Category: Capitalism

Seeking intelligent life!

Continuing from yesterday with the essay from George Monbiot.

The title of today’s post comes from that very silly joke, oft repeated by yours truly, about why is it that Planet Earth has never been visited by aliens?

Answer: Because they have seen no signs of intelligent life!

(Yes, I know, it’s very corny!)

In yesterday’s post about Smart thinking (or the frequent lack of it) I referred to a recent essay from George Monbiot about the United Nations and climate change. Mr. Monbiot’s essay offers both a startling and hard-to-believe account of the madness, in lieu of a more cruel word, of what could be one of the crucial assemblies for positive change, but isn’t!

I said that the essay would be published in full today and here it is, with the kind permission of Mr. Monbiot.

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Applauding Themselves to Death

10th March 2015

Why the UN climate talks have wasted 23 years, and how this can change.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 11th March 2015

If you visit the website of the UN body that oversees the world’s climate negotiations(1), you will find dozens of pictures, taken across 20 years, of people clapping. These photos should be of interest to anthropologists and psychologists. For they show hundreds of intelligent, educated, well-paid and elegantly-dressed people wasting their lives.

The celebratory nature of the images testifies to the world of make-believe these people inhabit. They are surrounded by objectives, principles, commitments, instruments and protocols, which create a reassuring phantasm of progress while the ship on which they travel slowly founders. Leafing through these photos, I imagine I can almost hear what the delegates are saying through their expensive dentistry. “Darling you’ve re-arranged the deckchairs beautifully. It’s a breakthrough! We’ll have to invent a mechanism for holding them in place, as the deck has developed a bit of a tilt, but we’ll do that at the next conference.”

This process is futile because they have addressed the problem only from one end, and it happens to be the wrong end. They have sought to prevent climate breakdown by limiting the amount of greenhouse gases that are released; in other words, by constraining the consumption of fossil fuels. But, throughout the 23 years since the world’s governments decided to begin this process, the delegates have uttered not one coherent word about constraining production.

Compare this to any other treaty-making process. Imagine, for example, that the Biological Weapons Convention made no attempt to restrain the production or possession of weaponised smallpox and anthrax, but only to prohibit their use. How effective do you reckon it would be? (You don’t have to guess: look at the US gun laws, which prohibit the lethal use of guns but not their sale and carriage. You can see the results in the news every week). Imagine trying to protect elephants and rhinos only by banning the purchase of their tusks and horns, without limiting killing, export or sale. Imagine trying to bring slavery to an end not by stopping the transatlantic trade, but by seeking only to discourage people from buying slaves once they had arrived in the Americas. If you want to discourage a harmful trade, you must address it at both ends: production and consumption. Of the two, production is the most important.

The extraction of fossil fuels is a hard fact. The rules governments have developed to prevent their use are weak, inconsistent and negotiable. In other words, when coal, oil and gas are produced, they will be used. Continued production will overwhelm attempts to restrict consumption. Even if efforts to restrict consumption temporarily succeed, they are likely to be self-defeating. A reduction in demand when supply is unconstrained lowers the price, favouring carbon-intensive industry.

You can search through the UN’s website for any recognition of this issue, but you would be wasting your time. In its gushing catalogue of self-congratulation(2), at Kyoto, Doha, Bali, Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban, Lima and all stops en route, the phrase “fossil fuel” does not occur once. Nor do the words coal or oil. But gas: oh yes, there are plenty of mentions of gas. Not natural gas, of course, but of greenhouse gases, the sole topic of official interest.

The closest any of the 20 international conferences convened so far have come to acknowledging the problem is in the resolution adopted in Lima in December last year. It pledged “cooperation” in “the phasing down of high-carbon investments and fossil fuel subsidies”(3), but proposed no budget, timetable or any instrument or mechanism required to make it happen. It’s progress of a sort, I suppose, and perhaps, after just 23 years, we should be grateful.

There is nothing random about the pattern of silence that surrounds our lives. Silences occur where powerful interests are at risk of exposure. They protect these interests from democratic scrutiny. I’m not suggesting that the negotiators decided not to talk about fossil fuels, or signed a common accord to waste their lives. Far from it: they have gone to great lengths to invest their efforts with the appearance of meaning and purpose. Creating a silence requires only an instinct for avoiding conflict. It is a conditioned and unconscious reflex; part of the package of social skills that secures our survival. Don’t name the Devil for fear that you’ll summon him.

Breaking such silences requires a conscious and painful effort. I remember as if it were yesterday how I felt when I first raised this issue in the media(4). I had been working with a group of young activists in Wales, campaigning against opencast coal mines(5). Talking it over with them, it seemed so obvious, so overwhelming, that I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t on everyone’s lips. Before writing about it, I circled the topic like a dog investigating a suspicious carcass. Why, I wondered, is no one touching this? Is it toxic?

You cannot solve a problem without naming it. The absence of official recognition of the role of fossil fuel production in causing climate change – blitheringly obvious as it is – permits governments to pursue directly contradictory policies. While almost all governments claim to support the aim of preventing more than 2°C of global warming, they also seek to “maximise economic recovery” of their fossil fuel reserves. (Then they cross their fingers, walk three times widdershins around the office and pray that no one burns it). But few governments go as far as the UK has gone.

In the Infrastructure Act that received royal assent last month, maximising the economic recovery of petroleum from the UK’s continental shelf became a statutory duty(6). Future governments are now legally bound to squeeze every possible drop out of the ground.

The idea came from a government review conducted by Sir Ian Wood, the billionaire owner of an inherited company – the Wood Group – that provides services to the oil and gas industry. While Sir Ian says his recommendations “received overwhelming industry support”(7), his team interviewed no one outside either the oil business or government. It contains no sign that I can detect of any feedback from environment groups or scientists.

His review demanded government powers to enhance both the exploration of new reserves and the exploitation of existing ones. This, it insisted, “will help take us closer to the 24 billion [barrel] prize potentially still to come.” The government promised to implement his recommendations in full and without delay(8). In fact it went some way beyond them. It is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist when promoting climate change, but not when restraining it.

During December’s climate talks in Lima, the UK’s energy secretary, Ed Davey, did something unwise. He broke the silence. He warned that if climate change policies meant that fossil fuel reserves could no longer be exploited, pension funds could be investing in “the sub-prime assets of the future”(9). Echoing the Bank of England and financial analysts such as the Carbon Tracker Initiative, Mr Davey suggested that if governments were serious about preventing climate breakdown, fossil fuel could become a stranded asset.

This provoked a furious response from the industry. The head of Oil and Gas UK wrote to express his confusion(10), pointing out that Mr Davey’s statements come “at a time when you, your Department and the Treasury are putting great effort into [making] the UK North Sea more attractive to investors in oil and gas, not less. I’m intrigued to understand how such opposing viewpoints can be reconciled.” He’s not the only one. Ed Davey quickly explained that his comments were not to be taken seriously, as “I did not offer any suggestions on what investors should choose to do.”(11)

Barack Obama has the same problem. During a television interview last year, he confessed that “We’re not going to be able to burn it all.”(12) So why, he was asked, has his government been encouraging ever more exploration and extraction of fossil fuels? His administration has opened up marine oil exploration from Florida to Delaware – in waters that were formally off-limits(13). It has increased the number of leases sold for drilling on federal lands and, most incongruously, rushed through the process that might, by the end of this month, enable Shell to prospect in the highly vulnerable Arctic waters of the Chukchi Sea(14).

Similar contradictions beset most governments with environmental pretentions. Norway, for example, intends to be “carbon neutral” by 2030. Perhaps it hopes to export its entire oil and gas output, while relying on wind farms at home(15). A motion put to the Norwegian parliament last year to halt new drilling because it is incompatible with Norway’s climate change policies was defeated by 95 votes to 3(16).

Obama explained that “I don’t always lead with the climate change issue because if you right now are worried about whether you’ve got a job or if you can pay the bills, the first thing you want to hear is how do I meet the immediate problem?”(17)

Money is certainly a problem, but not necessarily for the reasons Obama suggested. The bigger issue is the bankrolling of politics by big oil and big coal(18), and the tremendous lobbying power they purchase. These companies have, in the past, financed wars to protect their position(19); they will not surrender the bulk of their reserves without a monumental fight. This fight would test the very limits of state power; I wonder whether our nominal democracies would survive it. Fossil fuel companies have become glutted on silence: their power has grown as a result of numberless failures to challenge and expose them. It’s no wonder that the manicured negotiators at the UN conferences, so careful never to break a nail, have spent so long avoiding the issue.

I believe there are ways of resolving this problem, ways that might recruit other powerful interests against these corporations. For example, a global auction in pollution permits would mean that governments had to regulate just a few thousand oil refineries, coal washeries, gas pipelines and cement and fertiliser factories, rather than the activities of 7 billion people(20). It would create a fund from the sale of permits that’s likely to run into trillions: money that could be used for anything from renewable energy to healthcare. By reducing fluctations in the supply of energy, it would deliver more predictable prices, that many businesses would welcome. Most importantly, unlike the current framework for negotiations, it could work, producing a real possibility of averting climate breakdown.

