I am playing with words: A problem is not a question but can lead to questions. An answer is not a solution but can lead to solutions.
News reports are generally dubious, ambiguous, questionable, implausible, illogical, and contradictory, but like many other people I have developed methods, to encrypt the coded information that is hidden between the lines and over the last years a consistent picture emerged. The picture is not pretty and shows mankind on a straight and fast road to destruction.
This observation by itself wouldn't be so frightening, because we have had our party, we were victorious, we conquered everything. We have achieved a lot, one could say: "We had it all!"
We used more energy and resources, we caused more destruction and changed the ecosphere more rigorously and profoundly than any other species before us. Considering the strain, that we put on all other life on this planet and the devastation that we cause, our demise could be beneficial for life on earth as a whole, but as it stands now, humans are not only working hard to destroy themselves, humans also attempt to kill off all other life and to convert this planet into an uninhabitable ball of rock, covered with thrash and a brew of toxic fluids and sludge.
The questions that arise from this observation are: Why shall we care? Why shall we consider this to be a bad thing? Isn't all life bound to be destroyed in the end, burned in a great fireball when the sun of our planetary system finally explodes and turns into a supernova?
The assumption that all life will end one day and the sun will become a supernova is based on scientific theories, which, as everything else what we know or believe to know, are constructions of our brain and may or may not reflect to some extend the world outside our body. I don't wan't to be distracted from my chosen subject by a reflection about epistemology (though this inevitably will be a theme in one of my future blog posts), but the explosion of the sun into a supernova is not imminent and humans in all likelihood will not be around anymore when this happens many million years from now, if it happens at all.
It makes sense, to base and restrict our considerations on and to a more apprehensible timeframe of some hundred years, and to focus on and deal with developments that are happening right now. And as I wrote at the start of this text, there is overwhelming evidence, that right now humans try hard to destroy themselves and everything else around them.
One can reject this observation and counter, that things are fine and we are on the best way to achieve universal happiness and a harmonious and sustainable life by creating our very own, well designed synthetic environment, which will be far superior to anything what nature with its inherent imperfections could have ever developed.
Every reader who shares this view should instantly stop and leave the website. This blog is not for you.
There may be other readers who concur to my views and nevertheless will not see any reasons to get upset or animated or concerned about the state of the world. Humans try hard to destroy themselves and everything else around them -- so what?
I tell you: What we humans do right now causes pain and suffering to many of us and to many of our fellow animals. Severe pain, unimaginable, inconceivable, indescribable pain. Pain and suffering that no single human being can understand in its whole gigantic extent, pain and suffering that no single human being can adequately appreciate.
Did you ever suffer, did you ever feel pain? You could be one day on the receiving end of the measures that humans take in their attempt to destroy the world. You could be feeling pain when the doctor doesn't give you enough morphine and the spreading cancer tumors are destroying your body. You could suffer and become desperate when you find out, that your brain does not work properly anymore because of the sedatives that are needed to alleviate your pain. Or you could be shot, deadly insured by a missile or a bomb, feeling the blood running down your body, looking in disbelief at the stumps that once were your hands.
You could be harmed by various natural disasters, you could see your life turned upside down when everything what you worked hard for your whole life long has been swept away or blown away. You could one day suffer from hunger and thirst because food and drinking water have run out or are poisoned.
You are unmoved, as long as it doesn't strike you? You don't have children, whose future is at risk? You don't have friends who could be struck by misfortune? Your parents are still alive? Did you ever love somebody?
Diagnosis: You are unmoved, because you lack imagination and you lack empathy.
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Maybe the mentioned examples don't frighten you because you are well positioned and protected. You have siphoned off a lot of wealth and built your guarded and fortified retreat or bought a luxurious super yacht for 100 million US$? You are able to afford the complex water cleaning procedures that will be needed after the oceans have lost their capacity to absorb and break down pollutants? You have enough money to settle everywhere you want and choose the place with the least chemical and radioactive contamination?
Diagnosis: You are unmoved, because you are a member of the ruling plutocracy. You are unmoved, because you are a sociopath.
There are many human beings that are not members of the ruling plutocracy, many that are working class (like me) or small farmers, many that have a hard time to irk out a living. There are many human beings that have a vivid imagination (like me) and are able to feel empathy (like me). I don't know if we are the majority, but at least we are a sizable minority and we could achieve something if we unite and coordinate our efforts.
I composed this text for us, the humans who are able to imagine and feel the pain and suffering around us. I composed this text, to formulate some questions that maybe could lead to some answers that maybe lead to some solutions. I wrote other texts to discuss inequality, injustice, exploitation, murder. I will continue doing this but just now I raise questions. Questions like this one:
What can we do to avoid or alleviate the pain and suffering of our fellow humans and our fellow animals?
This is the ultimate question which leads to the ultimate answer (which is also the ultimate solution): Love, care, learn and teach happiness, lead a modest life with the least possible use of energy and materials. Don't reproduce.
I am still playing with words.
Some readers may accept my formulation of the ultimate question, but will not agree with my ultimate answer/solution because they cannot comprehend and retrace the considerations that lead from the question to the answer. Some readers will accept the answer but consider its formulation as too demanding and utopian to be written on the banners and in the proclamations and manifestos of a movement.
Some readers will argue, that the answer is incomplete, because it doesn't show a way, how to convince humans, that a change is necessary. These readers are right, the answer is incomplete -- the question is also incomplete.
I try it again and amend my ultimate question:
What can we do to avoid or alleviate the pain and suffering of our fellow humans and our fellow animals? How can we bring our fellow human beings to share this goal of avoiding pain and suffering of sentient beings and how can we incapacitate the evil and unchangeable individuals?
I feel uncomfortable, I feel like a lawyer who is drafting a legal text, trying to make it watertight, with no loopholes or room for misinterpretation. Composing the ultimate answer/solution is even more taunting. The first draft:
Be an example, be a teacher, be a prophet, be a saint. Love, care, be happy, lead a modest life with the least possible use of energy and materials. Don't reproduce. Be careful and clever, outwit the powers of evil.
sss www sss www sss www
The amended ultimate answer is straightforward, plain and simple, yet, to actually live the envisioned life or reach the appropriate and for such a life necessary state of mind could be a demanding job. Not everybody will fit into the job profile. Vandana Shiva, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama could maybe fit in.
So we should all kneel down and meditate to reach ultimate enlightenment, unmoved by the carnage around us, undeterred by gun shots and bomb blasts? Meditation is helpful and the most powerful tool to change ourselves, but practicing meditation or other mind-body interventions doesn't mean that we have to ignore the world outside us. Vandana Shiva is, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama were politically active. Many wonderful people in human history were both inspirational and politically active: Raicho Hiratsuka, Sarojini Naidu, Ellen Kuzwayo, Mahatma Gandhi, just to name a few.
To live according to the ultimate answer could be a demanding job and not everybody will fit into the job profile. The process of acquiring the necessary wisdom and resolve, as well as the process of parting with the past and starting a new life could be more complicated, burdensome, and dangerous than the plain and simple wording of my answer suggests. Many noble and well-intended humans tried and failed, many suffered terribly when they attempted to lessen suffering, many were killed when they tried to stop killing, many teachers and prophets were imprisoned, tortured, drowned, torn apart, burned alive, crucified. Evil is powerful and knows no restrains and no mercy.
To state it clear and short again: The ultimate answer could be quite demanding and many, who accept the answer will not have the resolve, endurance, willpower, and courage to change their lives, preach the gospel, and organize resistance to the evil powers.
I am still playing with words, trying to gradually approach the center of the issue.
In order to make it a bit easier I slice my question into three parts (A, B, C) and try to find three answers. All answers will in the end lead back to the ultimate answer and the combined necessary efforts to reach a solution will be the same, but the separated issues will be easier to grasp.
Question A: How can we stop humans from destroying nature?
Question B: How can we stop population growth and reduce human population to a sustainable level?
Question C: How can we stop violence and war, how can we disable, break, ruin, dismantle, demolish, destroy weapons?
I better write down the answers one by one, I have to be more detailed and refer to concrete situations, I have to avoid being too detailed -- the powers of evil are listening. When these partial questions together with the complete ultimate question are part of the public consciousness, every individual can find the answers by herself/himself. I am only playing with words here, but every individual can find the answers and contribute to the solutions by changing her or his life. Please make people aware, tell everybody, share this text!
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QUESTION A: How can we stop humans from destroying nature?
The destruction of nature happens by pollution/contamination, habitat destruction, mass extinction, and climate change.
Pollution and contamination of the ecosphere
The global production of organic chemicals is around 400 million metric tons per year, the volume of chemical pulp is 130 million tons, the volume of plastic materials is 110 million tons. Global lead production is 8.6 million tons per year, mercury production is 2,000 to 3,000 tons.
The WHO estimates, that unintentional poisonings kill an estimated 360,000 people globally each year. Toxic chemicals are emitted by industrial processes, pulp and paper plants, tanning operations, mining, and unsustainable forms of agriculture. Adult humans carry some 600 measurable chemicals in their bodies that were never in anyone's body before the 1920s.
The total amount of obsolete (banned) pesticides in non-OECD countries is between 400,000 and 500,000 tons -- 60.000 tons in Africa alone. Stores are often in deplorable condition on unfenced sites, with defective containers and no rain protection. The pesticides are leaking into the environment, contaminating soil, water, air, and they often find their way to the illicit pesticide market.
