On the 9th February, there was a Post on Learning from Dogs about the flower industry. Here’s a small extract.
At flower farms in Ecuador and Colombia — the countries that export the most to the U.S. — two-thirds of the workers are women. These women are routinely subjected to harassment and even rape from their male supervisors. They suffer eye infections and miscarriages from consistent contact with dangerous pesticides.
In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, they’re routinely forced to work 80-hour weeks with no overtime pay. Attempts to form a union are met with opposition by police and armed forces.
Apparently some 40% of annual purchases of flowers are purchased for Valentine’s Day in the USA. Anyway, in today’s in-box is this lovely update from Change.org
Dear Paul,
We are blown away by the incredible impact Change.org members have made around the world by starting, joining, and winning dozens of meaningful campaigns over the past few weeks. So we wanted to drop you a quick note to say thank you. And congratulations. And let’s keep fighting.
Here are a few of the top victories and successes we’ve had together:
Late last week, the largest florist in the world, 1-800-Flowers, responded to 54,000 Change.org members and agreed to begin selling Fair Trade flowers and insist on a strong code of conduct for all their suppliers to counteract the deplorable working conditions that thousands of female flower workers face in South America. They’ve promised to offer Fair Trade flowers in time for Mother’s Day, making 1-800-Flowers a leader in the industry. (Click here to write a thank you message on 1-800-Flowers’ Facebook wall.)
Nice one! The website Change.org can be found here.
It started when someone we know in Payson, Peter N, posted an item on Facebook about dogs being able to smell out cancer. The Facebook item referred to an article in Natural News. That item here went as follows:
(NaturalNews) The mainstream media is suddenly reporting on the idea that dogs can sniff out cancer in human beings. This concept is no surprise to NaturalNews readers, of course, as we’ve talked about this before, but until now the idea that cancer patients could be detected by smelling them was considered pure quackery by conventional doctors.
Of course, conventional doctors are once again wrong:Cancer patients do have a particular smelldue to the metabolic off-gassing of cancer cell tumors. But here’s the real story the mainstream media isn’t telling you: It’s not just dogs that can smell cancer — manyhealth practitionerscan also smell cancer patients.
I’ve personally spoken to numerous natural health practitioners who say they can smell cancer in patients. It’s not really a difficult thing to do, it turns out. With a bit of training, I believe most doctors could even be trained to do it, much like this dog in Japan which correctly identified cancer from stool samples 37 out of 38 times.
It doesn’t mean doctors have to sniff patients’ poo, either: You can also smell cancer on someone’s breath, so just talking to a patient can give a doctor an opportunity to do that. (Historically, by the way, physicians use to taste patients’ urine, from which they could diagnose a number of diseases, especially diabetes.)
This particular research on dogs’ ability to sniff out cancer was conducted by researchers at the Kyushu University in Japan. Dr Hideto Sonoda, who conducted the research, told the BBC, “The specific cancer scent indeed exists, but the chemical compounds are not clear. Only the dog knows the true answer.”
An important point in all this is thatthe cancer-sniffing dogs were able to detect early-stage bowel cancer— something that is extremely difficult for modern medical technology to detect. And it only takes a dog a few seconds — at virtually zero cost — to make the assessment.
Now, of course, medical scientists are busy trying to build an electronic device to replace the dog, because conventional medicine can’t stand the fact that something built by nature (the dog’s nose) might be better than some million-dollar electronic gizmo they come up with that can be billed out at $500 a test. So rather than just using dogs who can already detect cancer right now, they’re going to wait around a few years and try to create some high-tech equipment that will probably be a poor replacement for the dog.
That’s how modern medicine works: It steals good ideas from nature and replicates them, but the results are almost always a poor imitation of what Mother Nature has provided for free. Here’s how the end results would likely stack up:
CANCER-SNIFFING DOG
Accuracy: 98%
Cost: One dog biscuit and a pat on the head
CANCER-SNIFFING HIGH-TECH MACHINE
Accuracy: 60%
Cost: $500 billed to Medicare [the US medical system for those unfamiliar with the term. Ed.]
Gee, which one do you think conventional medicine will end up using?
In fact, a quick web search finds much information on the topic including these YouTube videos.
Now how to get our dogs to tell us ……… we’re OK; assuming we are!
The British Medical Journal published a ground-breaking research reporting how dogs have been trained to detect bladder cancer by its smell in urine, bringing together dogs’ exceptional sense of smell, with the theory that cancer produces chemicals with distinctive odours. (on September 24th, 2004 )
Six dogs, none of which had any prior experience in scent discrimination, were trained over seven months to distinguish between urine samples from bladder cancer patients and those from healthy people and individuals with non-cancerous diseases. For the final tests, each dog was offered a set of seven urine samples, and their task was to determine which of them was from a patient with bladder cancer. All of the samples used in the tests were completely new and unfamiliar to the dogs.