Left to themselves, the negotiators will continue to avoid this issue until they have wasted everyone else’s lives as well as their own. They keep telling us that the conference in Paris in December is the make or break meeting (presumably they intend to unveil a radical new deckchair design). We should take them at their word, and demand that they start confronting the real problem.

With the help of George Marshall at the Climate Outreach and Information Network, I’ve drafted a paragraph of the kind that the Paris agreement should contain. It’s far from perfect, and I would love to see other people refining it. But, I hope, it’s a start:

“Scientific assessments of the carbon contained in existing fossil fuel reserves suggest that full exploitation of these reserves is incompatible with the agreed target of no more than 2°C of global warming. The unrestricted extraction of these reserves undermines attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. We will start negotiating a global budget for the extraction of fossil fuels from existing reserves, as well as a date for a moratorium on the exploration and development of new reserves. In line with the quantification of the fossil carbon that can be extracted without a high chance of exceeding 2°C of global warming, we will develop a timetable for annual reductions towards that budget. We will develop mechanisms for allocating production within this budget and for enforcement and monitoring.”

If something of that kind were to emerge from Paris, it will not have been a total waste of time, and the delegates would be able to congratulate themselves on a real achievement rather than yet another false one. Then, for once, they would deserve their own applause.

References:

1. http://unfccc.int/2860.php

2. See the section titled “Key Steps”.

3. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2014/cop20/eng/10a01.pdf

4. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/dec/11/comment.greenpolitics

5. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/dec/05/beartoherethetruthyouvespoken

6. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/7/part/6/crossheading/recovery-of-uk-petroleum/enacted

7. http://www.woodreview.co.uk/documents/UKCS%20Maximising%20Recovery%20Review%20FINAL%2072pp%20locked.pdf

8. https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/wood-review-implementation-team

9. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11277546/Fossil-fuel-investing-a-risk-to-pension-funds-says-Ed-Davey.html

10. https://www.scribd.com/doc/256034152/Malcom-Webb-to-Secretary-of-State

11. https://www.scribd.com/doc/256034194/Secretary-of-State-to-Malcolm-Webb

12. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-obama-on-obama-on-climate.html?_r=1

13. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/how-obama-became-oil-president-gas-fracking-drill

14. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175963/tomgram%3A_subhankar_banerjee%2C_arctic_nightmares/

15. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24299-ipcc-digested-just-leave-the-fossil-fuels-underground.html

16. https://stortinget.no/no/Saker-og-publikasjoner/Saker/Sak/?p=59412

17. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-obama-on-obama-on-climate.html?_r=1

18. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/aug/02/climate-change-political-funding-us

19. http://en.mercopress.com/2008/06/15/formal-end-to-oil-companies-proxy-chaco-war-1932-35

20. http://www.kyoto2.org/

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What a funny lot we can be!

Smart thinking – something else to learn from our dogs?

Because some of the things we humans do are insanely stupid!

Here’s a picture of Oliver taken yesterday afternoon.

Becoming a dear, smart dog. (And those eyes!)

A few days ago, I was sitting in our living room on one of our settees (more or less where Oliver was sitting when the photograph above was taken) with my knees up against a low coffee table; the table separates our two settees.

On the settee to my left lay Cleo and on the floor across my feet slept Hazel.

It was clear that Oliver wanted to join me on the settee but couldn’t work out if there was room. I shifted about two feet to my left leaving an Oliver-sized gap to my right. However, Oliver couldn’t come past my knees, from left to right as it were, because of Hazel. He very quickly worked out to run around behind the settee and jump up into the space I had newly created to my right.

Don’t worry if I lost you!

The point I am making is that Oliver, who has grown into the most delightful young adult dog, with a gorgeous temperament, demonstrates daily a keen intelligence and a nose for working things out quickly.

All of which is a preamble for me wondering if among the list of qualities that we humans should learn from dogs we should add intelligence.

For there’s been a few items around the ‘blogosphere’ that have highlighted how silly we can be.

Take this item that recently was featured on Grist.

Walmart’s new green product label is the most misleading yet.

A giant, 150-foot roll of bubble wrap may not be your idea of an environmentally friendly product, but over at Walmart.com this one-pound ball of plastic now boasts a special “Sustainability Leaders” badge. It’s one of more than 3,000 products tagged with this new green label, which Walmart executives unveiled last week, together with a web portal where shoppers can find these items.

Dozens of news accounts hailed the giant retailer’s move as a significant step toward clearing up the confusion and misleading information that often greet consumers trying to make ecologically responsible choices. “The world’s largest retailer took a major and important step toward helping all of us shop more smartly,” declared corporate sustainability consultant Andrew Winston in Harvard Business Review. Triple Pundit concurred: “It’s about to get a lot easier for Walmart.com shoppers to make the responsible choice.”

Actually, a green-minded online shopper is likely to find Walmart’s new badge confusing, murky, and downright misleading. I searched the bubble wrap’s product page high and low for its secret sauce, the invisible feature that makes it a smarter choice amid the many seemingly less harmful packing options available, but found no explanation.

It turns out that the key to this mystery lies in a remarkable disclaimer tucked into the middle of the home page of Walmart’s sustainability shopping portal: “The Sustainability Leaders badge does not make representations about the environmental or social impact of an individual product.” (my emphasis)

You can read the full item here, and you should! It’s unbelievably stupid, apart from being highly misleading, to my mind because when the word gets around it will damage the trust that all retailers need from their customers. And don’t even bring up the notion of integrity!

Then over on George Monbiot’s blogsite, there is a recent essay about the UN and progress on climate change. Here’s how it starts (and I’m republishing it in full tomorrow):

Applauding Themselves to Death

If you visit the website of the UN body that oversees the world’s climate negotiations, you will find dozens of pictures, taken across 20 years, of people clapping. These photos should be of interest to anthropologists and psychologists. For they show hundreds of intelligent, educated, well-paid and elegantly-dressed people wasting their lives.

The celebratory nature of the images testifies to the world of make-believe these people inhabit. They are surrounded by objectives, principles, commitments, instruments and protocols, which create a reassuring phantasm of progress while the ship on which they travel slowly founders. Leafing through these photos, I imagine I can almost hear what the delegates are saying through their expensive dentistry. “Darling you’ve re-arranged the deckchairs beautifully. It’s a breakthrough! We’ll have to invent a mechanism for holding them in place, as the deck has developed a bit of a tilt, but we’ll do that at the next conference.”

Humans have the potential to be incredibly smart thinkers, and down the ages there have been many such thinkers.

But!

Over on the Patrice Ayme blogsite there have been a couple of recent essays that highlight examples of both stupid thinking and the rewards that flow from smart thinking. In one essay, Added Value in the XXI Century, Patrice writes:

SUPERIORITY OF THE WEST?

Why did the West become so superior? Or China, for that matter?

Technology. Superior technology. Coming from superior thinking. Both the Greeks and the Chinese had colossal contempt for barbarians. (In both cases it went so far that the Greeks lost everything, and the Chinese came very close to annihilation).

Around the year 1000 CE, the Vietnamese (it seems) invented new cultivars of rice, which could produce an entire crop, twice a year. The population of East Asia exploded accordingly.

A bit earlier, the Franks had invented new cultivars of beans. The Frankish Tenth Century was full of beans. Beans are nutritious, with high protein.

Homo is scientific and technological. Thus, two million years ago, pelt covered (tech!) Homo Ergaster lived in Georgia’s Little Caucasus, a pretty cold place in winter. And the population was highly varied genetically (showing tech and travel already dominated).

A GREATER OBSESSION WITH FREEDOM MADE THE WEST SUPERIOR:

Here is the very latest. Flour was found in England, in archeological layers as old as 10,000 years before present. It was pure flour: there were no husks associated. The milling had been done, far away. How far? Well the cultivation of wheat spread to Western Europe millennia later. The flour had been traded, and brought over thousands of miles. Most certainly by boat. Celtic civilization, which would rise 5,000 years later, was expert at oceanic travel.

What’s the broad picture? Not just that prehistoric Englishmen loved their flat bread, no doubt a delicacy. Advanced technology has permeated Europe for much longer than is still understood now by most historians. Remember that the iceman who died in a glacier, 5,000 years ago, was not just tattooed, and had fetched in the lowlands a bow made of special wood. More telling: he carried antibiotics.

Then in a subsequent essay, What Is It To Think Correctly?, Patrice opens, thus:

What Is It To Think Correctly?

Some say that correct thinking has to do with avoiding “logical fallacies”. That is, of course, silly. Imagine a pilot in a plane. Suppose she avoids all logical fallacies. Where does the plane go? Nowhere. Thinking correctly is more than avoiding logical “fallacies”.