Humans produce about four billion tons of waste a year worldwide but reuse, recover, or recycle barely a quarter. 30 ‐ 60 million tons of e‐waste are generated worldwide. In the USA in 2007 41 million computers and 32 million displays were discarded, the total amount of e-waste was 3.01 million tons, only 12 percent of it were recycled.
Ten percent of the produced plastic materials end in the waterways. Plastic that is thrown into creeks and rivers and transported into the oceans accumulates in five gyres. The biggest concentration of plastic trash and chemical sludge is inside the North Pacific Gyre and is called the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or the "Pacific Trash Vortex". The trash vortex covers an area the size of Texas and contains an estimated 6 kilograms of plastic for every kilogram of natural plankton. Millions of fish, marine mammals, and birds die painfully when they accidentally swallow small plastic pieces.
Total annual Dioxin and Furan (PCDD/PCDF) emissions are approximately 10,000 -- 20,000 g I-TEQ. Based on recent epidemiological data about neurotoxicological development and the endocrine system, the WHO agreed on a tolerable daily intake of 1 to 4 picogram per kilogram body weight and day. It is known, that subtle effects occur in the general population in developed countries at background levels of 2 to 6 picogram per kilogram body weight and day.
Global energy consumption in 2008 was 474 exajoules (equivalent to an average energy consumption of 15 terawatts). While human population increased five percent from 2004 to 2008, gross energy production and annual CO2 emissions increased ten percent. Chinese use on average less than a third of the energy Americans consume. China, with a population of 1.3 billion people though has recently surpassed the USA to become the largest user of energy and also the largest polluter.
Habitat destruction, deforestation and desertification
Forests still cover about 28 percent of the land mass, but areas the size of Panama are lost every year. The biodiversity of the rainforests is severely threatened because they have been subjected to heavy logging and agricultural clearance. Rainforests once covered 14 percent of the earth's land surface; now they cover not more than 6 percent and experts project that the last remaining areas could be consumed in less than 40 years.
As the area covered by forests around the world is shrinking, large numbers of species lose their habitat and are driven to extinction. The destruction of virgin rainforests causes between 200 and 600 species extinctions per day.
Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires (an estimated 2,700 million acres are burned each year), the destroyed area is then used for farming and ranching operations, attracting corporate giants like Mitsubishi Corporation, Georgia Pacific, Texaco and Unocal.
The Amazon rainforest is one of the most bio diverse regions on earth. It is home to 10 percent of the world’s mammals and 16 percent of the world’s known land-based plant species. The Amazon Rainforest covers over a billion acres and is encompassing areas in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia as well as the Eastern Andean region of Ecuador and Peru.The Amazon Basin contains 20 percent of the world's fresh water.
The Amazon forest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet," because it provides the essential service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. The jungle is soaking up more than one-quarter of the world's atmospheric carbon and is producing more than 20 percent of the world's oxygen.
In November the Mato Grosso state assembly passed a bill that substantially weakens protections for the rainforest and the Pantanal. The bill reduces areas set aside for conservation by 73 percent and calls for a 67 percent (16 million hectare) increase of areas zoned for agriculture. The bill reduces the legal forest reserve (the land ranchers and farmers must maintain as forest) from 80 percent to 50 percent and allows the planting of sugar cane in parts of the Pantanal and Amazon, where it is currently prohibited.
A third of the human population lives in drylands, which cover 40 percent of Earth’s land area. The water scarcity of drylands is limiting crop production, forage, wood, and other services a functioning ecosystem provides to humans. Drylands are vulnerable to exploitation, mismanagement, and climate change. Between ten and twenty percent of drylands are already degraded and an estimated 12 million square kilometers have turned to desert. A billion people are under threat from further desertification. The Sahara desert is expanding south at a rate of up to 48 kilometers a year.
Mass extinction
In the same moment, as I write this words, thousand of animals, maybe millions are dying. They are starving to death, they are dying from sicknesses, they are eaten alive by predators. The life before their death is in most cases a life of suffering and pain, with only a few moments of relieve and peace.
The creatures on this planet are not doing well. They never did well, but it got worse in the last ten thousand years. We are watching the greatest mass extinction of species since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. The present rate of extinction is estimated to be 140,000 species per year. 90 percent of large fish in the oceans are gone, 40 percent of amphibians and 20 percent of vertebrates are endangered. If present trends continue, half of all species will be extinct in less than 100 years as a result of hunting and fishing, habitat destruction, pollution, epidemic diseases, invasive species, and climate change.
Animals die in great numbers from epidemic diseases, because they are weakened by pollutants, for instance ozone (O3) which builds up at ground on sunny days, or particle pollutants (PM10 / PM2.5). The animals are also effected by pesticides, toxic heavy metals (mercury, arsenic, lead), PCBs, DDT, dioxins and other POPs (persistent organic pollutants). The pollutants accumulate in body fat tissue and make the animals vulnerable against diseases and parasites.
The colony collapse disorder of honey bees all over the world is not caused by pesticides or electromagnetic radiation or Varroa mites or an invertebrate iridescent virus or the fungus Nosema ceranea, but by a combination of diseases and environmental stressors.
Climate change, depleted ozone layer
Climate change will lead to a rise of sea levels between one and three meters. Millions of people will have to move away from coastal areas, some polynesian nations (Kiribati, Tonga, Tuvalu, French Polynesia, Cook Islands) will disappear. Rising sea levels right now threaten to destroy Vietnam’s rice bowl because they increase the salt content of the rivers. A rise of one meter would submerge 40 percent of the Mekong Delta. In Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest nations, a sea level rise of one meter would affect 16 percent of the land and 17 million people.
Changing weather patterns will cause droughts (Horn of Africa, North China, Southern USA), heavy storms and flooding. The changing climate will destroy ecological systems, animals and plants which are not able to migrate will get extinct. The changing climate will reduce food production and increase the likelihood of famine.
More than 900 million people in the world are chronically malnourished. Several hundred million more live in countries that depend on imported grain. Even a modest decline in agricultural production could trigger significant price increases for basic foods, as well as hoarding on a global scale, making food inaccessible to poor people in much of the world.
Climate change will wreck any efforts to save the rainforests. Even a complete stop of deforestation and carbon emissions would fail to save the Amazon jungle and up to 86 percent of the forest could be lost if spiraling greenhouse gas emissions are not brought under control. Even under the most optimistic climate change scenarios, the destruction of large parts of the forest is irreversible.
Global warming/climate change will not only effect the jungles but forests of all kind all over the world.
Trees in the western United States are dying twice as quickly as they did three decades ago. Ecologists found that a wide range of tree species are dying, including pines, firs and hemlocks, and the trees are dying in all altitudes. The changes will have serious long-term effects including reducing biodiversity and turning forests into a source of carbon dioxide as they die and decompose. That could lead to a runaway effect, speeding up climate change.
A drought, potentially more severe that the drought of the 50s, is not only costing Texas’ farmers and ranchers an estimated 5.2 billion US$, but has also caused the most destructive wildfires in Texas history. Since November 2010 21,000 fires have destroyed more than 1,000 homes and ravaged more than 3.6 million acres.
In April the depletion of the Arctic ozone layer caused increased ultraviolet (UV) radiation in Scandinavia and Russia. The radiation reached levels that could have caused sunburns within minutes and scientists proposed that regional weather services should include UV forecasts. Skin cancer, especially melanoma cancer, is rising all over the world.
Marine researchers found blue whales near the Mexican coast which showed signs of severe sunburns and early stages of skin cancer.
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ANSWER A:
The use of fossil fuels, resource extraction/mining, industrial production, traffic/transport, and energy consumption has to be significantly reduced. Everybody can contribute and reduce her or his consumption of energy and materials. Everybody can do sound research and experiment with changed daily procedures and new habits in an attempt to develop the most efficient way to conduct our lives. There are thousands of books and websites with advice about green living, upcycling, refurbishing, gardening, subsistence agriculture.
Industrial agriculture has to be replaced with small organic farms, minimizing the use of agrochemicals (pesticides, fertilizers) and heavy machinery. Meat consumption has to be reduced and if possible completely stopped, making animal factories obsolete.
Meat consumption has to be reduced, because: 16 kilogram of grain are needed to produce one kilogram of meat, fish on fish farms must be fed six kilogram of wild-caught fish to produce one pound of farmed fish flesh. It takes 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plants. Land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops covers 30 percent of the Earth's land mass. Livestock grazing is the number one reason that plants go extinct, it also leads to soil erosion and desertification. Commercial fishing methods such as bottom trawling and long-lining have emptied the oceans and pushed marine species to the brink of extinction.
Animals in factory farms are suffering!
Small organic farms must not necessarily go back to ancient production methods or start from zero. The experience and know-how of many centuries was thrown away when factory farming, based on cheap fossil fuels, destroyed the small farms, but the know-how is not lost. It has been documented by wise and prescient people. I still have the Whole Earth Catalogue and the Whole Earth Epilogue at home. It is now available online at
www.wholeearth.com.
Small farms can combine the wisdom of the ages with new technology, using improved weather forecasts, biological pest control, new developed clever tools and machines, and renewable energy. Soil analysis will help optimizing fertilizer use and crop rotation. Specialized computer programs will help organize flow and storage of materials and create time-plans.
Computer technology is also helpful in calculating and comparing ecological impacts and weigh production costs of energy saving appliances versus continuing use of old devices or building costs of new homes versus refurbishing/adapting old structures.