The dogs, comprising three spaniels, one papillon, one Labrador and one mongrel, correctly selected the bladder cancer urine on 22 out of 54 occasions – an average success rate of 41% compared to the 14% which would have been expected if the dogs had randomly selected a sample each time. This was statistically significant.
The research was undertaken by a unique partnership of medical scientists, including a statistician, and dog trainers. An orthopaedic surgeon from Buckinghamshire, Mr John Church, brought together colleagues from the Department of Dermatology, Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust (funded by the Erasmus Wilson Dermatological Research Fund) to develop and supervise the scientific protocol for the research, and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People (based near Princes Risborough) for the purpose of training the dogs for the trial.
“We were flattered to be asked to assist in this study on the basis of our reputation in the field of training dogs,” Claire Guest, Operations Director at Hearing Dogs said, “although we have been very careful not to let this project affect our normal work which involves training dogs for deaf people. The four of us who trained these cancer detection dogs did so using our own pet dogs, in our own homes, in our own spare time.”
Back row: And Cook, Claire Guest, Martin Church. Front row: Carolyn Willis, John Church, Susannah Church
I rather loved the quote from John Church, “I am a passionate believer that animals have a huge amount to teach us, and I have heard many stories of people who have been alerted to the presence of cancer in their bodies by their pet dogs. I was delighted to find that the two charities were open-minded enough to participate in this study, so that we could really examine this phenomenon scientifically.”
As I keep going on about – we really can learn from dogs!
This opened my eyes; thought I would share it with you.
I know that many of the several hundred readers of Learning from Dogs are not in the USA. But many are. Hence me deciding, after mulling it over, to publish in full the contents of an email that came in a short while ago from the organisation Change.
Here’s that email.
Dear Paul,
Valentine’s Day, which accounts for 40% of fresh flower sales annually, is fast approaching.
Not always a sweet smell.
If you’re planning to order a bouquet from 1-800-Flowers — the world’s largest florist — you should know where most of those flowers really come from.
At flower farms in Ecuador and Colombia — the countries that export the most to the U.S. — two-thirds of the workers are women. These women are routinely subjected to harassment and even rape from their male supervisors. They suffer eye infections and miscarriages from consistent contact with dangerous pesticides.
In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, they’re routinely forced to work 80-hour weeks with no overtime pay. Attempts to form a union are met with opposition by police and armed forces.
Many retailers — such as Whole Foods and Stop & Shop — have taken the important first step of offering Fair Trade flowers to consumers who want no part of these abuses. Fair Trade certified farms must adhere to strict standards for workers’ rights, which prevents the abuses described above.
1-800-Flowers is the largest florist in the world. Yet they offer no Fair Trade flowers at all.
1-800-Flowers uses a certifying agency called Florverde, which ensures that its flower farms measure up to certain environmental standards — this is a good thing. But Florverde has almost no labor standards: A farm can be certified even if it uses forced labor.Indeed, Florverde is owned by the Association of Colombian Flower Exporters, so it has a financial incentive to keep wages low and suppress workers’ rights.
This is the week before Valentine’s Day — more people will purchase flowers during the next seven days than any other week this year. This is our best opportunity to demand a promise from 1-800-Flowers to join its competitors in offering Fair Trade flowers. So after you sign the petition, please share this email widely and post on Facebook — do everything you can topressure 1-800-Flowers to show a little respect for the women who toil in unbearable circumstances. The women without whom they’d have no flowers to sell.
Click the link below to tell 1-800-Flowers to make a promise this Valentine’s Day to sell Fair Trade flowers:
Since this campaign began, the company has emailed to tell us that it will post more information on its website about the farms that supply their flowers. But this is a far cry from selling fair trade products — and we have much more to do to make sure workers are protected. This is the week to do it.
Thanks for taking action,
Patrick and the Change.org team
If you feel so minded to sign the petition, which can be done by people outside the USA, then that may be done here.
A guest post from Dr John W Lewis. John and I have known each other for some years now, both of us sharing a group aircraft that was based in Exeter, SW England. His areas of interest and competence are described here. But these days when John and I chat about the world in general and nothing in particular we often come back to the topic of innovation. So bear that in mind as John muses on the rather gloomy nature of a recent post on Learning from Dogs.
John writes:
John Lewis
Having read the recent Post, Group Human Insanity, my first instinct is that I have nothing particular worthwhile to say that has not been said before. But, of course, the time to apply minds is exactly when the answers don’t readily come to mind, so I will continue!