One needs more than logic, to proceed: one needs e-motion, or motivation (both express the fact that they are whatever gets people to get into action; the semantics recognizes that logic without emotion goes nowhere).

There is another, related, fallacy in thinking that correct thinking is all about avoiding “logical fallacies”.

I don’t have the answers to the conundrum of stupid thinking a la Walmart and the United Nations (not an exclusive list; by far) but I do believe that the only way for humanity to overcome what looks like a very dangerous era ahead is through smarter thinking!

Oh, nearly forgot.

Oliver will be happy to run classes on smart thinking!

Please help.

Reblogged from Exposing the Big Game

I follow the blogsite Exposing the Big Game. The bye-line on the home page explains, “Forget Hunter’s Feeble Rationalizations and Trust Your Gut Feelings: Making Sport of Killing Is Not Healthy Human Behavior“. Some of the posts that are published are incredibly difficult to read.

But this post does at least allow those that hate hunting for sport to register their feelings.

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Who the F**k Hunts Giraffes for Sport and How You Can Stop Them

Please sign and share these petitions.

Stop trophy hunting giraffes
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/929/929/857/stop-trophy-hunting-giraffes/
…
Stop hunting giraffes for sport
http://forcechange.com/12033/stop-hunting-giraffes-for-sport/

Stop any kind of safari hunting in South Africa
https://www.causes.com/actions/1742571-stop-any-kind-of-safari-hunting-in-south-africa

Stop the savage and sickening trophy and sport hunting
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-savage-and-sickening-trophy-and-sport-hunting/

Complete ban on trophy hunting in South Africa and a full census
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/complete-ban-on-trophy-hunting-full-census-carried-ou.html?

Stop the legal killing of wildlife in trophy hunting
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-the-legal-killing-of-wildlife-stop-hunting/sign.html

End WWF partnership with pro-hunting lobby
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Yolanda_Kakabadse_is_WWFs_International_President_and_USAID_WWF_End_your_partnership_with_the_USA_ProHunting_Lobby_Group/

Ban lion farming and trophy hunting
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/147/069/549/ban-lion-farming-and-trophy-hunting/?cid=FB_TAF

Stop the canned hunting of large cats in South Africa
https://www.change.org/p/ms-lakela-kaunda-stop-the-canned-hunting-of-large-cats-in-south-africa

USF&WService save the lions from mass extinction
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/US_Fish_and_Wildlife_Service_Save_African_Lions/?sfmqQib

Zambian tourist board: to reinstate ban on hunting lions and leopards
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/

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If you have any issues with any of the links, just move on. Please sign just as many as you can.

One small step at a time

We have absolutely no choice other than to change our ways.

I closed yesterday’s post, Stepping back from the future, with these words:

Tomorrow, I want to offer the example of someone who has been sufficiently strong to take one small step back to sanity.

What I am offering is the reposting of an item in 2013 on Transition Network over in the UK. As you read it, do bear in mind that the references to Amazon are, in the main, to Amazon in the United Kingdom.

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The day I closed my Amazon account

Published on December 5, 2013, by Rob Hopkins

I’ve done it. I’ve closed my Amazon account. I now stand before you as an ex-Amazon account-holder. I feel curiously shaky, but at the same time empowered, excited even. While opening a new Amazon account is easy as pie, closing one is another matter altogether. I’d like to share with you how, and why, I did it.

Was it the recent Panorama programme about working conditions in those vast Amazon ‘fulfilment centres’ that tipped me across into doing something? Was it the stories about the appallingly low levels of tax Amazon pay in the UK? Was it the recent video showing Amazon’s plans to be delivering across the UK within 30 minutes through the use of drones? Was it hearing the level of taxpayers’ money that goes in sweeteners to attracting Amazon to open up in different communities, while the profits generated pour out of those same places? What actually tipped me across was a conversation I had with a book seller in my town. It was that that led me, finally, to build the steely resolve needed to close down my Amazon account.

Yes, I confess, I had an Amazon account. I buy music from my local record shop, I support my local book shops, but there are times when I need a book quickly, or feel I do, and it’s just easier and more convenient. And, if I’m honest, I love getting exciting parcels in the post. And isn’t it cheap? But as Carole Cadwalladr, who went undercover in Amazon’s Swansea ‘fulfilment centre’ for The Guardian puts it:

Our lust for cheap, discounted goods delivered to our doors promptly and efficiently has a price. We just haven’t worked out what it is yet.

I’ve always had that nagging conscience that it’s not OK really, but I have just had it ticking away in the background and carried on using it on occasion. The conversation that tipped it for me, with my local bookseller, was around “what would it take for you to stop supporting Amazon?” His example was Primark, recently implicated in child labour in the manufacturing of some its clothes. We know that’s the case, but we still shop there. If we knew that 8 year olds work there, would we stop shopping there? Or 5 year olds? If we knew that every day they arrive for work they get hit with a stick, would we still pop in there for a cheap new shirt? And if they got hit 3 times, and then again in the middle of the day? Where do we draw the line?

Our tendency is to draw a line, but then for that line to slip. What swung it for me was thinking that actually, what I already know should be enough to make me withdraw my support. Also, it was thinking about where the world will be in 5 years time if we continue to give Amazon our support. More and more low paid jobs, with little Union protection, in conditions described in the BBC documentary as “… all the bad stuff at once. The characteristics of this type of job, the evidence shows increased risk of mental illness and physical illness.”

We’ll see Amazon ‘fulfilment centres’ that look like a wasp’s nest, with drones flying in and out. High streets swept clean of bookshops, indeed of most shops, as Amazon spread into selling virtually everything that local economies sell, but far cheaper. It made me think about what kind of a world I’m creating for my sons as they enter the work place. What kind of opportunities will Amazon offer them, as they gut local economies and focus economic activity into vast warehouses along the side of motorways?

I give so much of my time every day to trying to create a different, more just, more resilient world, yet my shopping decisions undermine that. There is also an extraordinary arrogance to thinking that it is OK for you to fill peoples’ airspace, the sky above their heads, with your drones, delivering your products to people for your profit. What happens for a company to get so huge that that is considered acceptable? It is about getting too big. Amazon is too big. Far too big. But it clearly sees that it has only just started. That’s not good.

So, decision made, and with a commitment to source those things in other ways, I went to the website to close my account. Closing an account with Amazon is like breaking up with a girlfriend whose level of obsessive denial is such that the possibility you might want to split up with her doesn’t even enter her consciousness. It’s a fascinating process. Opening an account with Amazon is so easy. Closing an account is, as my 15 year-old son might put it, a right mission.

Click on ‘Your account’ and there is no option anywhere of “Close my account”. Nothing. Like it’s not even a possibility that it might entertain. I had to Google (and don’t get me started on them) “closing your Amazon account”. If you search the Amazon site for “close my account” it yields no results. See below:

The Google link took me to their Help section, on pages that bear the slogan “we’re the people with the smile on the box”, prompting the thought that the inside of their box-like warehouses are probably somewhat bereft of smiles. If offers you a drop-down menu under the helpful title “what can we help you with?”. Surely that’s where I’ll find “Close my Account”? No. You get a range of choices, “An order I placed”, “Kindle”, “Digital services” and, er, “Something else”. Guess I’m “something else” then. So I click that.

I’m then given another 4 options, none of which are “Close my account”. I’m asked to “tell us more about your issue”, and given another list where my option is “other non-order question”. Given that still, the idea that I might have got this far could mean I want to close my account is clearly unimaginable, I am then given an option to email, to phone, or to “chat”. So I click on “chat”, and am told “a customer service associate will be here in a moment”.

A charming man then begins to chat with me. Here’s how our conversation went:

Me: I want to close my account please. How do I do that?

Tom (not his real name): Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk. My name is Tom. May I know your name, please?

Me: Rob

Tom: Thank you. I’m sorry to hear that you want to close the account. May I know the reason for closing the account please?

Me: Certainly. I am appalled by the way Amazon operate as highlighted in the recent BBC Panorama programme. I am appalled at the recent story on Amazon considering deliveries in future by drone. I am appalled by the low level of tax Amazon pay in the UK. I have been a customer for years, but I feel Amazon has become too big, and eats everything in its path. It is no longer something I wish to support.

Tom: I’m sorry for the situation. For confidentiality reasons, I’m not able to close your account for you in chat, so I’m going to send you an e-mail with the information to close the account. When you receive it, please respond to that e-mail so that we will close your account.

Me: Thank you Tom. I would really like my reasons for leaving to be registered somehow, as I think a lot more people will be closing their accounts for similar reasons, and it would be good for that to be noted by those in charge. Will that be possible?

Tom: Unfortunately we will not be able to comment on this issue. However, I will send you an email regarding the closing of the account. Is there any thing else I can help you with?