Internet portals and data bases make it able to swap supplies or find new users for discarded items (a non commercial eBay). Such portals and data bases are an essential tool in an economy, where reusing, repairing /refurbishing, upcycling/recycling is preferred or even mandatory.
Essential goods which cannot produced locally or at home can be ordered online and shipped by postal service. The postal service can optimize the distribution with a computer controlled and container based flow of goods using railway and small vans. Supermarkets and shopping malls will become unnecessary.
Traffic can be reduced by using electronic communication (Skype, social network portals), and telecommuting. Politicians and diplomats don't have to travel around the world and can bargain via teleconferencing instead.
The politicians themselves can also be made obsolete to some extent by new technology -- most readers will probably agree that this would be a good thing. The internet makes it possible to replace many instances of representative democracy with direct democracy. Neighborhood committees, who discuss pending issues in a weekly meeting can use a computer to directly connect with higher instances (districts, counties, states) to get information, negotiate, and finally vote. All without additional costs of a cumbersome and costly election process. Organizing societies in this way will also make secret agreements/backroom deals of representatives less likely.
The production of unnecessary items like weapons, luxury goods (aircrafts, yachts, cars), fashion cloth, electronic gadgets has to stop. Jobs that are lost in these sectors can be easily replaced by jobs in habitat rebuilding, cleanup operations of contaminated areas, social services, restoration of animal populations.
There could be many jobs created by mending the damage that we have caused to nature!
Planting trees
The "Billion Tree Campaign" is a worldwide tree planting initiative facilitated by the UN Environment Program. The campaign strongly encourages the planting of indigenous trees and trees that are appropriate to the local environment. By the end of 2009, more than 7.4 billion trees had been planted by participants in 170 countries.
Kenyan environmentalist and politician Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 has spearheaded the Green Belt Movement, which aims to provide financial support for women in rural areas. Her tree planting projects are copied by activists in many other countries (MillionTreesNYC, "Tree the Town" in Texas, Chicago Tree Initiative, Marylanders Plant Trees, W1W Tree Planting Initiative, Plant-a-Tree by Wild Asia, Tree People, to name just a few.)
The efforts have to be significantly increased though, because at the present level, all public, private or corporate sponsored initiatives will not be able to restore the lost forests and avoid a catastrophic ecological breakdown. To make up for the loss of trees over the past decade, 130 million hectares (1.3 million square kilometers), an area as large as Peru, would have to be reforested. Accomplishing that would mean planting about 14 billion trees every year for 10 years in a row, the equivalent of every person on Earth planting and caring for at least two seedlings annually.
Why can't we do that right now?
Changing our life and applying the highest standards is a precondition to changing the world. This is self evident, is common sense; it is very clear, what we have to do. I cite myself:
Stop buying. Drop out. Stop consuming. Leave the party. Don't give them a chance to brainwash you -- don't waste time with corporate media. Take part in small networks to make the big systems irrelevant. Avoid bank services and other financial services as far as it is possible. Cut your credit card into pieces!
Chris Hedge, longtime foreign correspondent and now columnist on Truthdig said it this way:
"We have to create monastic enclaves where we can retain and nurture the values being rapidly destroyed by the wider corporate culture and build the mechanisms of self-sufficiency that will allow us to survive."
Unfortunately, there will be many people who don't take the cue and don't follow our example. People will ridicule and taunt us. Lets face it, there are people who are stupid and there are people who are evil, together they are a sizable part of the population and they can thwart any efforts to build a new society and a new economic system.
Many of this coalition of sociopaths and idiots will be quite glad when we reduce our carbon footprint because that means, that the negative effects of their wasteful and inefficient lifestyle will be alleviated and they can pretend a little bit longer that everything is okay.
As the negative consequences of human crime against nature become more visible, the ecological and anti-war movement will gain momentum and it may be, that the sociopaths at some point will feel threatened by the rise of the movement. They will start to worry about their power and their profits and they will send messages to the idiots via TV and order them to organize in a Tea Party or whatever it may be called, and they will tell them to attack the dissenters, non-conformists, dropouts, non-shoppers, consumerism objectors, environmentalists and pacifists.
They will also use secret services (Mossad, FBI/CIA, MSS, MI5/MI6, FSB), police and military without hesitation to spy on dissenters and quell protests.
Dissidents, peace activists and environmental activists around the world are already now subjected to harassment and oppression, and they are often imprisoned and killed. Physical acts of defiance are met with police brutality, detainment, and heavy fines. Protesters who want to block construction sites or protect forests will be doused with pepper spray and tear gas as they cling to trees that are about to be cut down. Bulldozers will clear away barriers and protesters alike -- there could be another Rachel Corrie.
In the USA at least 4,000 activists have been arrested since President Obama was inaugurated. The activists included people protesting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo, strip mining, home foreclosures, nuclear weapons, police brutality, mistreatment of hotel workers, budget cutbacks, Blackwater, rollback of labor rights and social security. Today there are more Americans serving time in prison for nuclear weapons protests than at any time in the last decade.
A few examples (the list is incomplete and shall only demonstrate the repression of dissent):
January 1, 2011. 9 women, ages 40 to 91, who brought solar panels to the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor were arrested for blocking the driveway at Entergy Corporation.
April 22, 2011. 11 women chained and locked the gate at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant before being arrested.
In July environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years and a 10,000 US$ fine for taking part in an auction about mineral rights (a classic act of non-violent disobedience).
In two weeks of climate protests at the White House, starting in August 2011, 1,252 people were arrested, including NASA climate scientist James Hansen, Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, actresses Daryl Hannah and Margot Kidder, for protesting the Keystone Xl pipeline, which would increase the flow of tar sand oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
June 22, 2011. 12 animal rights activists were arrested in Spain and labeled as “eco-terrorists," for rescuing abused animals from factory farms.
I already mentioned Wangari Maathai. She was arrested many times and constantly received death threats for organizing projects to plant trees.
June 14, 2011. In El Salvador, an environmental activist was killed after speaking out against a mining project. Juan Francisco Duran Ayala is the latest in a string of activists to be killed after denouncing the Canadian gold mining company, Pacific Rim, in its efforts to mine the area of Cabañas. A community youth radio station, Radio Victoria, has also received repeated death threats for covering the story.
In Brazil, Chico Mendes, murdered 1988, became an environmental martyr and an inspiration for activists. Unfortunately many others shared his fate. Obede Loyla Souza was killed in June because he denounced illegal logging, it was the sixth murder since May. Joao Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife were murdered on a nature reserve in Para state, where they had been working for the past 24 years. The couple had received numerous threats in the past two years for their environmental activism but was refused police protection.
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) was classified as the top "domestic terror" threat in the United States by the FBI despite the fact that they never caused injuries or death and only engaged in activities like: releasing animals from fur farms, gluing locks, setting offices, mansions, and SUVs ablaze, or disabling machines (monkey-wrenching). Activists who were caught received longtime sentences. Lacey Phillabaum was sentenced to three years, Briana Waters to six years, Jennifer Kolar was ordered to serve five years and to pay 7.1 million US$ in restitution, Stanislas Meyerhoff was sentenced to 13 years despite the fact, that he had become an informant, causing the arrest of further ELF members (he deserved the time in my opinion, though not for the reasoning of the judge). Eric McDavid was convicted to 20 years for conspiring to destroy a Northern California dam and a genetics laboratory.
I don't condone arson because of the pollution uncontrolled fires cause and because of the implied dangers for life and health. I wouldn't object to setting free animals from fur farms and meat factories. How could I am not be in favor of saving my dear animal friends from a life of misery and from certain death? I am also hard pressed to outright condemn monkey-wrenching and non-destructive forms of sabotage. I always liked to take things apart. From my early years on I used to disassemble old mechanical clocks or at least to look inside, later I disassembled electronic devices and learned from that how to built them by myself.
I still like to do that, when a hard drive died last year I disassembled it completely and learned a lot about current production technics in the process. Instead of setting SUVs ablaze I rather would prefer to disassemble them, I am sure that one could harvest a lot of useful parts from a SUV -- even from a Hummer.
More infos:
I'm still playing with words and try now to formulate QUESTION A with completely different words, meaning the same:
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QUESTION A2: How can we replace greed with love?
Greed is a main motivation and main driving force of humans in todays society and the rich and powerful see the destruction of nature as just another promising business opportunity to create an artificial habitat (with GM crops) and to sell all the goods of nature that formerly were free (drinking water, fruits and vegetables from gardens, crops from small subsistence farming) with big profits.
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ANSWER A2:
Maybe we will not be able to convince enough people, that this system, this way of living is unsustainable and destructive. People are addicted to consumerism and they get their daily brainwashing by TV.
We can outsmart the sociopaths (plutocrats) by exploiting weaknesses in the system and using economic developments to our advantage. The ups and downs in a free market economy are like the ups and downs of natural cycles with feedback. Or to describe it more scientific: The free market economy is (most times) a self correcting system (comparable to an op-amp with negative feedback and latency of the feedback loop achieved by coil or RC network).
As the flow of goods and money accelerates because of technological advances (electronic trading, high frequency trading, container shipping, airlifting), latency in the feedback loop is reduced and the up and down cycles become shorter and turn into a wild fluctuation. A wildly fluctuating free market economy is of course wasteful and inefficient and therefore damaging to nature, but this fluctuating free market economy can be destabilized and finally destroyed by using the downward swings to just push a little bit further down so that the self regulating forces of the market (demand — supply) are not able anymore to generate an upward swing.