In a way, it’s probably a case of applying the sentiment on the old wartime poster, “Keep calm and carry on!” or as Winston Churchill said, “I’f you’re going through hell, keep going!”.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to change, because we do. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to put a lot more effort into things that matter, because we do. But, as has been said before, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward, only looking backwards”. In other words, “it is very difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”.
Reading about this kind of thing in books, such as “Freakonomics” or “Drive” or “Switch” suggests that we don’t really understand the mechanism by which behavioural changes happen in populations, although some of the discoveries of Everett Rogers about the diffusion of innovations is relevant here. To refer to another book, there is probably going to be a lot of “Who moved my cheese?” hemming and hawing behaviour going on too.
All we really know is that when the environment (in the most general sense) is changing rapidly, populations are much better off if they are diverse in their characteristics and behaviour; also I believe (but am not sure) that it’s true to say that increased communication assists populations in adapting to changes in the environment.
So the most important thing to do is to let lots of different people do lots of different things in search of ways forward. If you like, we need to split up (within the multidimensional behavioural space in which we operate) into smaller groups to dodge the big boulders.
We need to communicate lots of information and lots of ways of interpreting and verifying not only the information itself, but also the operational implications of that information (which may be very different things). Hopefully this will reduce (but it will never eliminate) instances of mass movements (as in stampedes) based on partial information which misdirect substantial resources into activities that turn out to be dead ends.
If we don’t believe that there are any viable ways forward, then we might as well give up and just enjoy what’s left of the good times!
But if there are ways forward, then the way to find them is to have lots of people scouting ahead on lots of fronts and passing information around so that we maximise the chances of finding those ways forward, and having lots of other people striving to find ways to make use of that information and testing out those ways forward.
Whether this is all obvious, or not, I don’t know; but it probably is. One thing we do know is that telling people what to do is emphatically not going to work! Just look at some of the stories on the Breaking The Mould website.
Instead, we are better off when people are asking questions, gathering information and passing it around. I believe that if these behaviours are adopted in a population, as a result of ‘external’ pressures building up, then changes and innovations will inevitably occur, and this is about the best that we can do! Fortunately, I think that is what tends to happen anyway.
So, in a sense, as I referred to above: “Keep calm and carry on” (By the way, a Google search on that phrase unearths a variety of interesting stuff and variations such as “Get excited and make stuff”)
This is a real British passport application letter!!
Dear Minister,
I’m in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through.
How is it that Bert Smith of T.V. Rentals Basingstoke has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a satellite dish from them back in 1994, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date?
How come that nice West African immigrant chappy who comes round every Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet you still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the government?
How come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not, and yet if I win the government run lottery they have no idea I have won or where I am and will keep the bloody money to themselves if I fail to claim in good time.
Do you people do this by hand?
You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 30-odd years. It’s on my health insurance card, my driver’s licence, on the last four passports I’ve had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the planes and boats over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our lords and masters are up for re-election.
Would somebody please take note, once and for all, I was born in Maidenhead on the 4th of March 1957, my mother’s name is Mary, her maiden name was Reynolds, my father’s name is Robert, and I’d be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!
I apologise Minister. I’m obviously not myself this morning. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You mail the application to my house, then you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthals working there? Look at my damn picture.
Do I look like Bin Laden? I don’t want to activate the Fifth Reich for God’s sake! I just want to go and park my weary backside on a sunny, sandy beach for a couple of week’s well-earned rest away from all this crap.
Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to back to Salisbury and get another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one. AND to the tune of 60 quid! What a racket THAT is!!
Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day? But nooooo, that’d be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You’d rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it’s really me on thegoddamn picture – you know… the one where we’re not allowed to smile in case we look as if we are enjoying the process!
Hey, you know why we can’t smile? ‘Cause we’re totally jacked off!
I served in the armed forces for more than 25 years including over ten years at the Ministry of Defence in London . I have had security clearances which allowed me to sit in the Cabinet Office, five seats away from the Prime Minister while he was being briefed on the first Gulf War and I have been doing volunteer work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Services. However, I have to get someone ‘important’ to verify who I am — you know, someone like my doctor… who, before he got his medical degree 6 months ago WAS LIVING IN PAKISTAN…
I see LG have recognised that many people the wrong side of 60 now use a mobile phone and have recently launched …..
Cell phone for seniors
and from John L. from Devon, England this lovely story.
Several men are in the changing room of a golf club. A mobile phone on a
bench rings and a man engages the hands-free speaker function and begins to
talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen.
MAN: “Hello”
WOMAN: “Hi Honey, it’s me. Are you at the club?”
MAN: “Yes.”
WOMAN: “I’m at the shops now and found this beautiful leather coat. It’s
only £2,000. Is it OK if I buy it?”
MAN: “Sure, go ahead if you like it that much.”