Me: I am not asking you to comment on the issue. I am asking you to make sure that the reasons for my closing my account are passed on to management. If I ran a business I would want to know why my customers were closing their accounts. Is that not the case at Amazon?

Tom: Sure, all the information’s will be recorded and forwarded to the appropriate department.

Me: Thank you Tom. I appreciate your help.

Tom: Thanks for your understanding. We hope to see you again soon! Have a Nice Day!

I later received an email from Customer Support to say:

“We appreciate your feedback and have forwarded it to the appropriate team internally. We are proud to provide a safe and positive working environment for all of our associates. Information about working at our fulfilment centres can be found at the following link: www.amazon.co.uk/fcpractices“

Amazon may be cheap, but cheap comes at a cost for someone else. And, after all, much of what is bought on there is throwaway rubbish. As Carole Cadwalladr puts it:

The warehouse is 800,000 square feet, or, in what is Amazon’s standard unit of measurement, the size of 11 football pitches (its Dunfermline warehouse, the UK’s largest, is 14 football pitches). It is a quarter of a mile from end to end. There is space, it turns out, for an awful lot of crap.

Me, I resolve to buy less, but better. Less, but longer-lasting. Less, but local. The thought of where we will end up in 5 years time, 10 years time, 20 years time, if companies like Amazon continue as they are, really frightens me. It’s not good, it’s not right. It’s not about our needs, it’s about the needs of huge investors. I want a different world for my boys.

I can’t, on my own, do that much about it. I can’t insist that the UK government legislate so that, as in Holland, the Recommended Retail Price (RRP) is the legal minimum at which any book can be sold, although I think that is grounds for a really timely campaign. Because of that, Amazon don’t really operate in Holland. Bring back the RRP for books here, and let’s have a level playing field. As I say, I can’t do much, but I can withdraw my support. I just have withdrawn my support. It feels surprisingly unsettling, as one does after ending a relationship, but it was the right thing to do. It may be a drop in the ocean, but if enough people do it….

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As you might expect, I do have an Amazon account but will look closely into alternatives. In that regard, I just want to expand on the link underneath the earlier phrase, “commitment to source those things in other ways“. The link takes you to an article in the Guardian newspaper, online version, dated the 16th May, 2013. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Amazon’s tax bill is in the news again, after a Guardian investigation put the spotlight on its financial arrangements. There’s a growing swell of people who want to use an alternative place to buy – including my colleague Patrick Collinson who wrote about his attempts to kick the Amazon habit in November.

But it is not always easy to find good alternatives online: if you want to buy either the latest Dan Brown novel (and clearly some people do), Mad Men series five on DVD, or even a packet of Pampers nappies, Amazon seems to come top of the search pages.

That Patrick Collinson piece is a ‘must-read’.

To close today’s post, just spend four minutes watching the following video.

Why growth and the environment can’t coexist

Published on Feb 9, 2015
Featuring: Sam Bliss
Production: Daniel Penner
Animation + Illustration: Amelia Bates
Music: “Nincompoop (No Vocals)” by Josh Woodward (http://www.joshwoodward.com/)
“Favorite Secrets” by Waylon Thornton (http://waylonthornton.tumblr.com)
Footage: Prelinger Archives

The background to the video, first seen referred to on the Grist blogsite, is republished here:

Watch our juicy explainer about the environment’s growing economics problem.

By Sam Bliss on 9 Feb 2015

Consume less, share more. Those are some basic principles behind degrowth, an idea and movement that rejects economic growth as a goal for society. This video explains degrowth with oranges, juice, and peels.

But wait, you ask, isn’t growth a good thing? In an age when we’re conditioned to equate growth with progress, degrowth sounds insane. In reality, pursuing endless exponential expansion of the economy is insane — and impossible. Humans already use resources faster than Earth can replenish them and produce wastes, like carbon emissions, faster than Earth can assimilate them. Hence, degrowth.

Degrowth isn’t about making everyone poorer; it’s about redefining wealth to acknowledge that real well-being can’t be measured in dollars. It’s about breaking down the artificial barrier between life and work; it’s about valuing cooperation over competition; it’s about democracy, autonomy, solidarity, and climate justice. Most importantly, degrowth means sharing society’s surplus for awesome art projects and epic, week-long gatherings.

Check out the vid to get juiced on degrowth.

Stepping back from the future!

In more ways than one.

I freely admit that I have been putting off today’s post, and I’m not sure why.

Maybe it’s the continuing escalation of words between the West and Russia over the Ukraine? (But for some clarity do read this analysis written by Anatol Lieven, Professor, Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar.)

Maybe it’s because my last republication of a George Monbiot essay was so hopeful. Indeed, the blog post was called Voting for hope. Whereas today’s Monbiot essay is very sad.

Maybe it’s because I am not immune to the temptations that are described.

But whatever the reasons, there can be no denying that there is a real sense of finding the modern world increasingly strange and frequently upsetting.

That theme continues today with the republication of a George Monbiot essay that he released on his blog a week ago.

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Lost in the 21st Century

3rd February 2015

Consumerism has broken its promise. Perhaps now we can begin to reconnect.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th February 2015

A woman walks into a department store. She takes in the racks and stacks of stuff, the sugared music, the sale signs, the listless customers shuffling through the aisles, and is moved – suddenly and to her own astonishment – to shout. “Is this all there is?!”. An assistant comes round from behind his till. “No madam. There’s more in our catalogue.”

This is the answer we have been given to everything, the only answer. We might have lost our attachments, our communities, our sense of meaning and purpose, but there will be more money and more stuff with which to replace them. Now that the promise has evaporated, the size of the void becomes intelligible.

It’s not that the old dispensation was necessarily better: it was bad in different ways. Hierarchies of class and gender crush the human spirit as effectively as atomisation. The point is that the void that was filled with junk is a void that could have been occupied by a better society, built on mutual support and connectedness, without the stifling stratification of the old order. But the movements that helped to smash the old world were facilitated and co-opted by consumerism.

Individuation, a necessary response to oppressive conformity, is exploitable. New social hierarchies, built around positional goods and conspicuous consumption, took the place of the old. The conflict between individualism and egalitarianism, too readily ignored by those who helped to break the oppressive norms and strictures, does not resolve itself.

So we are lost in the 21st Century, living in a state of social disaggregation that hardly anyone desired, but that is an emergent property of a world reliant on rising consumption to avert economic collapse, saturated with advertising and framed by market fundamentalism. We inhabit a planet our ancestors would have found impossible to imagine: 7 billion people, suffering an epidemic of loneliness. It is a world of our making but not of our choice.

Now it appears that the feast to which we were invited is only for the few. Figures released last week show that wages in the United Kingdom are lower than they were 13 years ago(1). A fortnight ago, Oxfam revealed that the top 1% now possesses 48% of the world’s wealth(2); by next year it will own as much as everybody else put together. On the same day, an Austrian company unveiled its design for a new superyacht. It will be built on the hull of an oil tanker, 918 feet long(3). There will be 11 decks, three helipads, theatres, concert halls and restaurants, electric cars to take the owner and his guests from one end of the ship to the other, and a four-storey ski slope.

In 1949, Aldous Huxley wrote to George Orwell, to argue that his dystopian vision was the more convincing(4). “The lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. … The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency.” I don’t believe he was wrong.

Consumerism is at odds with common purpose: you could pay your taxes or you could spend the money on a new car(5). It stifles feeling, dulling our concern for other people. Freedom to spend displaces other freedoms, as lotus eating allows us to forget our losses. Most forms of peaceful protest are now banned, but no one stops us from devouring the resources upon which future generations will depend. All this helps the global oligarchs to rip holes in the social safety net, find relief from the constraints of both democracy and taxation, and enclose and privatise our common weal.

Just as human society has been pulled apart by consumerism and materialism, pushing us into an unprecedented Age of Loneliness(6), so ecosystems have been shattered by the same forces. It is the consumerist mindset, raised to the global scale, that now threatens us with climate breakdown, catalyses a sixth great extinction, imperils global water supplies and strips the soil upon which all human life depends(7).

But nor do I believe that the acceptance of servitude Huxley envisaged is a permanent state. Wage stagnation, the brutality of the new conditions of employment, the breaking of the link between educational attainment and social advancement, the impossibility, for many young people, of finding good housing, all these confront us with the question that could be deferred only during conditions of rising general prosperity: is this all there is?

As the growth of Syriza and Podemos suggests, we cannot build political movements to challenge these issues unless we also build society. It is not enough to urge people to change their politics: we must create not only communities of interest but also communities of mutual support, offering the security, survival and respect that the state will no longer provide.