Sometimes I dreamt about a technological invention, that could stop all the combustion engines. I dreamt that there would be sudden silence and nature would get a chance to recover. I wrote already before, that the burning of fossil fuels has to be reduced as much a possible. When oil prices exceed 150 US$ per barrel, this will happen automatically. The engine noise will not stop suddenly, but it will slowly fade out.
When fuel for tractors and trucks becomes more and more expensive, production and transport will also cost more and food prices will rise. When natural disasters will ruin the crops and food will become scarce, prices will soar to exorbitant heights. People will have to buy the expensive food and there will be no money left for other consumer goods.
All the new iPads, iPhones, laptops, 3D-TV sets, camcorders and other hot gadgets will remain on the shelfs. All the new cars will remain in the showrooms. The airplanes and cruise ships will remain empty. The governments will print money like crazy and talk about “jumpstarting the economy”. New economic incentives will be discussed and new bailout packages delivered and the deficit will become astronomically high and subsequently unmanageable.
I always despised the narrow-minded and inflexible liberals who talked about economic growth and how necessary growth is to achieve prosperity for all. They are dead wrong, the wage disparity increases despite growth! Growth is not the answer. “Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell”. (Edward Abbey).
The liberals may be whining about the spending cuts and the resulting hardship for big parts of the population. It is their fault too! They told their constituency that our wasteful and inefficient way of life would go on forever with just a few tweaks here and there.
The conservatives on the other side will triumphantly cut spending, eliminating unemployment benefits and cash assistance and leaving a growing number of low-income families in dire poverty. The conservatives will reduce taxes even more and they finally will achieve their goal of destroying “big government”. When they finally realize that they did not only destroy the government but the system as a whole it will be too late. The system will crumble and fall into pieces.
People will organize in small grassroots committees and will take over empty factories and people will start growing food in their gardens and on reclaimed land and nobody will bother them with property claims because there will be no police departments and no FBI agents and the local policemen who formerly got their orders from the government will work for the neighborhood committees and will defend the community against intruding criminals and roaming bandits.
There will be barter markets and fairs and convoys who fetch needed tools and materials from the reactivated and renovated factories who are now owned by the workers. (We had some developments in this direction already after the big economic crash in Argentina at the turn of the millennium.)
Heritage and property rights will become meaningless and replaced by the just distribution of resources. There will be no "Tragedy of the Commons," because nature and all natural resources are not a common good (as Hardin acknowledged already by himself). The land, all plants and all animals will be entities in their own right and resources will be used as if they were only borrowed or bought with the implied obligation to refund nature in the form of habitat restoration, replanting, reforestation, reintroduction and care for endangered species. Intelligent small scale agriculture will harmonize with or even enhance nature, research in natural phenomena and the small scale application of scientific findings will allow biological pest control and biological detoxification.
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QUESTION B: How can we stop population growth and reduce human population to a sustainable level?
As the human population has reached 6.8 billion, drinking water and food becomes scarce, while social services (health care, care for disabled and elderly) are reduced.
Scarcity of clean drinking water
In Europe at least 11 percent of the population and 17 percent of the continent are affected by water scarcity, the cost of droughts in the past thirty years is estimated to be 100 billion Euros. These are serious numbers, but Europe is still better off than most other regions of the world.
Worldwide nearly three billion humans are living in unsanitary conditions without access to clean water. One billion of them have no access to safe drinking water. Poor water quality increases the risk of cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, schistosomiasis. Water scarcity can also lead to trachoma (an eye infection that causes blindness), plague, and typhus.
Water scarcity encourages people to store water in their homes. This increases the risk of household water contamination and provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes -- which are carriers of dengue fever and malaria.
Industrial agriculture currently withdraws about 70 to 90 percent of water supplies, increased use of water for irrigation in many of the world’s “breadbasket” river basins has already depleted major rivers, including the Indus, the Colorado, the Yellow River, the Jordan, and the Murray-Darling, and caused steep drops in levels of groundwater. A lack of water has driven up the use of wastewater for agricultural production in poor urban and rural communities. More than 10 percent of people worldwide consume foods irrigated by wastewater that can contain chemicals or disease-causing organisms.
Urbanization and increases in industrial and household use are exacerbating the situation. According to UN statistics, water withdrawals have tripled over the last 50 years because of rapid population growth and increased industrial demand. UN studies also project that 30 nations will be suffering from water shortages in the next decade, most of them in the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Israel, Somalia, Libya and Yemen.
The organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's estimates that at the present rate of demand increases, in 2030 47 percent of the world’s population will be affected by water scarcity.
Bolivia, South Africa, India, Botswana, Mexico and parts of the USA have seen vigorous water related protests. Last year the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department shut off water service to 40,000 households (mostly African American) in the middle of winter. The plan to privatize water supplies in Cochobamba, Bolivia met fierce opposition and the army was called in. Mexico City confiscated water sources from the country side and built fortresses around the wells. In India, Coca-Cola Company is taking drinking and irrigation water away from local people. Government data confirms a drop in groundwater levels by eight meters in Mehdiganj since Coca-Cola began bottling operations in 1999.
There is a dangerous water conflict brewing in Central Asia between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Agriculture in Central Asia is mainly based on irrigation. The irrigation canals are fed by the two largest rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya and their tributaries, which all have seen a decrease in water flow.
North China is drying up and a chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted that it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities -- 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone -- has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill. Beijing has about 100 cubic meters of water available per person. According to UN standards this is a fraction of the 1,000 cubic meters per person that indicates chronic water scarcity.
China plans to reroute the Yangtze River and channel it toward Beijing, which makes it necessary to move 3 million people, twice the number of people resettled to make way for the world’s largest dam, at the Three Gorges of the Yangtze. Scientist fear that the diversion could destroy the ecology of the southern rivers, making them as useless as the Yellow River. There are also concerns about tectonic effects, because the Qingling mountains are prone to earthquakes and landslides.
In the Middle East, fighting between south and north Yemen could result from a looming water conflict, with other countries in the region following suit if the situation is not improved. Yemen's capital Sanaa could run out of water in the next decade. The Nile is another potential flash point. In 1989, former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak threatened to send demolition squads to a dam project in Ethiopia.
Water wars in Yemen and Egypt are two possible future conflicts, but there is a water war going on right now, though it is disguised and mislabeled. It is the war of Israel against the Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza.
The Jordan River Basin, including parts of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan and the West Bank, is a bone-dry, arid region. The Jordan River originates in Lebanon and has an average flow of 1,200 million cubic meters per year. This river system consists of the Jordan and Yarmuk River, which flows from Syria. With the dry climate and low precipitation in this region, water has become the most valuable resource.
Israel uses the greatest amount of water available in the basin, and next is Jordan. The Israeli-occupied West Bank uses the smallest amount. The daily amount of water per person in the Jordan River Basin is the lowest in the world and the situation is constantly worsened by the population increase due to high Palestinian birthrates and Israeli immigration. Syria and Israel have taken over the water supplies. The construction of reservoirs on the Yarmuk River has caused a reduction of discharge into the Jordan River. The aquifers that supply Israel's central area lie in the West Bank.
The Israel National Water Carrier pumps water from the Sea of Galilee and carries it to areas in the center and south of Israel as well as to Palestinian areas. The Mountain Aquifer underneath the West Bank is a point of contention, Israel is walling off access to water supplies and Palestinians are charged three times the cost for water than settlers and the population in Israel's central area. Israelis use on average five times as much water than Palestinians.
There is not enough water for two states of Israel and Palestine. A just distribution of water between Israel and Palestine would mean, that Israel would have to scale back the use of water significantly and dismantle many irrigation projects. "Turning the dessert into a garden" would become impossible and agricultural exports would falter. Israel's economy would crush and the living standard would decrease significantly. Israeli politicians know all that and therefore will never join any meaningful peace process. As the "Palestinian Papers" released by Al Jazeera in January have shown, peace negotiations and calls for a peaceful solution were never meant serious, the peace process always was a charade, a travesty.
Scarcity of food
Right now there is a severe drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. Somalia is the center of the catastrophe but Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda are also affected. Thousands are fleeing a devastated Somalia every day to take refuge in makeshift camps across Ethiopia and Kenya. 4 million people in Somalia and 12 million in the whole Horn of Africa cannot survive without food assistance. Two million Somali children are malnourished, 30,000 children died of starvation in the last three month and another 400,000 are at risk. 750,000 people could die, if the drought worsens.
Another hunger crisis is taking place in North Korea and the government in Pyongyang has asked for foreign help. Only 20 percent of North Korean land is farmed and North Korean acknowledged, that it is lacking one million tons of food. The country has been dependent on foreign food aid since a devastating famine killed two million people during the mid-90s. The European Union announced that it will provide about 14 million US$ in emergency aid to feed some 650,000 North Koreans, But the USA refused sending aid and South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In Taek stated in April, he believed that Pyongyang's plea for handouts was politically motivated and that shortages this year weren't any worse than in past years.
Worldwide about 1.7 billion people live in poverty and over a billion are suffering hunger or malnutrition. Most of them are small-scale farmers. 200,000 farmers in India committed suicide in the last 16 years. One billion children (every second child on this planet) live in poverty and six million children die of hunger every year.
In Bangladesh, a country which has faced several hunger crisis in the last years, household income fell 10 percent in two years, while retail food prices increased by 30 percent. Today two-thirds of household income is spent on food, 60 percent of the households cannot buy enough food and people are in debt because of high food prices. Two million children are suffering from acute malnutrition.