WOMAN: “I also stopped by the Lexus dealership and saw the new models.
I saw one I really liked..”
MAN: “How much?”
WOMAN: “£60,000.”
MAN: “OK, but for that price I want it with all the options.”
WOMAN: “Great! Oh, and one more thing. I was just talking to Janie and
found out that the house I wanted last year is back on the market. They’re
asking £980,000 for it.”
MAN: “Well, then go ahead and make an offer of £900,000. They’ll probably
take it. If not, we can go the extra eighty-thousand if it’s what you really
want.”
WOMAN: “OK. I’ll see you later! I love you so much!”
MAN: “Bye! I love you, too.”
The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are staring at him in
astonishment, mouths wide open.
He turns and asks, “Anyone know whose phone this is?”
The technology of the Internet will prove to be of huge democratic value.
Those who know me know a disquieted man. Someone, who despite being more at peace with himself than ever before, nonetheless senses that we, as in the mankind of Planet Earth, are already deep in the ‘no mans land’ of change between the last, say, forty years and a very different future just around the corner.
In the past opinion and commentary has been in the hands, more or less, of the giant media moguls. But technology has changed that. Now more than ever a huge people have access to the Internet. Indeed, a quick Google search reveals that of a world population of 6.85 billion people, just under 2 billion (29%) have internet access. In North America that percentage is 77.4% (226 million) and in Europe the percentage is 58.4% (475 million). I.e. nearly a billion people in just North America and Europe!
My point is that, in a manner never before experienced in human history, the vast majority of us have the ability to read, learn and muse about the critically important issues facing us today, coming to conclusions that carry political weight. We have almost infinite choice as to where and how we form opinions.
Thus having access, via the internet, to the scribblings of so many wise people may end up giving democracy the boost it really needs in the face of overwhelming powerful plutocratic forces.
Here are just a couple of those wise voices.
Simon Johnson
I first came across him in an article in The Atlantic Magazine back in May 2009. That article was called The Quiet Coup. If you haven’t read it, go here. It is introduced thus:
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
Simon is also one of the lead writers for the Blog Baseline Scenario. Have a read of a recent article about the appointment of Bill Daley as President Obama’s new chief of staff. That article concludes thus:
Top executives at big U.S. banks want to be left alone during relatively good times – allowed to take whatever excessive risks they want, to juice their return on equity through massive leverage, to thus boost their pay and enhance their status around the world. But at a moment of severe financial crisis, they also want someone in the White House who will whisper at just the right moment: “Mr. President, if you let this bank fail, it will trigger a worldwide financial panic and another Great Depression. This will be worse than what happened after Lehman Brothers failed.”
Let’s be honest. With the appointment of Bill Daley, the big banks have won completely this round of boom-bust-bailout. The risk inherent to our financial system is now higher than it was in the early/mid-2000s. We are set up for another illusory financial expansion and another debilitating crisis.
Bill Daley will get it done.
Now let’s turn to that other writer, Patrice Ayme.
That name is a nom-de-plume but so what! Having read Patrice for some time now and corresponded via email from time to time, I have to tell you this is one giant of an intellectual thinker. Take this Post from example: Pluto Lie #1: Glass Beads Matter More It’s a beautifully written article but not something that you should try a skim read through; it deserves a really focussed mind on the words and the meanings expressed. Here’s a flavour:
Abstract: An American historian paid by the hyper rich, exhumed again the old fallacy that material riches matter more than anything else. He points at recent electronic gadgetry, and attributes it to Reagan. This article of faith in Reagan and American plutocracy amusingly gives, obviously without knowing, prominence to recent French and German governmental research, which allowed to make such gadgets.
I skewer this lamentable, not to say corrupt, piece of dismal propaganda which was published all over the American media, for Christmas. I use the occasion to give a new metric to evaluate riches over the last 100,000 years, explain why the USA does not use the metric system, and what European kings were really about.
Too great a disparity of riches is another name for plutocracy. Indeed, money is power, and thus, too much money is too much power.
Here is how Patrice’s article closes (but it would be so much better if you read the article in its entirety):
Morality? Europeans Kings of old could live long, and lived strong.The best of them were working relentlessly, brandishing whatever it took to stabilize the situation ethically, politically, and civilizationally. They were incredibly brutal. They would die, and kill, just over the length of hair (kings and prospective kings wore it long, religious wore it nought). Even small children, if viewed as potential kings, would be presented with the scissors and the sword (if they did not go for the former, they would get the later).
So of course, kings of old would have made it to today’s highest class. Kings were often the richest people around, and they got there, or stayed there, by killing, in the name of new, and higher principles. This only happened because their subordinates agreed to strive towards the same new and higher principles. Hanson misses completely the spiritual dimension of the kings of old. Kings of old led an ethical revolution, which was their reason for being in power, and why people elected them (or elected to follow them).