In a remarkable series of contemplations, extending beyond its familiar brief, Friends of the Earth has begun to explore how we might reconnect(8), with each other and with the natural world. It is looking, for example, at new models for urban living(9), based on sharing rather than competitive consumption: the sharing not just of cars and appliances and tools, but also of money (through credit unions and micro-finance) and power. This means community-led decision-making, over transport, planning and, perhaps, rent levels, minimum and maximum wages, municipal budgets and taxation. Such initiatives are not a substitute for government action – like David Cameron’s Big Society they are meaningless without facilitation from the state – but they can bring people together with a sense of shared purpose, ownership and mutual support that centralised decision-making can never provide.

Friends of the Earth also supports the empathy revolution championed by the author Roman Krznaric(10), and lifelong education that might counter the ever narrower schooling now inflicted on our children, whose purpose is to prepare people for jobs they will never have, in the service of an economy ordered for the benefit of others.

In these ideas and movements we find the glimmerings of an answer to the question: no, this is not all there is. There is attachment. Despite the best efforts of those who believe there is no such thing as society, we have not lost our ability to connect.

http://www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/30/british-wage-slump-post-financial-crisis-uk

2. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/19/global-wealth-oxfam-inequality-davos-economic-summit-switzerland

3. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2916523/Welcome-aboard-gold-superyacht-size-OIL-TANKER-indoor-ski-slope-board-BMWs-five-helicopters.html

4. http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/1984-v-brave-new-world.html

5. See also the discussion of Rami Gabriel’s work (2013. Why I buy: Self, taste, and consumer society in America. University of Chicago Press) in Friends of the Earth, December 2013. Consumption and identity: A review of literature which is relevant to the question: ‘what is a better foundation for people’s identity than consumption?’ http://bit.ly/1ECZopQ

6. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/age-of-loneliness-killing-us

7. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/jun/05/the-farming-lobby-has-wrecked-efforts-to-defend-our-soil

8. http://www.foe.co.uk/page/big-ideas-change-world

9. http://www.foe.co.uk/page/big-ideas-cities

10. http://www.romankrznaric.com/

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Tomorrow, I want to offer the example of someone who has been sufficiently strong to take one small step back to sanity.

Voting for hope.

Considered reflections to yesterday’s post.

Yesterday, I published Bitter Lake ripples, a post that, in turn, was my response to the fabulous comments left by readers of my earlier post Oil, money, banks, guns and blood. The overall feeling I read in those comments was one of terrible uncertainty about these present times. Or in the words of Sue Dreamwalker in response to a comment left by Patrice Ayme.

I have to say Patrice.. I agree with your comment here… And yes people are not understanding the whole of what is going on.. The Truth of it would seem unbelievable..

Patrice, in a post published on Monday entitled Arm Ukraine, Disarm Bankers sent shivers down my spine with the suggestion, the strong suggestion, that Ukraine, if not handled properly by ‘the West’ could be a tipping point into another major war between Europe (and the USA?) and Russia. Here’s an extract from Patrice’s post:

The way it was said, in conjunction with Putin’s recent admission that Russian “volunteers” were fighting in Ukraine, is basically a declaration of war. On top of this, the head of the Eastern Ukraine rebels declared that he was raising a 100,000 men army. This means he expect tens of thousands of Russian troops (Putin’s “volunteers”) to cross the border.

This is not contained. Putin is billowing out of control, all by himself. One has to see what the combination of Putin’s dictatorial powers, media control, psychology and sinking economy leads to. Let me spell it out.

Once Putin has conquered Ukraine, he will push for more: he is already partly occupying Moldavia, WEST of Ukraine. Putin is also messing up with Hungary: there were street demonstrations about this, just yesterday, in Budapest. Putin uses the fact that Hungary is extremely dependent upon Russia’s fossil fuels. Merkel, who desperately wants to avoid war with Putin, flew to Budapest in emergency, to sort the situation out.

Patrice continues the warning of possible terrible times ahead in a subsequent post: Mental Inertia, Evil’s Friend, published yesterday.

Just as it takes a long time to erect, or change a vast building, so it is with the brain. The brain has inertia. Thus psychological inertia.

This mental inertia is why human beings tend to go on with a task, or with an attitude, once they got launched into it (a Jihadist laden with explosives just flew by).

Once a force is applied to an object, for example a propaganda to a brain, it tends to gather momentum, and develop ever more inertia.

Putin of course creates his own propaganda, and then can listen to it, reinforcing his deviance, in a self-reflective way. It’s all the more efficient if others repeat his ideas, and he listens to them. Actually that’s not just a problem with Putin, but with all Great Leaders. (And that’s one reason why Great Leadership has to be discontinued, and replaced by Direct Democracy.)

This amplifies the inertia.

By not fiercely opposing Putin, one collaborates with him. It is not just a question of sanctions. Putin is a liar, and an aggressive one, he should be publicly called for what he is.

Thus in terms of my own personal ideas, I freely admit to struggling to see things clearly. Simply because I find it very difficult to get to the heart of these international issues through not having access to clear, impartial commentators who know what they are speaking about. As Patrice infers much of the media is corrupted by self-serving agendas.

However, on balance, despite Patrice Ayme being a ‘nom-de-plume’ and me having no idea who the person behind the label really is, I do trust his (?) writings and believe that Patrice writes from a position of having very good access to the inner workings of the US Government. (I am not privy to anything to support my proposition; just my guess.)

The other commentator whose opinions and judgements are trusted by me in equal fashion is George Monbiot. Mr. Monbiot has been gracious to grant permission to me for his essays to be republished here on Learning from Dogs.

On the 28th January, Mr. Monbiot published an essay that in words better than I could write encapsulates my response to the comments left on my Bitter Lake ripples post. Here is that post from George Mobiot.

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The Lamps Are Coming On All Over Europe

28th January 2015

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th January 2015

Here is the first rule of politics: if you never vote for what you want, you never get it. We are told at every election to hold our noses, forget the deficiencies and betrayals and vote Labour yet again, for fear of something worse(1). And there will, of course, always be something worse. So at what point should we vote for what we want, rather than keep choosing between two versions of market fundamentalism? Sometime this century? Or in the next? Follow the advice of the noseholders and we will be lost forever in Labour’s Bermuda triangulation.

Perhaps there was a time when this counsel of despair made sense. No longer. The lamps are coming on all over Europe. As in South America, political shifts that seemed impossible a few years earlier are now shaking the continent. We knew that another world was possible. Now, it seems, another world is here: the sudden death of the neoliberal consensus. Any party that claims to belong to the left but does not grasp this is finished.

Syriza, Podemos, Sinn Fein, the SNP; now a bright light is shining in England too, as the Green party stokes the radical flame that Labour left to gutter. On Tuesday morning, its membership in England and Wales passed 50,000(2); a year ago it was less than 15,000. A survey by the website voteforpolicies.org.uk reports that in blind tests (the 500,000 people it has polled were unaware of which positions belong to which parties), the Green Party’s policies are more popular than those of any other. If people voted for what they want, the Greens would be the party of government.

There are many reasons for this surge, but one of them must be a sense of popular ownership. Green party policies are determined democratically. Emerging from debates led mostly by younger members(3), they feel made for their time, while those of the major parties appear trapped in the 1980s.

Let me give you a flavour of the political transformation the Green Party seeks. There would be no prime minister of the kind we have today, no secretaries of state. Instead, Parliament would elect policy committees which in turn appoint convenors(4). It would also elect a First Minister, to chair the convenors’ committee. Parliament, in other words, would be sovereign rather than subject to the royal prerogative prime ministers abuse, leaders would be elected by the whole body and its various parties would be obliged to work together, rather than engage in perennial willy-waving.

Local authorities would set the taxes they chose. Local currencies, which have proved elsewhere to have transformative effects in depressed areas (see Bernard Lietaer’s book The Future of Money(5)) would become legal tender(6). Private banks would no longer be permitted to create money(7) (at the moment they issue 97% of our money supply, in the form of debt). Workers in limited companies would have the legal right, following a successful ballot, to buy them out and create cooperatives(8), with funding from a national investment bank.

The hideously unfair council tax system would be replaced by land value taxation(9), through which everyone would benefit from the speculative gains now monopolised by a few. All citizens would receive, unconditionally, a basic income(10), putting an end to insecurity and fear and to the punitive conditions attached to benefits, which have reduced recipients almost to the status of slaves.

Compare this vision of hope to Labour’s politics of fear. Compare it to a party so mesmerised by the City and the Daily Mail that it has promised to sustain the Tory cuts for “decades ahead”(11) and to “finish that task on which [the Chancellor] has failed”: eradicating the deficit.

Far too late, a former Labour minister, Peter Hain, now recognises that, inasmuch as the books need balancing, it can be done through measures like a financial transaction tax and a reform of national insurance(12), rather than through endless cuts. These opportunities have been dangling in front of Labour’s nose since 2008(13), but because appeasing the banks and the corporate press was deemed more important than preventing pain and suffering for millions, they have not been taken. Hain appears belatedly to have realised that austerity is a con, a deliberate rewriting of the social contract to divert our common wealth to the elite. There’s no evidence that the frontbench is listening.