Gobal food prices have gone up 36 percent in one year, the price of maize is 88 percent higher and wheat prices are 80 percent higher. Food has become more expensive because of market speculation, a 44 percent rise in crude oil prices and a 67 per cent rise in fertilizer prices.
The famine in northern Somalia was preceded by weather-related crop losses over the last year in Russia and Australia, which contributed to a rapid rise in food prices. This in turn fueled food insecurity throughout the developing world and contributed to unrest in Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka, Mexico, and Bolivia.
Worst affected by high food prices and food shortages are the already mentioned countries in the Horn of Africa, North Korea, Niger, Chad, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Bolivia.
Food prices in Uganda, Burundi, Bangladesh and Honduras are unstable and the situation could deteriorate quickly, while Sudan, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Mali, Burkina Faso and India are also emerging as potential problem areas.
Lack of social services
Health inequities are reflected in the differences in life expectancies between countries and even within countries. A child born in Japan or Sweden can expect to live 80 years, but less than 50 years in several African countries.
According to a WHO report, four million health workers are needed to combat a chronic shortage around the world. 57 countries have a serious shortage of health workers, affecting children's vaccinations, pregnancy care and access to treatment, 36 of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa. At least 1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to the most basic healthcare, often because there are no health workers.
In the developing countries 15 million people die every year from preventable diseases. There is a lack of midwifes. 358,000 women and 3.6 million newborns die due to largely preventable complications in pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period. Another 3 million babies are stillborn.
Over 200 million children lack basic health care. Seven million children die each year from five preventable and treatable conditions: diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, measles and malnutrition.
46,000 people die in the USA every year because they lack health insurance.
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ANSWER B:
The fertility rate of women in the industrialized world has fallen considerable, in many countries below the replacement rate of two. European countries have a fertility rate between 1.2 and 1.9. The decreasing fertility rate goes hand in hand with an improved social position and increased gender equality. The social rise of woman was made possible by two factors:
1. As technique becomes more and more sophisticated, the required working skills change dramatically. Muscle power is not necessary anymore when machines can do the heavy lifting, todays working place needs intelligence and common sense.
While increasing numbers of women are recognizing their right and ability to be full and equal members of society, they still have a long way to go. Men try to hold on to their privileges and use various means of subtle repression. In the schools and universities outperformed by the female students, young men still have the advantage of general support and promotion by their male bosses. When the careers of the competing women are interrupted by pregnancy and made difficult by the task of raising children, men take advantage of the situation and occupy positions, which according to their talents and skills would naturally belong to the women.
The technological revolution based on communication and computer has though completely changed the job market and woman slowly but irresistibly progress. The tough competition of a global economy requires the mobilization of all available talents and skill -- of whom woman have a lot. Women dominate their traditional branches education and health care and increase steadily their share in industry and trade. A study by the University of Cambridge shows, that more women than men in the UK now work in high status professions.
2. Various methods of contraception and better health care (which results in a higher survival rate of the children) allow todays woman to have fewer children and to decide, when and how often they get pregnant.
Highly educated and successful women have often difficulties to find an adequate partner. Educated Afro American women (lawyers, doctors, engineers) in the USA for instance have the lowest rate of fertility and more women are childless than in any other group. Most of these women want children, but they also want a husband, and if they're not going to get an adequate husband they end up bypassing the children. Nearly twice as many Afro American women as Afro American men graduate from college, the poor educational performance of Afro American boys and the withering of job opportunities for less educated men plays a role as does the extraordinary level of incarceration of Afro American men (800,000).
The situation of Afro American women is mirrored to some degree in other countries. Young boys feel increasingly challenged and outperformed by their female classmates and many become frustrated and drop out of school. There is a growing number of uneducated young men in countries around the world who have no chance to ever get a decent job. This results in a universal crises of male pride and self respect and often leads to aggression and violence. Many men can't handle the fact that women are outperforming them and are more successful. The women often would accept them in an unequal relationship but the men are not able to cope with such a situation.
The picture in developing countries looks quite different.
There is a steep population growth in Arab, African and Asian nations and it is caused by poverty, illiteracy, and patriarchal societies where girls are married off as soon as they reach their reproductive age and successively give birth to a child every year. Contraception is not used because of religious and shortsighted political reasons.
African countries have the highest birthrate on the planet, with Niger, Uganda, Mali, Zambia at the top of the list. Somalia is number eight and is even further ahead in the fertility rate statistic; with an average of 6.35 children born by Somali women the country is number four in the list.
It is unlikely, that Somalia's women love to have so many children! No woman willingly will take the burden and the risk to give birth and raise six or more children in a war torn country where even the most basic support systems can't be taken for granted!
Wouldn't it be wise, to promote contraception and safe sex or maybe UN controlled programs for voluntary sterilization? Vasectomy (male sterilization) for instance is an effective, cheap, uncomplicated, and permanent form of contraception. The operation is quicker, easier and more effective than female sterilization and there is a very small failure rate.
Sterilization would not only increase the living quality and life expectancy of women, it would also absolve Somali men from the responsibility to father children which will be inevitably born to a life of hardship and misery because the land simply cannot support more people.
This proposal will not fly. One might as well suggest the obligatory castration of all boys at the age of twelve (except for a few to be kept as stallions). In the current social climate and at the current state of world affairs any actions that infringe the right of human males to unlimited fathering will be met with hostility and fierce resistance.
It is indeed a very emotional issue for men, and whenever the issue of overpopulation is raised, all the testosterone driven males will jump up and cry: "bigot, racist, elitist, fascist"! And they will talk about Nazi inspired eugenics, Rockefeller or Gates conspiracies to cull unproductive humans, and WHO vaccination programs that in fact exterminate African and Asian children with purposefully contaminated vaccines.
It is also a very emotional issue for Somali men, who are evidently attracted by Arab culture because women in mainstream Arab culture are inferior creatures and are at the mercy of their male relatives.
Somalia is influenced by many cultures, it is at the crossroads of African, Arabic, Indian, and Western culture. At present Arab culture wins and its imposition is relegating Somali women to a subservient role and condemning then to abuse and neglect.
On July 22, 2011 the newly appointed Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, a Harvard-trained professor of economics, announced his 49-member cabinet. There are only two women in it: one minister and one vice minister. Article 29 of the Somali transitional charter guarantees a 12 percent quota for women in parliament. But of the current 550 transitional federal parliamentarians only 38 are women. There is also only one female permanent secretary out of the current 18 government ministries.
For many Somali men even this minuscule female representation may be too much, and the resulting misgivings are very likely the main reason why they join or support the radical Islamic movement Al-Shabab, a political and military force where their grievances will be surely addressed.
China has a fertility rate of 1.5. Sometimes the ruling elites do something right….
The overwhelming majority of people do want to have children because they do want to nurture a young person and project themselves into the next generation. One can do that without bearing a child or fathering a child. One can teach and write and tell the accumulated life experience and wisdom to everybody who has time to listen.
Children usually don't want to be copies of their parents, they want to step out of the shadow of their parents and find their own way and become independent personalities in their own right. Mahatma Gandhi fathered four sons, born by his wife Kasturba. Mahatma Gandhi’s sons resented their upbringing as disciples. They were unfortunately not allowed the formal education which Mahatma himself had received and which would have provided them with their own choice of livelihood.
Harilal Mohandas Gandhi rebelled most strongly. He had a very troubled relationship with his father, who eventually disowned him. Harilal renounced all family ties in 1911 and embarked upon a tragic, lifelong path of self-destruction. He became an alcoholic, an embezzler; he was various times arrested and became destitute. Harilal appeared at his father's funeral in such derelict condition that few recognized him. Harilal died of tuberculosis in June 1948, within months of his father's death.
While many people marry to have children, probably an even larger number of people just want to have a partner. To raise a child is for sure a challenge, raising a child can be a life-changing experience and deeply fulfilling, it can be also devastating and result in a tragic outcome. Why not adopt an orphan?
There exists undeniably a biological urge to reproduce. Humans who follow this urge will more likely reproduce and proliferate their genes (and with them this particular urge) than humans who don't have the urge. This is Darwin's law of evolution by natural selection. Fortunately the human brain is very flexible and changeable. Human brain plasticity allows to change even the deepest rooted natural instincts and it allows also to overcome the urge to reproduce. To overcome this urge may be a laborious and even painful process -- yet in many instances less laborious and painful that raising children.
Childless couples can be happy too! Childless humans can tech children and care for children that are not their flesh and blood and in this way project themselves into the next generation -- if they really want to.
Lesbian and gay couples by nature are childless and should be supported and encouraged in any possible way. Polyandrous marriages would also help to curb overpopulation and would solve the problem of regional gender imbalances. The number of males usually exceed females and the resulting frustration of large male populations causes social instabilities (for instance in China).
I'm still playing with words and try to formulate QUESTION B with completely different words, meaning the same:
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QUESTION B2
How can the sexual energy of testosterone driven males be diminished or channeled into something more positive than aggression, violence, war? How can women break their shackles, escape the imprisonment, liberate themselves from oppression and exploitation?
Britain's Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton married in April, and this event was excessively reported in mainstream media. Media coverage as usual was shallow and useless and didn't address one essential question: How must a woman feel, who is engaged in a relationship that will inevitably confine her to a subservient role?
How do all the beautiful wife's of rich and powerful men feel? How do the "trophy wife's" feel? How do the mistresses feel? How does a woman feel, who is nothing more than a status symbol of some rich moron who treats her like his personal possession? How does the young teenage girl feel when she provides her body to the "sugar daddy" who could be her grandpa?