Kings of old lived very comfortably by their metrics, with residences all around Europe, and wives, concubines, nobles under oaths to serve them (to death). Some, such as Charlemagne, were very healthy into old age. What’s more fun than to make war for decades, mostly winning, as Charlemagne did?
Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.
That appurtenance, too, tells volumes. Hanson has tales to tell, and they sing of American plutocracy. It remains to be seen if history will sing along. Two things, though: history does not tell lies, and human beings are not reducible to gadget loving midgets.
So to repeat my point. Whether or not one choses to agree with the likes of Simon Johnson and Patrice Ayme there is no doubt that in my mind it will be writers like these that, through the better education of millions of citizens, will not only preserve democracy in so many countries but will ensure that the age before us will be fairer and more just.
Change can be achieved by the threat of tomorrow being the same
even quicker than by the hope of tomorrow being different!C. Graham-Leigh.
This Blog has been running since July 15th 2009. As of yesterday, there had been 777 posts – a nicely rounded number if nothing else. It has been and continues to be a great way of communicating with the wider world.
However, both Jon and I are facing a number of challenges that make it very difficult to maintain a Post a day as it has been, more or less, since the start in 2009.
Jon is in the last few months of completing a Master’s degree with huge demands on his creative time. I have volunteered to take a full US Pilot’s Licence and Instrument Rating with a great school down in Scottsdale, Phoenix, essentially building on my UK private flying experience that goes back to 1981. This is going to keep me pretty well occupied until the end of February, 2011. Both of us have private family lives that mustn’t be encroached upon (Jon does a much better job at this than me!).
On reflecting on this Blog, I have realised that the old salesman in me has tripped me up. In the sense that we have developed a virtual relationship with many hundreds of readers that, I think, includes the expectation of a new Post every day. But the reality is that any Blog that is written without a commercial angle, as with Learning from Dogs, should be more a reflection of what stimulates the Blog authors than trying to ‘serve’ a market – that’s the old salesman mistake!
So on the basis that this Blog is about integrity and why dogs set such a wonderful example of integrous behaviour, there is going to be a change of emphasis.
The Blog will continue to publish articles focussed close to the theme as expressed here.
We will continue to publish other pieces, including humorous items, if they are worth sharing (agreed a subjective measure).
We will continue to publish articles from Guest authors.
If pressures or circumstances conspire to mean that a Blog article isn’t published every single day, then that will be just the way it is – Jon and I are not going to beat ourselves up about it!
In the next few days, the Blog is going to pass the 100,000 readers mark since it started. You have to realise how much that means to all the people who have written for Learning from Dogs. Thank you!
Any ideas, comments or feedback to the above? Please let us know.
A guest post from Chris Snuggs, a long-term supporter and author on Learning from Dogs.
Chris Snuggs
EU QUESTIONNAIRE – C Snuggs, 26 November, 2010
This questionnaire is designed to test your knowledge and opinions of the EU. Your answers will be collated and go towards the production of a report to present to your MEP (Member of the European Parliament)– if you can find him or her. Please give your opinion by ticking either T (true) or F (false) for each proposition.
a
THE EURO
1 Greece falsified its statistics in order to “qualify” for entry to the euro.
2 EU leaders KNEW this (like almost everyone else), but ignored it.
3 The EU’s OWN economists had told them that Greece and others could not live in the Eurozone alongside Germany.
4 Ergo, the EU elite connived in a LIE about the finances of Greece and the future of the euro..
5 Once Greece was in the Eurozone it spent money wildly and wastefully with many people retiring at 50, a bloated and overpaid civil service, civil servants who often didn’t bother to turn up, pensions bequeathed to relatives and so on.
6 The EU elite knew all this but DID NOTHING EFFECTIVE about it.
7 Now European taxpayers are having to pay BILLIONS to bail out feckless countries that vastly overspent.
8 The EU elite that lied and ignored these deep problems have been utterly incompetent guardians’ of EU taxpayers’ money. More than incompetent, they have been party to DEFRAUDING many millions of taxpayers for their own ambitions and political ends.
9 The VAST payouts of taxpayers’ money to bail out Greece, Ireland and soon Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Italy DO NOTHING TO FIX THE UNDERLYING PROBLEMS as highlighted in 3 above. This policy therefore represents an appalling further waste of money and merely postpones difficult decisions that EU leaders must make, and should in fact have made YEARS ago.
10 According to the EU’s OWN RULES it is ILLEGAL to “bail out” a bankrupt country. Despite this, the EU countries have bailed out Greece and now Ireland. Mr Van Rompuy was charged with finding a way that this could be done legally. Frau Merkel has suggested that the Lisbon Treaty be amended to allow bailouts to be done legally. How she proposes to amend this Treaty without the consent of member countries is a mystery.