Whether it wins or loses the general election, Labour is probably finished. It would take a generation to replace the sycophants who let Blair and Brown rip their party’s values to shreds. By then it will be history. If Labour wins in May, it is likely to destroy itself faster and more surely than if it loses, through the continued implementation of austerity. That is the lesson from Europe.

Fearful voting shifts the whole polity to the right. Tony Blair’s obeisance to corporate power enabled the vicious and destructive policies the Coalition now pursues(14). The same legacy silences Labour in opposition, as it pioneered most of the policies it should oppose. It is because we held our noses before that there is a greater stink today. So do we keep voting for a diluted version of Tory politics, for fear of the concentrate? Or do we start to vote for what we want? Had the people of this nation heeded the noseholders a century ago, we would still be waiting for the Liberal Party to deliver universal healthcare and the welfare state.

Society moves from the margins, not the centre. Those who wish for change must think of themselves as the sacrificial margin: the pioneering movement that might not succeed immediately, but that will eventually deliver sweeping change. We cannot create a successful alternative to the parties that have betrayed us until we start voting for it. Do we start walking, or just keep talking about the journey we might one day take?

Power at the moment is lethal. Whichever major party wins this election, it is likely to destroy itself through the pursuit of policies that almost no one wants. Yes, it might mean five more years of pain, though I suspect in these fissiparous times it won’t last so long. And then it all opens up. This is what we must strive for; this is the process that begins in May by voting, regardless of tactical considerations, for parties offering a genuine alternative. Change arises from conviction. Stop voting in fear. Start voting for hope.

http://www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/09/labour-tories-vote-osborne

2. Green Party office, by email, 27th January 2015

3. http://bright-green.org/green-movement/how-the-green-party-changed-itself-to-make-the-greensurge-possible/

4. http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/pa.html

5. http://www.lietaer.com/writings/books/the-future-of-money/

6. http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ec.html#EC678

7. http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ec.html

8. http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/in.html

9. http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ec.html

10. http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ec.html

11. http://press.labour.org.uk/post/87284550049/long-termism-in-public-finance-speech-by-chris

12. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/22/labour-radical-counter-greens-peter-hain

13. I was not the first to propose these alternatives to austerity Peter Hain has just discovered, but even I had got there by 2011: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/06/march-26-protest-aims-first-draft

14. http://www.monbiot.com/books/captive-state/

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I said that Mr. Monbiot’s words were much finer than my own. No better illustrated than by his closing three sentences:

“Change arises from conviction. Stop voting in fear. Start voting for hope.”

Bitter Lake ripples.

Reflections on last Thursday’s post.

Last Thursday, I published a post under the title of Oil, money, banks, guns and blood. It was such a departure from my normal style of blog post that I anticipated that it would slide by without any comment. Wrong! It had the highest readership of the week and attracted some powerful and insightful replies. So much so that I expressed the desire to reflect on those replies before responding. Thus, today’s post is my response to your comments and feelings.

First, Hariod Brawn of the blogsite Contentedness responded, in part:

Now, where are we? Val’s words are a good place to begin: “Nothing is what is seems, or will ever be the same again.” Nobody knows for sure, but piecing together fragments of world events, my instinct (fwiw) tells me that we are in the incipient stages of the collapse of the 20th.c. paradigm. Neoliberalism has failed; further than that, Capitalism has failed – we have no free markets where it counts; they’re all rigged. Politics has failed too, having been bought out by the corporates. [There are over 30,000 lobbyists in Washington alone] All that Western Governments have to offer is a doomed re-run of failed practices (same with Japan actually). Worse still, they have gone down on their knees and begged the financial sector to create a fix. The private banks have been given access to vast sums of QE cash at virtually zero interest in order to continue rigging markets (via their agents) all to their benefit whilst also creating huge market distortions in asset bubbles. Has the wealth they created trickled down? Has it hell. Whilst all this is going on, and as the film so clearly demonstrates, the Middle East looks like fulfilling its promise of the last century as being the flashpoint for warfare on a vast scale. And of course, if by some miracle we escape financial collapse, and world peace is not threatened by warfare, then the environment is going down the pan because – guess what? – our politicians have failed us once again. I have said enough on this.

Hariod then went on to recommend the films of Chris Hedges that will be featured on Learning from Dogs at a future date.

Then Val Boyco, her blogsite being Find Your Middle Ground, wrote a response before viewing the film:

Without being informed yet … my thinking is that the world we live in is so complex, stressful and fast that we can’t absorb everything that happens. We simplify and label, in order to make sense. We chop and segment in order to understand, but we miss the full story and many have lost the ability to grasp the bigger picture…. or are too fearful of going against the expectations of others and becoming one of “them” instead of one of “us”.

Then reinforced by her comment after watching the film:

I just watched the movie Paul. It is powerful and very disturbing. As you say, it undermines what we believe is real. It also reveals the complexity – misunderstanding – manipulation – corruption – opium, oil and the struggle for power – naivety – chaos.
In the dualistic fairy tale world of good vs evil it has created a nightmare of errors.
Nothing is what is seems.
Or will ever be the same again.

There was a comment from Patrice Ayme:

Giant American global corporations, the 200 largest ones, do 100 billion dollars of tax evasion through Luxembourg alone. Each year. Many are media companies. Wonder why stories make no sense?

Juncker directed that. Now he is head of the European Commission, and insist Greece shall pay every single penny.

As it happened, my dad was among a European group of geologists working for the Afghan government, who discovered Afghanistan’s riches… In the 1970s. All hell broke loose shortly thereafter.

I write about these sorts of things, day in, day out. But most people prefer the opium of feel-good…

Patrice then went further in offering a post over on his own blog that carried the specific title of Great Bitter Lake. Let me quote a little from that:

“Bitter Lake” is about the conspiracy between American plutocracy and Saudi plutocracy. Plutocrat Roosevelt was freshly flown from Yalta, to the Great Bitter Lake, on the Suez Canal. The idea was to steal the Maghreb, and the Middle East from the French and the British, by making a theocratic alliance.

At Yalta, Roosevelt had given half of Europe to his Comrade Stalin. (Plutocrats of the world naturally unite!)

Never mind that Poland had fought the Nazis courageously the Nazis, at a time when the USA was militarily and diplomatically collaborating… with the Nazis (or maybe, precisely, the Poles had to be punished!) Roosevelt had to be strict: the French had successfully escaped from the military occupation (AMGOT) he had set-up for them.

The movie “Bitter Lake” exposes (some) of the American plutocracy led conspiracies which led to the devastation, among other things, of Afghanistan, and other constituencies, thanks to the Wahhabist Islam it unleashed on the world.

Readers of this site will be familiar with the general ambiance.

One caveat: all what is in the documentary and makes American plutocrats (Roosevelt) and their servants (Reagan) look bad, is correct. However the real situation, the real badness is way worse. (For example the secret, official USA intervention in Afghanistan was under Carter, on July 3, 1979. However the real even more secret intervention, through the Pakistani ISI was even earlier and even more vicious.

So what is my response?

It is this:

In 1887, Oscar Wilde said, referring to the differences between the British and the Americans: “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”

By way of example there is a saying back in my old country that when something is “… going to the dogs”, it means an irreversible decline in standards; the phrase usually aimed at an organisation or even a country.

Many, especially those of my age, might nod sagely and reflect that something ‘is going to the dogs‘ in terms of the wider Western world.

Let me be specific. There are destructive and dysfunctional issues in modern societies that I would list as: Selfishness; Power & Corruption; Short-termism; Materialism; Population growth; Greed, inequality and poverty. It’s not an exhaustive list!

Now many would argue the ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’ about what precisely is wrong with Western societies in this 21^st century but far fewer would argue with the underlying premise; that something is fundamentally wrong with today’s world.

Indeed, one of the things that is impossible to miss is the body language, the look on a face, the shrug of a shoulder, when one casually remarks that these are interesting times! From strangers and friends alike.

There is no question that what mankind has ‘enjoyed’ these last fifty years or so cannot be continued for very much longer. That the era since the 1960s of growth, materialism and consumption is running one very basic and fundamental resource dry. You know the one I am referring to: Planet Earth.

My hope is that the widely-felt feelings that something is fundamentally wrong with today, are the feelings man has always experienced, since time immemorial, when mankind has passed through the threshold between two eras.

My hope is that the new era, one that we quite possibly may now just be entering, a new era of sustainable living on this planet, of social and political changes to replace extreme levels of inequality, of stronger communities of like-minded persons, will be obvious to all, but especially obvious to our next generation, within the next ten years; possibly fewer than ten years.

One thing is for sure. The sharing of ideas and feelings as is the style of modern blogging is critical to the forming of the opinions that precede the changes that so many now see as unstoppable.