The wife of Italians Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi filed for divorce after 19 years. He didn't mind and is reportedly having a good time with young girls and allegedly also with minors. Donald (you are fired) Trump was divorced twice, but he easily found a third wife, who is 24 years younger. Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch also was divorced twice, 17 days after his second divorce he married Wendi Deng, who is 38 years younger. Sumner Redstone, another billionaire media mogul, in 1999 divorced wife Phyllis Gloria Raphael after 55 years and married the 39 years younger Paula Fortunate. In 2009 he divorced Paula and since then spent his time with Malia Andelin, Manuela Herzer, Christine Peters, Rohini Singh, and various other girlfriends.
After his first wife Linda died of breast cancer, former Beatle Paul McCartney married Heather Mills, who is 25 years younger. I like the music of the Beatles and consider them still as one of the greatest bands in pop history. I never was impressed though with the music, that the Beatles produced in their solo carriers. John Lennon has my respect for his social and peace activism (working class hero), Ringo Starr is not worth mentioning, George Harrison and Paul McCartney produced music that was bearable but for sure not outstanding.
Paul McCartney had all my sympathies until I saw the video of a US concert tour in 2005. The video included backstage footage which showed Paul interacting with his wife and he appeared to me as being patronizing and lofty. I was not surprised when I learned about the nasty divorce battle which the couple fought and which was settled with a 40 million US$ payment for Heather Mills.
Rich men like (and get) beautiful women and beautiful women like (and get) rich men. This is just a reflection of the current value system and the state of our society.
Only one percent of the world's assets are in the name of women. There are only five women CEOs in the Fortune 500 corporations. In Silicon Valley, for every 100 shares of stock options owned by a man, only one share is owned by a woman. Only 13 percent of Goldman Sachs Partners are women. Men in the Arab states have 3.5 times the purchasing power of their female counterparts. 70 percent of people in poverty (living on less than one US$ per day) are women.
US women earn in average 77 percent of their male colleagues. Female MBAs make 4,600 US$ less per year in their first job out of business school. African-American women earn 68 percent of their male counterparts.
Men have the money, women have their body.
Only seven percent of the world's total cabinet ministers are women. Women ministers remain concentrated in social areas (14 percent) compared to legal (9.4 percent), economic (4.1 percent), political affairs (3.4 percent), and the executive (3.9 percent). Women accounted for only about 14 percent of members of parliament worldwide in 2002. Only 16 percent of US Congress members are women.
Women's participation in managerial and administrative posts is around 33 percent in the developed world, 15 percent in Africa and 13 percent in Asia and the Pacific. Just 2.2 percent of senior management positions in top German companies are occupied by women. Women hold only 9 percent of the top management jobs and only 21 percent of senior management positions in the UN bureaucracy.
Men have the power, women have their body.
We live in a society, where everything is a commodity and is subject to the rules of a free market (demand -- supply). Love is a commodity like everything else, it can be advertised, traded, rented, lend, optioned. Salon writer Tracy Clark-Flory once wrote a piece with the title "The sexual cost of female success", where she argued that the "price of sex" has hit an all-time low, because women are excelling academically (57 percent of students in US colleges are women) and have difficulties, to find an adequate partner (meaning: men are simply to dump for them), and also because men don't like women who are more clever than they are. Demand for bright women is low, so these women have to sell their body at a lower value.
The mindset and the logic of Americans normally doesn't astonish me anymore, but I couldn't believe it, when I read this. I just want to ask, what is the remedy? Adam Smith, Milton Friedman or John Maynard Keynes?
Speaking of US America, I forgot one crucial factor in gender relations (or should I call it the "gender war"?): Men have the muscle strength and men have the weapons! Violence causes more death and disability worldwide amongst women aged 16 to 44 than war, cancer, malaria and traffic accidents. One in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape, one in three women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime.
A woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read -- a third of all women there are raped. In October 2010 more than 600 women and girls were raped along the Congo-Angola border. A few months before, more than 200 women were raped in a single thatched-roof village in eastern DRC while UN peacekeepers were less than 12 miles away. In April an investigative report in the American Journal of Public Health concluded, that: More than 400,000 women 15 - 49 years old were raped across all provinces of the DRC during a 12-month period in 2006 and 2007. The number of women raped at least once in the eastern conflict area of North Kivu -- 67 per 1,000 -- is more than double the national average of 29 per 1,000. That means a woman in certain parts of the Congo is 134 times more likely to be raped than a woman in the United States, which has an annual rape rate of 0.5 per 1,000 women.
Did Stevie Wonder mean this with his song "All In Love Is Fair"?
ANSWER B2
Baseball, football, soccer and other competitive sports are obviously not sufficient to vent male aggression. Putting young males into Buddhist monasteries is successfully practiced in several East Asian societies, but this practice unfortunately has not gained much traction in the West. Another solution is widely practiced right now but is dangerous and often harmful for the involved women -- there could be cheap and easily administrable substantial improvements.
Prostitutes do a great service to society, and so do pornography producers. Prostitutes should be regarded as social workers and they should get solid training about safe sex, disease prevention, and psychiatric counseling. They should also be trained in self defense/martial arts. They should be supervised and employed by the municipalities and be able to do their work in safe and well controlled facilities. Pornography producers should be compelled to follow strict ethical standards, production of exploitative and humiliating material should be severely punished. There should be workplace regulations and frequent controls by female inspectors. Such measures would severely curb the exploitation of female performers and filter out the hardcore criminals who could then easier be apprehended by law enforcement.
One could of course alternatively put all aggressive young males into military service and send them to foreign countries.
As it was already stated before, woman advance in all educational institutions. 57 percent of students in US colleges are women, nearly twice as many Afro American women as Afro American men graduate. Women now comprise around two-thirds of Iran's university students and the number of women in the workforce has risen from 13 to 32.5 percent. With 10 years of school attendance, Chinese girls now top boys by one year. Women hold 34 percent of the senior management positions in China, 18 percent of companies have female CEOs. In Thailand 30 percent of companies employ female CEOs.
Women eventually will outsmart the evil brotherhood of men, and when they are suppressed, they will go underground and work silently, determined, and systematically. They will work in university institutes, taking the money from corporations and DARPA and nevertheless doing their own thing far away from what the donors intended. They will work in offices and laboratories and utilize the resources there for the means of women liberation.
In 1968, the US-based Women's Liberation Front crowned a sheep as Miss America. Other radical women's organizations began following suit, staging mock farm auctions and cattle shows that drew comparisons between the treatment of livestock and the portrayal of women in beauty contests. The movement was ridiculed and vilified, today the Women's Liberation Front is not active anymore, at least not in public. In India a Dalit Women's Liberation Front has been formed by fisherwomen. They members are participating in developmental activities and organize courses to learn sewing and stitching.
Could it be, that the Women's Liberation Front still exists, organized in secret groups?
No, I don't know anything about the real serious people, I only heard rumors about the Sacred Silence Sisterhood (SSS), or the World's Wise Women (WWW). I don't know about the secrets of the Sacred Silence Sisterhood (ssss) and the wisdoms of the World's Wise Women (wwww). If I would know about, I would not tell it in the public sphere. Who am I to talk about them? I am a man. The sisters know very well by themselves, what to do. The sisters don't need advice from men, though they accept their help.
Dear female reader, dear friend, I understand, that you have already founded the local chapter of the Sacred Silence Sisterhood and joined the council of the World's Wise Women. I admire you!
The sisters can detect every intruder with simple EEG tests, based on Jennifer Vendemia's research.
The sisters abhor weapons, weapons are hard and cold and terribly loud.
The sisters love cats, they are soft and warm and quiet.
The sisters write powerful and undetectable code.
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QUESTION C: How can we stop violence and war, how can we disable, break, ruin, dismantle, demolish, destroy weapons?
One cannot argue or negotiate in front of a gun. I was fortunate, I was blessed in my life and never had a gun aimed at me (or if it happened I didn't realize it and no shot was fired). I didn't have to hide from bombs and missiles. I never lived in an area where unexploded ordinance is hidden in the ground and one has to be careful not to step on a grenade, a landmine, or a cluster bomblet.
Sometimes I hear gunshots from hunters who try to kill the animals of the forest but the part of the wood where I live is right between the areas of two hunting organizations and the hunters spare it because they want to avoid conflicts between them.
In my younger years I had some violent rows and fistfights with other men, fortunately no one was injured seriously. It took me a long time to overcome my choleric temper. In my younger years there were instances, where I got in such a furious rage that it could have easily taken up a weapon and shot somebody -- fortunately I never had a weapon at hand. I was shown weapons, friends handed them to me and tried to instruct me how to use them. I always refused, I never liked to touch weapons, weapons are hard and cold and terribly loud.
I rather touch my cats, they are soft and warm and quiet!
Sometimes, not too long ago, I dreamt that one of my cat friends was shot by a hunter and the idea of this possibility alone made me so mad that I envisioned taking an AK-47 and running into the forest to seek out and mow down the hunters. I envisioned taking aim at their lower body, avoiding to shoot them in the chest or in the head. They should not die immediately, they should feel the terrible pain as their inner organs, their liver, their guts had been torn into pieces by the projectiles. I envisioned standing in front of them and watching them and listening to their death rattle, laughing diabolically.