11 The EU elite, knowingly having illegally bailed out Greece and now Ireland should be arrested en masse for illegal use of public money. The EU is very strong on law, except apparently for itself when it suits it.
EU FINANCE, SPENDING & REMUNERATION
12 The EU has failed to get its accounts signed off for the nth year in succession; NO PRIVATE CONCERN COULD GET AWAY WITH THIS.
13 At this time of economic crisis the EU wants to spend SIX BILLION EUROS on a new diplomatic service, including the placing of FORTY-SIX “diplomats” on Barbados and over FIFTY on Madagascar.
14 The number of EU citizens demanding this vast expenditure must be microscopic; though nobody knows for sure since the EU would never dream of asking its paymasters their opinion.
15 Europe is going through the worst period of financial chaos since WWII. Jobs are being lost almost everywhere; many EU countries are technically bankrupt; people’s living standards and public services are being drastically cut, except it seems in the EU in Brussels.
16 The EU has just won a court case against the people that finance it, the national governments. As a consequence, EU workers will receive a payrise backdated to last year with interest of 3.7% at a time of desperate economic hardship for many millions of EU citizens.
17 The head of the vast new “diplomatic” organisation is a Brit who has NEVER BEEN ELECTED to any post of significance and earns more than TWICE as much as ANY European leader, plus very considerable expenses. She is far from unique in the EU circle of the elite.
18 EU workers receive extraordinary perks (benefits) and also pay around 8% income tax. Very few of their electors (who pay their wages) benefit from anything like this sort of remuneration.
19 Peter Mandelson RESIGNED from his post as Commissioner to become an English Lord. Since his ludicrous remuneration for this was LOWER than his EU income the EU is paying him around £62,000 of taxpayers’ money for FOUR years to make up the difference, EVEN THOUGH HE RESIGNED.
20 The above-mentioned practice amounts to institutionalised THEFT of taxpayers’ money.
21 The EU has just created an English-language website to inform us of how wonderful they are. In other words, WE are paying to have EU PROPAGANDA shoved down our throats.
22 The EU paying some 300,000€ for a dogs’ home in Poland at a time when millions of people in Europe are suffering real economic hardship is just one example of frivelous use of taxpayers’ money.
THE RATIONALE OF THE EU
23 Mr van Rompuy, unelected “President” from a failing and disintegrating state (is this the reason for his obsession?), has said that “The nation states are dead.”He and the EU elite seek the creation of a European “superstate” controlled from Brussels.
24 Mr Van Rompuy has presumably informed President Sarkozy, Chancellor Merkel and other EU leaders personally that their states “are dead”. Their reactions have not been published so far.
25 This agenda was denied by the EU elite for many decades, which of course represents yet another LIE.
26 This unelected “President” earns more than any national leader in the EU. This is to give the impression that he is more important, since clearly the more money you are paid the more important you must be.
MEPs & DEMOCRACY
27 MEPs have just demanded a near 6% increase in the EU budget.
28 In this they are certainly not reflecting the wishes of the majority of their electors.
29 Many turn up in Brussels, sign on to qualify for their attendance allowance and then go away.
30 I do not know of any other profession where you get paid a vast salary and expenses and then EXTRA MONEY just for attending a meeting.
31 Most people haven’t got the foggiest idea who is supposed to be “representing” them in Brussels.
32 The EU as it stands is a top-down decision-making organisation whose leaders have a degree of self-righteousness (“Only we know what is good for you.”) that has to be suffered to be believed.
33 MEPs do not take their electors wishes into account.
34 The EU hates referendums since they give an opportunity to the people to express their opinion and actually make a decision. Naturally they can’t be trusted with decisions.
35 When a referendum goes against the EU the usual reaction is to oblige the country involved to do it again and again till the “right” answer is produced. In this the EU is a laughing stock, but the elite do not care as long as they get their way
36 MEPs periodically flog up and down from Brussels to Strasbourg. Sitting in Strasbourg is supposed to be some sort of symbol, but I don’t know of any voters who were asked if they wanted to pay through the nose for a symbol at vast expense, not least in carbon emissions.
CONCLUSIONS
37 The modern world is characterized by greed, arrogance and incompetence. These are qualities that the EU elite has demonstrated in abundance.
38 The EU elite has totally and utterly FAILED the people of Europe and is not fit for purpose.
39 Most people believe in cooperation within Europe, but not in a European superstate ruled from Brussels, a country both disintegrating and vastly endebted.
40 The EU elite has completely destroyed the faith that many ordinary people had in the EU as primarily a “common market”.
