad, dirty, etc.), you are being tricked or fooled into responding to a judgment.
6. As a child you have no choice in the conditioning process, which links secondary cues (bad, wrong, dirty, etc. etc) with pain.
7. People aren’t born with an innate knowledge and understanding of secondary cues: judgments like right, wrong, good, bad or any other human constructs. The similarities in genetically determined wiring and all-encompassing experience base of children presents a universally witnessed NRS. Input from culture and family will overlay these building blocks.
8. The belief in, and conditioning to these constructs is a product of (predominantly parental childhood) training (nurture). The “nature” part of childhood training simply relates to the capacity to respond to training. Trying to separate these into two distinct components (nature and nurture) is counterproductive.
KWD
3 years ago
ME2
more of the same
9. Unless someone is biting, kicking or punching you, or posses a direct/immediate/realistic threat to your welfare, the pain you are experiencing is a result of the way you are thinking. If the way you are thinking is a response to a cue, or the memories the cue elicits, it can be referred to as distortional thinking.
10. Cues (which links to memories that stir body feedback pain as well as judgments) can stir memories that express themselves through the limbic system (the autonomic nervous system). This is the crucial point where the scope of NSR thinking diverges from classical conditioning. The NSR incorporates the fact that the response is not simply “drooling”. The response involves all of the body feedback generated by the limbic system (that goes unnoticed) when the memory was first stored as well as the message from the immediate cue. (The response to a brick held over the foot is much more involved than a simple neuromuscular flinch of the leg. Just as the body feedback one experiences when one is criticized/labeled is not just the result of the judgmental label used at that time, it’s the sum total of feedback from all previous experiences with criticism.) Once conditioned we continue the reinforcement process everytime we use judgmental labels. We unknowingly subject ourselves to another level of conditioning.
11. As a result (because the limbic system is involved) there are two outcomes: a. As you think and stir memories, so you will feel, and b. As you feel and stir memories, so you will tend to think.
12. Because pain underlies our NSR, everyone succumbs to the influence of distortional thinking.
KWD
3 years ago
ME2
are you still with me??
Understanding these points and their linkages is a prerequisite to exposing many societal illusions that persist despite the existence of facts (scientific method) and the principles of logic. Since pain (that is the result of being tricked or fooled through distortional thinking but is pain nonetheless) can be the result of stirring pain related memories, the only hope humanity has for a less painful, continued existence on this planet (in the face of dwindling resources) is to begin to understand the difference, in causation, between real pain (from biting, hitting, kicking, etc.) and pain linked through conditioning.
As we grow, from child to adult, we tell ourselves, and are told, stories about how life is to be lived. These stories become our reality.
According to Guy Claxton (The Wayward Mind) there are two types of stories people tell: implicit (common sense) and explicit (explanations).
The implicit or common sense stories determine everyday habits and values, and our choice of judgmental labels. They tell us what is “normal”, “obvious”, “intelligent”, “good” or “true” and conversely, what is to be treated as “stupid”, “naughty”, “ugly” or “wicked”. Each member of a given society shares a common history of common sense stories.
The explicit mind tries to explain the unexplainable. And the stories we tell are constantly evolving. To cope with this change we invent explanations. In the creation of explanations, the judgmental labels we rely on in common sense thinking become accepted as reality.
Enjoy ...