How NOT to sell beer!

Adding to the chorus of voices criticising Budweiser.

I’m going to republish in full what arrived in my ‘in-box’ yesterday from Howling For Justice.

But before I do that, let’s consider the ancient history of the wolf and the connection with our dogs of today. I shall do that by offering a small extract from something that I will be presenting at a meeting in Grants Pass on February, 10th.

Dogs are part of the Canidae species, a family including wolves, coyotes and foxes, thought to have evolved some sixty million years ago. There is no hard evidence as to when dogs and man came together but dogs were certainly around when man developed speech and set out from Africa; about fifty thousand years ago.

What is clear is that the dog represents man’s longest domesticated animal companion; by far. Some scientists believe that we have had the benefits of dogs in our lives for thirty thousand years. Indeed, some have proposed that the benefits of having tame wolves around us humans helped man be so successful a hunter and gatherer that it was instrumental, a mere ten thousand years ago, in humans first discovering how to cultivate crops and domesticate animals. Becoming the most significant single development in human history.

Because reflect that for a previous three million years Stone Age man, the hunter-gatherer, had engaged in activities as natural as the swoop of a hawk or the grazing of a horse.

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OK, on to that Budweiser advertisement.

Budweiser Takes Low Road – Demonizes Wolves To Sell Suds

February 1, 2015

We all know about the Budweiser ad, a little lost puppy being threatened by a wolf. I won’t show the ad because it’s BS and I don’t want to give it any publicity but Budweiser should be ashamed. Are they that desperate to sell beer?

Get a grip Budweiser, very poorly played. Beer drinkers around the country should boycott Bud if the ad is not pulled. It’s a low blow to wolves, one of the most persecuted animals on the planet.

Please click the link below and sign the petition to tell Budweiser what you think of their blatant demonizing of wolves.

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Tell Budweiser: Don’t Demonize Wolves to Sell Beer

author: Center for Biological Diversity

target: Anheuser-Busch CEO, Thomas W. Sante

Purposefully demonizing an animal that is part of America’s natural heritage is no way to sell beer.

But that hasn’t stopped Budweiser from crafting a commercial for this year’s Superbowl that intentionally drums up anti-wolf sentiment to try and capitalize on our culture’s outsized fear of wolf attacks.

The ad pits a cute puppy against a snarling, evil-looking wolf. In the ad the puppy is saved from the vicious wolf by the arrival of a team of Clydesdale horses.

Here’s a reality check: 1.2 million dogs are euthanized in shelters in the United States each year while another 1.2 million dogs are hit and killed by cars on America’s roads.

By comparison, wolves are a virtually non-existent threat to our furry canine friends, only in very rare instances attacking dogs if they feel threatened or perceive them as competitors. The real threat to both dogs and wolves, as these numbers show and as Budweiser’s cynical attempt to boost sales indicates, is people.

Take action — tell Budweiser to pull its wolf-hating ad, demonizing an endangered species is no way to sell beer.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/872/023/837/

ooOOoo

Please feel free to share this post to spread the word that animal and nature lovers are not amused by this!

Oil, money, banks, guns and blood.

The history of power, control, those who wield it, and where it has taken us all.

There is a real pain in me as I start into today’s post. A pain that comes from agonising over whether or not to write in this vein. A pain that has its roots in me being forced to accept that global politics, money and power-plays are much worse than I ever wanted to believe.

What, you must be asking, has got me plunging so far into this dark place? When just twenty-four hours ago I was writing of peace, calm and deep meditation?

Simply a film!

A film that was uploaded by the BBC a few days ago exclusively on to their BBC iPlayer platform.

The film is called Bitter Lake and here’s the trailer.

The full film is 2 hours, 20 minutes long. (But note that the film is age-restricted for obvious reasons.)

I can’t encourage you to watch it. For if you do, the world may never seem the same to you.

But Jeannie and I did watch it and think it should be shared widely. And, yes, it has changed the world for us.

Here’s how it is described by Adam Curtis and the BBC.

Published on Jan 26, 2015
Shown exclusively on the BBC iPlayer service in the UK
This upload is for those outside of the UK

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis

Politicians used to have the confidence to tell us stories that made sense of the chaos of world events.

But now there are no big stories and politicians react randomly to every new crisis – leaving us bewildered and disorientated.

And journalism – that used to tell a grand, unfurling narrative – now also just relays disjointed and often wildly contradictory fragments of information.

Events come and go like waves of a fever. We – and the journalists – live in a state of continual delirium, constantly waiting for the next news event to loom out of the fog – and then disappear again, unexplained.

And the formats – in news and documentaries – have become so rigid and repetitive that the audiences never really look at them.

In the face of this people retreat from journalism and politics. They turn away into their own worlds, and the stories they and their friends tell each other.

I think this is wrong, sad, and bad for democracy – because it means the politicians become more and more unaccountable.

I have made a film that tries to respond to this in two ways.

It tells a big story about why the stories we are told today have stopped making sense.

But it is also an experiment in a new way of reporting the world. To do this I’ve used techniques that you wouldn’t normally associate with TV journalism. My aim is to make something more emotional and involving – so it reconnects and feels more real.

BBC iPlayer has given me the opportunity to do this – because it isn’t restrained by the rigid formats and schedules of network television. It’s a place you can go to experiment and try out new ideas.

It is also liberating – both because things can be any length, and also because it allows the audience to watch the films in different ways.

The film is called Bitter Lake. It is a bit of an epic – it’s two hours twenty minutes long.

It tells a big historical narrative that interweaves America, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia. It shows how politicians in the west lost confidence – and began to simplify the stories they told. It explains why this happened – because they increasingly gave their power away to other forces, above all global finance.

But there is one other country at the center of the film.

Afghanistan.

This is because Afghanistan is the place that has repeatedly confronted politicians, as their power declines, with the terrible truth – that they cannot understand what is going on any longer. Let alone control it.

The film shows in detail how all the foreigners who went to Afghanistan created an almost totally fictional version of the country in their minds.

They couldn’t see the complex reality that was in front of them – because the stories they had been told about the world had become so simplified that they lacked the perceptual apparatus to see reality any longer.

And this blindness led to a terrible disaster – support for a blatantly undemocratic government, wholesale financial corruption and thousands of needless deaths.

A horrific scandal that we, in our disconnected bubble here in Britain, seem hardly aware of. And even if we are – it is dismissed as being just too complex to understand.

But it is important to try and understand what happened. And the way to do that is to try and tell a new kind of story. One that doesn’t deny the complexity and reduce it to a meaningless fable of good battling evil – but instead really tries to makes sense of it.

I have got hold of the unedited rushes of almost everything the BBC has ever shot in Afghanistan. It is thousands of hours – some of it is very dull, but large parts of it are extraordinary. Shots that record amazing moments, but also others that are touching, funny and sometimes very odd.

These complicated, fragmentary and emotional images evoke the chaos of real experience. And out of them I have tried to build a different and more emotional way of depicting what really happened in Afghanistan.

A counterpoint to the thin, narrow and increasingly destructive stories told by those in power today.

And I must include this comment from the relevant page on BBC Blogs:

Quite simply one of the best films I’ve ever watched. The theme and content made so many connections linking events of the last 40 years. It’s perhaps time to reflect on power ,control and those who wield it . The official narrative is not our narrative , we have a choice to decide what we believe . Time to reflect and make that choice.
Thanks for such an informing film.

Here is the film.

Who am I, Part Two!

Trying to make sense of our place in the world – and probably failing!

Yesterday’s post, Making sense of who we are?, was built upon a recent essay from George Monbiot: A Small and Shuffling Life. It is a terrific essay, in the very best tradition of George Monbiot. I really hope you read it in yesterday’s post because today’s introspective jaunt is built on that essay. Two particular paragraphs of his essay really ‘spoke’ to me.

The opening paragraph:

Live free or die: this is the maxim of our age. But the freedoms we celebrate are particular and limited. We fetishise the freedom of business from state control; the freedom not to pay taxes; the freedom to carry guns and speak our minds and worship whom we will. But despite – in some cases because of – this respect for particular freedoms, every day the scope of our lives appears to contract.

Later:

We carry with us the psychological equipment, rich in instinct and emotion, required to navigate that world. But our survival in the modern economy requires the use of few of the mental and physical capacities we possess. Sometimes it feels like a small and shuffling life. Our humdrum, humiliating lives leave us, I believe, ecologically bored.

In that second paragraph I sense something from Mr. Monbiot that is felt by me and Jean and appears to be shared very widely. A sense that something about today’s society is broken. That the last, say fifty years, of increasing living standards, health and prosperity, albeit not universally embraced, have brought us no closer to a golden future. That, as so clearly voiced in the preceding paragraph, “… our survival in the modern economy requires the use of few of the mental and physical capacities we possess.”