My overall reaction to the EU elite and its management of the EU is as follows. (Please tick ONE box.)
A) In general I am very pleased with the EU leadership.
B) I am quite pleased, even if some things could be improved.
C) I don’t care much either way. They can get on with it as far as I’m concerned.
D) I am not very pleased with the way the EU is run.
E) I am very dissatisfied indeed about the way that my money is being spent.
F) It is such a corrupt, wasteful and undemocratic shambles that we have to abolish it up and start again. My country is certainly better off outside the EU AS IT IS CURRENTLY RUN. I am profoundly disappointed.
F) I am disgusted at the EU elite’s arrogance, incompetence, dishonesty and venality.
[NB. If after reading the above, you really would like to submit your answers to the above questions to your local MP or MEP, then Chris has a form you may use that may be downloaded from here. Ed]
I was much taken by Patrice’s guest post of yesterday and have managed a short break from the travails of my Master’s degree to post an article by David Pratt, that has been part of my research. Jon.
The death of David Bohm on 27 October 1992 is a great loss not only for the physics community but for all those interested in the philosophical implications of modern science. David Bohm was one of the most distinguished theoretical physicists of his generation, and a fearless challenger of scientific orthodoxy. His interests and influence extended far beyond physics and embraced biology, psychology, philosophy, religion, art, and the future of society. Underlying his innovative approach to many different issues was the fundamental idea that beyond the visible, tangible world there lies a deeper, implicate order of undivided wholeness.
David Bohm was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1917. He became interested in science at an early age, and as a young boy invented a dripless teapot, and his father, a successful businessman, urged him to try to make a profit on the idea. But after learning that the first step was to conduct a door-to-door survey to test market demand, his interest in business waned and he decided to become a theoretical physicist instead.
In the 1930s he attended Pennsylvania State College where he became deeply interested in quantum physics, the physics of the subatomic realm. After graduating, he attended the University of California, Berkeley. While there he worked at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory where, after receiving his doctorate in 1943, he began what was to become his landmark work on plasmas (a plasma is a gas containing a high density of electrons and positive ions). Bohm was surprised to find that once electrons were in a plasma, they stopped behaving like individuals and started behaving as if they were part of a larger and interconnected whole. He later remarked that he frequently had the impression that the sea of electrons was in some sense alive.
In 1947 Bohm took up the post of assistant professor at Princeton University, where he extended his research to the study of electrons in metals. Once again the seemingly haphazard movements of individual electrons managed to produce highly organized overall effects. Bohm’s innovative work in this area established his reputation as a theoretical physicist.
In 1951 Bohm wrote a classic textbook entitled Quantum Theory, in which he presented a clear account of the orthodox, Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. The Copenhagen interpretation was formulated mainly by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in the 1920s and is still highly influential today. But even before the book was published, Bohm began to have doubts about the assumptions underlying the conventional approach. He had difficulty accepting that subatomic particles had no objective existence and took on definite properties only when physicists tried to observe and measure them. He also had difficulty believing that the quantum world was characterized by absolute indeterminism and chance, and that things just happened for no reason whatsoever. He began to suspect that there might be deeper causes behind the apparently random and crazy nature of the subatomic world.
Bohm sent copies of his textbook to Bohr and Einstein. Bohr did not respond, but Einstein phoned him to say that he wanted to discuss it with him. In the first of what was to turn into a six-month series of spirited conversations, Einstein enthusiastically told Bohm that he had never seen quantum theory presented so clearly, and admitted that he was just as dissatisfied with the orthodox approach as Bohm was. They both admired quantum theory’s ability to predict phenomena, but could not accept that it was complete and that it was impossible to arrive at any clearer understanding of what was going on in the quantumrealm.
It was while writing Quantum Theorythat Bohm came into conflict with McCarthyism. He was called upon to appear before the Un-American Activities Committee in order to testify against colleagues and associates. Ever a man of principle, he refused. The result was that when his contract at Princeton expired, he was unable to obtain a job in the USA. He moved first to Brazil, then to Israel, and finally to Britain in 1957, where he worked first at Bristol University and later as Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London, until his retirement in 1987. Bohm will be remembered above all for two radical scientific theories: the causal interpretation of quantum physics, and the theory of the implicate order and undivided wholeness.
In 1952, the year after his discussions with Einstein, Bohm published two papers sketching what later came to be called the causal interpretation of quantum theory which, he said, “opens the door for the creative operation of underlying, and yet subtler, levels of reality.” (David Bohm and F. David Peat, Science, Order & Creativity, Bantam Books, New York, 1987, p. 88.) He continued to elaborate and refine his ideas until the end of his life. In his view, subatomic particles such as electrons are not simple, structureless particles, but highly complex, dynamic entities. He rejects the view that their motion is fundamentally uncertain or ambiguous; they follow a precise path, but one which is determined not only by conventional physical forces but also by a more subtle force which he calls the quantum potential.The quantum potential guides the motion of particles by providing “active information” about the whole environment. Bohm gives the analogy of a ship being guided by radar signals: the radar carries information from all around and guides the ship by giving form to the movement produced by the much greater but unformed power of its engines.