Fortunately I don't have such dreams anymore, I was able to overcome also this phase of my personal development. I am deeply ashamed and apologetic about having even dreamt about committing such a crime. At least I have now a vague idea in what state of mind a mass murderer could be, when he is gunning down his victims one by one. I have an idea how Brehing Breivik felt, how Jared Lee Loughner felt, how Cho Seung-Hui felt, how Tim Kretschmer felt, how Thomas Hamilton felt, how Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold felt.
I have still no idea how a soldier must feel, who is killing people day in and day out. I have no idea how a soldier must feel when he sees his victims laying on the pavement and bleeding to death. Soldiers in combat are presumably not in a rage, are not on drugs, they are not psychopaths, they are not mentally deranged. I'm not completely sure about that though.
Does the US soldier feel any kind of empathy when he uses the Afghan farmer for target practice? The soldier will argue that this farmer was very likely to joy the Taliban after his brothers family was wiped out in a missile strike, so it was necessary and logical to wipe him out too. The soldier will maybe even argue that it will be necessary to wipe out the whole village because the villagers are enraged by the killings and likely to become ardent Taliban supporters.
When members of the Bravo Company in Afghanistan's Kandahar Province started to kill unarmed farmers for sport and cutting off their fingers as trophies, they were not exposed by their comrades nor stopped and sent home by their superior officers. It took a report in "Rolling Stone" about the "Kill Team" to bring these activities to light. Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, a member of the Kill Team, had brought with him a reputation of killing civilians in Iraq, he was nevertheless well liked by his peers and highly regarded by his superiors.
Lets face it, soldiers are trained to kill, that is their job! Maybe they are not killers when they enlist, but they for sure are, when they have gone through the basic training. Does the combat training change the psyche of the enlisted solders? Could it be that a volunteer army inherently attracts psychopathic killers?
I have still no idea how a soldier must feel, who is killing people day in and day out, and I have also no idea, how political leaders feel, when they start another war. How did Hitler feel, how did Stalin feel? How did the famous warriors and commanders in history feel? Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte. How did Bush and Obama feel, when they gave the marching orders for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia?
Aren't the political and military leaders concerned about their legacy? Aren't the lobbyist, the propagandists and agitators, who promote and propagate war ashamed?
Silent Phones
Faulty loans
Foreclosed homes
Sticks and stones
Skull and Bones
in Green Zones
Deadly drones
Unknown unknowns
Wasted billions
Trillions, zillions
Busy villains
Dying lions
The leaders and their minions are seemingly not able to imagine the misery and hardship that they cause and they don't feel any pity for their victims. Obama, Bush, and Cheney were never in the military (Cheney reportedly said, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service"). They never had to shoot and kill other people (though Cheney once shot a fellow hunter). They probably never have seen dismembered bodies piled up, body parts, and blood sprayed around. They never have seen the brain ooze out of a child's cracked skull.
Soldiers that come back seem to be troubled, distressed, and traumatized. The condition was once called shell shock, later renamed battle fatigue, combat stress reaction (CSR), and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). No, the soldiers were not killing people, they were engaging enemies. They are not killers, they are active duty patriots. The ones who come back in body bags are fallen heros. One needs a lot of euphemisms to disguise the horrors of war.
In a 2008 report, "The Invisible Wounds of War," the Rand Corporation studied mental health problems of returning veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. The authors concluded that 18.5 percent of returning veterans struggle with PTSD or major depression, while another 19.5 percent suffer from traumatic brain injuries. 32 US soldiers committed suicide in July this year, the highest number since the Army started releasing monthly figures. That is one soldier per day. The annual number of suicides in the Marine Corps, which doesn't release monthly figures, is on pace with the Army. More than 1,000 military personnel have taken their own lives since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These figures do not include the suicides of veterans, which average 18 per day (6.408 a year)
The discharged soldiers may be troubled, the political leaders, the generals and the media agitators though are apparently doing fine.
Air force pilots, gunners in attack helicopters, drone operators are also not too much affected by PTSD. They are playing kind of a video game. There are little figures running back and forth on the ground below the aircraft and have to be hit. Lets push the button. You failed it? Just push the button once more; or a few times more. The little figure on the ground is not running anymore? Okay, lets move on to the next little figure that is running….
The Pentagon and the CIA try to automate war by deploying robots. The Talon robot is used since 2000 for defusing bombs, the SWORDS is an armed robot. Other models are the PackBot and the Throwbot, a mini robot. 2000 robots are already stationed in Afghanistan. More than 50 countries possess pilotless military drones, the USA has an inventory of more than 7,000, ranging from the MQ-9 Reaper, RQ-1A/MQ-1 Predator, RQ-4 Global Hawk, X-47B, to small models like RQ-7 Shadow and RQ-11 Raven.
In an automated war there will be no soldiers coming home to be discharged with honors just to kill themselves or others (what also happen regularly). In an automated war the use of robots keeps humans out of harms way and that can only be a good thing. I wouldn't be worried too much, if armies of robots could battle it out and no humans would be hurt, though the battle of the robots would still be an incredible waste of resources. There would be the ecological damage of bombings, the destruction of habitats and the poisoning of the ecosphere as well as the gigantic amount of materials and energy that is needed to build and deploy grenades, missiles, bombs, and the robots themselves. It would be nevertheless still better than if humans would kill each other.
But in the wars that are fought just now, robots are not used against robots, robots are used agains humans, and the idea that robots destroy humans is terrifying, it is an idea that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.
The war economy
Soldiers, hunters, mercenaries (private contractors), terrorists, militiamen, bandits, pirates, and other aspiring mass murderers all need weapons to do their bloody business. Without weapons they would have to strangulate their victims or beat them to death or toss them off a cliff or drown them, all cumbersome and labor intensive actions that could go wrong at any point. Lumber workers use chain saws and bulldozers, construction workers use cranes and trucks, soldiers, hunter, terrorists use weapons. Whats the bid deal, why shouldn't everybody make use of the best available technology to get his job done in the most efficient way?
The USA is the biggest producer of weapons, has the biggest military budget (725 billion US$, 120 billion for weapons) and is the biggest exporter of weapons (32 billion US$ in 2010, expected 46 billion in 2011). Saudi Arabia just purchased 13 billion US$ worth of weapons; the UAE spent 11 billion US$. A record deal of 60 billion US$ with Saudi Arabia is already signed.
Rank | Top Pentagon Suppliers
| Revenue in 2010 |
1 | | $10,888,633,000 |
2 | | $8,212,891,000 |
3 | | $5,051,984,000 |
4 | | $4,576,415,000 |
5 | | $4,095,309,000 |
6 | | $3,546,554,000 |
7 | | $3,332,433,000 |
8 | | $3,280,980,000 |
9 | | $2,398,874,000 |
10 | | $2,344,325,000 |
11 | | $2,344,325,000 |
12 | | $2,059,613,000 |
13 | | $1,993,623,000 |
14 | | $1,828,670,000 |
15 | | $1,808,674,000 |
16 | | $1,742,216,000 |
17 | | $1,381,184,000 |
18 | | $1,263,236,000 |
18 | | $1,167,928,000 |
20 | | $1,121,492,000 |
On September 1, the International Association of Machinists and the Aerospace Industries Association sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to preserve the aerospace and weapons industry and its high-skilled workforce. The aerospace and weapons industry directly employs 844,000 Americans, located in every state -- and supports more than two million jobs in related fields.
More than 240,000 are working in weapons manufacturing, all together some three million Americans live from arms production, counting family members and associated businesses. An estimated 6 million Americans get their paycheck by courtesy of Pentagon spending. The US industry may not be competitive in other areas and corporations have outsourced most manufacturing to China, but US weapons are still top quality and outsourcing is not allowed for obvious strategic reasons. The military budget is the cornerstone of the US economy and every attempt to trim military spending will fail because the US economy would break down without arms production and enter a deep depression compared to which the Great Depression of the 30s would look like the golden ages.
The Americans have to exploit the worlds resources, because otherwise they couldn't afford their gigantic military machine.
The Americans need their gigantic military machine because otherwise they would not be able to exploit the worlds resources.
Who or what can contradict this striking logic?
======================
ANSWER C
When you have a menacing gigantic monster in your back, you will look for holes and caves, where you can hide, you will look for sticks and stones that you can throw in the monsters way to bring it to fall, you will look for gaps in the armor of the monster, where you can insert your tiny little spear, you will look for a bog, a mire, where you could lure the monster to sink and drown there or for a jungle, a maze, where it could get entangled in creepers and shrubbery.
You will run for your life or crouch in your hideout, waiting for your tiny chance. You never will fight the monster head-on, this would be suicide. Ho Chi Minh knew that.
Maybe you don't fight and avoid the menacing gigantic monster altogether? But that is difficult when the monster destroys all your food and goes on to burn the forests and to poison the rivers and lakes with its fiery breath. You will have to think very hard and find creative solutions!
One cannot argue or negotiate with a guy who has a gun, one cannot take the gun away from him. He will defend his gun, it gives him power, he needs the gun desperately. Without the gun he would possibly be a poor bagger, a failure, a high school dropout, unemployed, penniless. It doesn't need much education, it doesn't need much brain to pull the trigger -- every idiot can do this.
The guy with the gun will for sure look TV and play video games. He has some connection with the society around him, everybody has. Maybe he is a rightwing extremist nutcase and dwells in his rightwing echo chamber like Brehing Breivik did. Isolate him, compromise his echo chamber. Plant subliminal messages. Plant the seeds of doubt. Plant the ideas that by themselves seem benign but will combine in his head to an irritating compulsion that one day will break the nutcase down.