My guess is that George Monbiot and Terry Hershey have never met. One might suggest that their backgrounds are as different as two people might be. Take their respective ‘About’ pages on their blogsites. Here are their closing paragraphs.

First, George:

My work is more sedentary than it used to be, so I temper it with plenty of physical activity: sea kayaking, ultimate frisbee, running and some heavy duty gardening: growing my own vegetables and much of my own fruit.

Here are some of the things I love: my family and friends, salt marshes, arguments, chalk streams, Russian literature, kayaking among dolphins, diversity of all kinds, rockpools, heritage apples, woods, fishing, swimming in the sea, gazpacho, ponds and ditches, growing vegetables, insects, pruning, forgotten corners, fossils, goldfinches, etymology, Bill Hicks, ruins, Shakespeare, landscape history, palaeoecology, Gavin and Stacey and Father Ted.

Here are some of the things I try to fight: undemocratic power, corruption, deception of the public, environmental destruction, injustice, inequality and the misallocation of resources, waste, denial, the libertarianism which grants freedom to the powerful at the expense of the powerless, undisclosed interests, complacency.

Here is what I fear: other people’s cowardice.

I still see my life as a slightly unhinged adventure whose perpetuation is something of a mystery. I have no idea where it will take me, and no ambitions other than to keep doing what I do. So far it’s been gripping.

Now, Terry:

I used to ask of myself and others: what have you accomplished? Where are your credentials? What does your job and your bank account say about who you are?

Now, my questions are different:
Are there butterflies in your garden?
What are the color of loved ones’ eyes, when they are looking at you with hope?
And when was the last time your house smelled of paper-white narcissus?
Do sunsets make you smile?
When was the last time you stood in stocking feet just to stare at the rising moon?
Have you ever seen a sunflower bloom?
Does the laughter of children do your heart good?
At what angle does the sun enter your house?

Do I understand that life is full of complications, obligations and distractions? Yes. I do. My wife and I raise a teenage son. We run two businesses. So, yes, I know a bit about down-to-earth realities.

But this, too, is reality:

I love to watch the hummingbirds dance.
I love that my son likes to put on his dancing shoes.
I love to join him when we play
old-time rock and roll.
I love to stretch out on a garden bench on a
warm summer day.
I love a hot shower and drying with an expensive,
oversized cotton towel.
I love books, delight in poetry,
and find sustenance in writing.
I treasure the certainty that grace
gives us all many second chances.
I value the times I can simplify life by letting go of my need to validate my humanity through productivity.
And I love to lose track of time in a garden.

I also know that sharing this with you – offering my practices for pausing, resources for doing less and living more, reflections in my blog —feeds me.

So I invite you, too, to join us — and together we’ll share, remind, and support each other, to “do less, live more.”

Yet, despite the differences in backgrounds, cultures and much more, to me there is a common openness, an honesty shared, and a passion for the truth.

All of which is a very long introduction to this week’s Sabbath Moment from Terry; republished in full.

ooOOoo

Finding sanctuary and grace

January 19, 2015

Today I am sitting in a café (and bar) in Vaison-la-Romaine, in the Provence region of France, nursing my espresso. The old men of the village (actually all of them are about my age) gather. They unload, swap stories, sip pastis, and watch petanque on TV. Some read the newspaper–with stories about Charlie Hebdo and photos of “Somme Nous Charlie“–carrying reminders of hope in our fragile and broken world.

I am glad to be here. Today. In this place. There is an air of familiarity among the men, and comfort in their ritual. I am grateful for reminders and invitations to live well into a place. Not just a physical space, but a tonic and sanctuary to the spirit. The invitation is a permission to settle down. (In the words of Jesus, “to come away and rest awhile.”) A sanctuary is a place that restores us, replenishes us, nourishes us. In this renewal, we are reminded, once again, of what really is important.

I agree that it is easy to sentimentalize. But living into the moment doesn’t smooth the edges of our life. It allows us to pay attention. I like to think that we can name the edges, to welcome and invite them into the sanctuary.

Outside a bicycle club gathers in the village center parking lot, ready for their weekend excursion. Their spirit is eager, their uniform bearing homage to their journey to the top of Mont Ventoux.

Sitting in the café, my thoughts meander, with no agenda or responsibilities to tether them. So I let them wander, a gift to embrace. But my reverie is interrupted with worry … I need a Sabbath Moment. And I don’t have a clue (I tell myself). It’s not easy on vacation. Especially without wi-fi.

I am on my annual trip to Europe with my good friend Bill McNabb to taste wine. He’s a wine writer (and pastor) in the San Francisco area. But mostly, he’s a friend. I’m his aide-de-camp and connoisseur.
We travel to wine regions and are blessed to taste beverages that we cannot afford, but offer us a glimpse of heaven.
Yes I’m biased. But then wine is not a beverage here; it is an experience. Your choice is to savor and take delight.

We visited wineries harvesting grapes from vines 100 years old. These are businesses passed down through the generations, grandfather to father to son (and now thankfully, often to daughter). A world where terroir is king, the personality of the soil. Meaning that this wine is born of a place, a very specific place. Here in the Rhone Valley, I’m honored to be in the company of crafts people. Like being with a great gardener. The men and women I met coddle their vines–they call them trees–lovingly.
Unlike Peter Mayle, I don’t have “A Year in Provence.” I only have a few days. But that’ll do… It is my first visit and I’m sure won’t be my last.

We’re in our gite–a rural rental property in France–we relish the evening light, a layer of bruised purple (pourple) above the slopes in Provence (Cotes du Rhone). Below the hills, vineyards roll through the landscape, the vines–still in winter and pruned–pose as menorah renderings in the dusk light.

Yes, this scene is a tonic. There is something about these moments that carry significance, because they are reminders, and they are sacraments. Partial, yes, but containing the full sustenance of grace.
And I think of the question a friend asks me, “What holds you?”
In other words… What sustains you, and carries you gently through your days?

Ryoken, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut, only to discover there was nothing in it to steal. Ryoken returned and caught him in the act.
“You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the disillusioned prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”
The thief was bewildered. But he took the clothes and slunk away.
Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon, “Poor fellow,” he mused. “I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”

Sometimes I feel like that thief. Standing–in my own home, or in front of an audience, or in a crowd, or all alone–I am looking for something, for whatever ails me or creates a hole or emptiness; but, like that thief, not finding it. “What am I missing?” I ask myself. What am I wanting, yearning for, that I find myself in such a pell-mell-hurry or weighted down… hoping to fix it, or find it, or mend it. So I run and race and call on God, or the sky, or roll the dice with some prayer from my childhood. This will solve it, I tell myself. But the more I push, the more I ask, the more I beseech, the further I move from the center.

Here’s the deal: In my state of distraction, I cannot see that the core of my identity, the place where I stand in this moment (even at times without clarity, or stability, or faith, or answers)… I stand smack dab in the center of an awesome and illogical grace. Smack dab in the center of the sacred present.

If I do have the permission to see that place, I know that I am grounded.
I am now able to breathe in
and out,
and rest in this acceptance.

Last night, above the slopes to the south, a slivered crescent moon rests, the sky a cobalt blue canvas. It is visceral, arresting, piercing. And for whatever reason, reassuring. This snapshot is imprinted, and I know in my heart that it is in some way essential, indispensable. I accept this gift of the moon, even though I don’t yet know why.

I don’t know what to tell you to do, exactly. Only that I too, wish I could give you the gift of that crescent moon.
I know this for certain: when we do not pay tribute, we are like the thief in the Zen story–without even knowing it–and we settle for less. So much less. So it is not just a question of what hold us, but of what holds us back… from being wholehearted, true to our self, fully alive, unafraid of uncertainty, and grateful for the gift of this moment.

Lord knows we look for ways to bottle it and sell it, when I reckon we should just get out of the way.

Our gite sits squarely in a vineyard and a working farm. A perfect setting to replenish. For years I’ve been writing about sanctuary and the need for restoration. And I’m my own worst enemy. There’s not a week that goes by that a Sabbath Moment friend doesn’t remind me to follow my own advice to pause… and let my soul catch up with my body. Gladly, this week I did.

ooOOoo

My penultimate reflection to today’s post is with a short, six-minute video from Professor Dan Gilbert. The video is entitled: The psychology of your future self. I hope you see it as offering a calming perspective to two days of inner psychological ramblings!

Published on Jun 3, 2014
“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.” Dan Gilbert shares recent research on a phenomenon he calls the “end of history illusion,” where we somehow imagine that the person we are right now is the person we’ll be for the rest of time. Hint: that’s not the case.

My final reflection is the lesson that dogs teach us; that one about living in the present.

Cleo living, and sleeping, in the present moment.

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The Lamps Are Coming On All Over Europe

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Budweiser Takes Low Road – Demonizes Wolves To Sell Suds

Tell Budweiser: Don’t Demonize Wolves to Sell Beer

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Finding sanctuary and grace

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