You can do that with a rightwing echo chamber on the internet, on TV (FOX), you can implant the subliminal messages, doubts and explosive ideas also in video games. You need the help of journalists, web designers, programmers. You will get the help, the disgust and repulsion is growing. Many people realize that we have to bring the system down. People are too frightened to act, but they will quietly show us the way, they will turn a blind eye.
One cannot argue or negotiate with the powers, who are building and controlling the weapons. They need the weapons to defend their position. Without weapons they would not be able to hold up their system of corruption, exploitation, and social injustice. Without weapons they would not be able so siphon off the wealth and enslave the population. Without weapons, people would storm the banks and destroy the loan and mortgage papers, the certificates of exploitation and enslavement. Without weapons, hungry, needy people would loot warehouses and shopping malls and stores. Without weapons, squatters would repossess empty (foreclosed) homes and laid off workers would take over closed factories and start production again on their own. Without weapons, people would storm the offices of the secret services and destroy all surveillance databases.
One cannot argue or negotiate, one cannot stand up against the ruling elites, they will use overwhelming force to splash any dissent. The plutocrats/sociopaths will not take any chances, they will surveil and seek out and destroy the dissenters.
And nevertheless, people all over the world stand up against the rulers and try to make their fellow humans aware of the ongoing monstrosities, of violence and repression in the name of liberty, people stand up against the absurdity of weapons and the crimes and horrors of war.
A few examples (the list is incomplete and shall only demonstrate the brutal repression of dissent):
December 1, 2010. 131 protesters against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were arrested outside the White House.
February 2, 2011. 5 arrests were made of peace activists protesting at Vandenberg Air Force base, including a veteran of WWII.
January 11, 2011. 10 people protesting against the continued human rights violation of Guantanamo prison trying to deliver a letter to a federal judge were arrested at the federal building in Chicago.
April 10, 2011. 27 people calling attention to the thousands of murders of people in Latin America by graduates of the US Army School of the Americas/WHINSEC were arrested outside the White House.
April 22, 2011 37 people were arrested protesting the use of drones outside the Hancock Air Force base near Syracuse New York.
April 22, 2011. 33 people protesting at the Livermore Lab which designs nuclear weapons at an interfaith peace service were arrested for trespassing.
April 24, 2011. 16 protestors against nuclear weapons at the Nevada National Security Site were arrested after a sixty mile sacred walk from Las Vegas.
May 2, 2011. 52 protestors against a nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City Missouri were arrested after blocking a gate to the construction site.
May 7, 2011. 7 people celebrating Mother's Day and protesting nuclear weapons were arrested outside the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.
June 2. 2011. 3 Florida activists from the group "Food Not Bombs" were arrested for feeding 40 homeless people in Lake Eola Park.
August 7, 2011. 4 peace activists were arrested while attempting to block the entrance to the US Navy's West Coast Trident nuclear submarine base.
June 15, 2011. 4 activists were arrested during a peaceful blockade of the secretive Swan Island military base in Victoria, Australia.
June 26, 2011. 28 peace activists were detained for protesting at the North European Aerospace Test range (NEAT) in Sweden. NEAT is used for testing missiles, jet-fighters, and drones.
These people are great, they have to be brave, they have to avoid being angered by constant provocations, they have to keep a cool head and stay calm. These people show us what we all have to do. They show us that we have to avoid playing the game of the sociopaths/plutocrats, which is: increasing the pressure, showing us how powerless we are, provoking us with their cynicisms, scorn, chutzpah, till we can't stand it anymore and do something stupid.
One could easily dismiss the described efforts as futile. Who cares how many protests are staged and how many petitions are signed, if these actions don't amount to any change? In fact, it all feels like a waste of time, if nothing changes. The sociopaths/plutocrats bet on this effect of disillusionment and weariness, and they will not give way one millimeter, hoping to discourage the peace movement by their rigid, uncompromising response. Another preventive measure against activists is, that protests are either not reported, belittled, or ridiculed as desperate actions of a few freaks from the lunatic fringe. By default, any reporting about dissent is taboo -- the power elites hope to confine the peace movement to a small, easily manageable minority.
It will need more than protests to break the stranglehold of the power elites.
As I wrote in answer A, we have a good chance to bring the system down, if enough of us drop out and organize in small communities. Some readers may be terrified of this idea and the realization, that their life will be significantly changed by a severe economic depression and the ensuing social and economic turmoil. It will be hard for many, but we have no chance. If we try to muddle through, keep the head down, keep quiet, we will be robbed and exploited by the ruling caste till there is nothing left what they can take from us. If we organize now and stabilize our small communities and build up a network, the disaster capitalists will not be able to come in at the heigh of the crisis and loot the place like they did when the USSR broke apart.
Civil disobedience together with dropping out of consumerism will bring things forward quite a bit, what about obstruction, subversion, disruption, non-violent sabotage (monkey-wrenching)? I never will call for acts of sabotage because that could be viewed as "material support" for a terrorist group. Constitutional rights and the First Amendment mean nothing when the plutocrats/sociopaths are challenged. I never will call for acts of sabotage because I don't want to risk the life of my family, my wife and my lovely six cats. I don't wont them to die in a drone attack, blown apart by a hellfire missile.
Do you like to take things apart? There are hundred of strip manuals for Glock17/19, AK-47, M-16. I didn't find much about XM-8, XM-29, but they are not in service yet. I hope someone produces a short guide how to take apart or disable them permanently in a few moments.
I already wrote in ANSWER A, that in my youth I liked to take things apart and that from my early years on I used to disassemble old mechanical clocks or at least to look inside. I have to add that I also many years ago liked to dig into programming codes. I used debuggers, decompilers, and often simply looked at the hexadecimal code for some special patterns. I was quite good in reverse engineering. Many times I found things intuitively, that I would never have been able to discover with a debugger or decompiler. The pattern recognition in our head is an incredible machine!
Nowadays I don't want to spent my time with programming or cracking or hacking or whatever. There are younger and brighter guys who can do that much better. I don't mean Anonymous and LulzSec. They are just having fun, mocking and distracting the law enforcement agents. I don't know anything about the real serious people, the ones, who have studied mathematics and who write code, that is miles ahead of Stuxnet. I don't know about the people, who can embed their code in jpg pictures with incredibly sophisticated compression algorithms, making it possible that everybody who uses normal jpg expansion will see just a picture. I don't know about the people, who can take over an Apache or an Oracle iPlanet server, reroute the data flows and install or disable deep packet inspection. I don't know about the people who write undetectable code, people who not only know the vulnerabilities of the operating systems, but also the vulnerabilities of the processors themselves.
Thousands of secret agents, informers, impersonators, and agent provocateurs roam the web, trying to seek out dissenters and get access to closed groups. We are approaching a situation where the activities of the Soviet Union's KGB and East Germany's Stasi in retrospective look like child's play.
Computer hardware is cheap, one can get 20 terabyte hard disk space for 600 Euro and less. Together with a 10 Gigabit/s Ethernet computer array and fast processors like Core i7 2600K, this hardware allows to do serious business. Such a computer station allows for instance to correlate all comments, postings, and chat room logs collected by crawler bots in some fiber optic connected South Korean computers to be analyzed and correlated, making it easy to uncover the agents and impersonators.
I don't know any details about such projects, I don't know where the computers are located. If I would know, I wouldn't write it in public.
I don't know about the private servers, who use special FTP based protocols with encryptions far beyond 254-bit to interconnect. I don't know about postings of sim cards and micro SD cards (who can be concealed easily even in a strip search). I don't know about the most secret groups who can detect every intruder with simple EEG tests based on Jennifer Vendemia's research. I don't know about SSS and WWW. I don't know about their secrets and their wisdom.
I don't know about all that, and if I would know, I would not tell it in public. I stop playing with words, and I am deadly serious now. I am just a front, like Anonymous and LulzSec. distracting and diverting attention. The secretive sisters don't write long texts like this one, they don't write blog posts, they write powerful and undetectable code.
======================
All the answers that I tried to write down in the end can be subsumed in the ultimate answer. Do you remember it?
Be an example, be a teacher, be a prophet, be a saint. Love, care, be happy, lead a modest life with the least possible use of energy and materials. Don't reproduce. Be careful and clever, outwit the powers of evil.
The sisters will outwit the powers of evil, the sisters cannot be corrupted, cannot be bought. The sociopaths/plutocrats will go down in flames! Or just wither away. Hiding in remote caves -- helpless, hopeless, useless.
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The numbers in this text are extracted from a wide range of documents and come from UN agencies, governments, NGOs, corporate and private journalists. The numbers of effected people and the amounts of materials vary widely and are most times not more than rough estimates or educated guesses. Usually I choose the most plausible number or the average from various conflicting estimates. I didn't cite sources because no source is unbiased, everybody has an agenda -- and so do I! The numbers are only meant to illustrate the scope/extent/range/amount of issues, developments, and things.
Most of the numbers are beyond our imagination in anyway. Who is able to imagine the suffering of the children and their mothers, when reports say, that 30,000 children starved to death in Somalia in three month? I cannot even fully apprehend the death of one child, let alone of 30,000. Who can imagine the death of 10,000 people in bombing raids? The death of 100,000 Iraqis and the suffering of millions more?
This text is a work in progress (like many of my other blog posts) and I publish it because I need a break and want do other thing than writing (mainly playing music and weeding in the garden). Please help me to improve this text, I am glad for any comments, responses, corrections, suggestions. I will occasionally update this text and incorporate all suggestion.
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