The quantum potential pervades all space and provides direct connections between quantum systems. In 1959 Bohm and a young research student Yakir Aharonov discovered an important example of quantum interconnectedness. They found that in certain circumstances electrons are able to “feel” the presence of a nearby magnetic field even though they are traveling in regions of space where the field strength is zero. This phenomenon is now known as the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect, and when the discovery was first announced many physicists reacted with disbelief. Even today, despite confirmation of the effect in numerous experiments, papers still occasionally appear arguing that it does not exist.
In 1982 a remarkable experiment to test quantum interconnectedness was performed by a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect in Paris. The original idea was contained in a thought experiment (also known as the “EPR paradox”) proposed in 1935 by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, but much of the later theoretical groundwork was laid by David Bohm and one of his enthusiastic supporters, John Bell of CERN, the physics research center near Geneva. The results of the experiment clearly showed that subatomic particles that are far apart are able to communicate in ways that cannot be explained by the transfer of physical signals traveling at or slower than the speed of light. Many physicists, including Bohm, regard these “nonlocal” connections as absolutely instantaneous. An alternative view is that they involve subtler, nonphysical energies traveling faster than light, but this view has few adherents since most physicists still believe that nothing-can exceed the speed of light.
The causal interpretation of quantum theory initially met with indifference or hostility from other physicists, who did not take kindly to Bohm’s powerful challenge to the common consensus. In recent years, however, the theory has been gaining increasing “respectability.” Bohm’s approach is capable of being developed in different directions. For instance, a number of physicists, including Jean-Paul Vigier and several other physicists at the Institut Henri Poincaré in France, explain the quantum potential in terms of fluctuations in an underlying ether.
In the 1960s Bohm began to take a closer look at the notion of order. One day he saw a device on a television program that immediately fired his imagination. It consisted of two concentric glass cylinders, the space between them being filled with glycerin, a highly viscous fluid. If a droplet of ink is placed in the fluid and the outer cylinder is turned, the droplet is drawn out into a thread that eventually becomes so thin that it disappears from view; the ink particles are enfolded into the glycerin. But if the cylinder is then turned in the opposite direction, the thread-form reappears and rebecomes a droplet; the droplet is unfolded again. Bohm realized that when the ink was diffused through the glycerin it was not a state of “disorder” but possessed a hidden, or nonmanifest, order.
In Bohm’s view, all the separate objects, entities, structures, and events in the visible or explicate world around us are relatively autonomous, stable, and temporary “subtotalities” derived from a deeper, implicate order of unbroken wholeness. Bohm gives the analogy of a flowing stream:
On this stream, one may see an ever-changing pattern of vortices, ripples, waves, splashes, etc., which evidently have no independent existence as such. Rather, they are abstracted from the flowing movement, arising and vanishing in the total process of the flow. Such transitory subsistence as may be possessed by these abstracted forms implies only a relative independence or autonomy of behaviour, rather than absolutely independent existence as ultimate substances.
(David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Boston, 1980, p. 48.)
We must learn to view everything as part of “Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement.” (Ibid., p. 11.)
Another metaphor Bohm uses to illustrate the implicate order is that of the hologram. To make a hologram a laser light is split into two beams, one of which is reflected off an object onto a photographic plate where it interferes with the second beam. The complex swirls of the interference pattern recorded on the photographic plate appear meaningless and disordered to the naked eye. But like the ink drop dispersed in the glycerin, the pattern possesses a hidden or enfolded order, for when illuminated with laser light it produces a three-dimensional image of the original object, which can be viewed from any angle. A remarkable feature of a hologram is that if a holographic film is cut into pieces, each piece produces an image of the whole object, though the smaller the piece the hazier the image. Clearly the form and structure of the entire object are encoded within each region of the photographic record.
Bohm suggests that the whole universe can be thought of as a kind of giant, flowing hologram, or holomovement, in which a total order is contained, in some implicit sense, in each region of space and time. The explicate order is a projection from higher dimensional levels of reality, and the apparent stability and solidity of the objects and entities composing it are generated and sustained by a ceaseless process of enfoldment and unfoldment, for subatomic particles are constantly dissolving into the implicate order and then recrystallizing.
The quantum potential postulated in the causal interpretation corresponds to the implicate order. But Bohm suggests that the quantum potential is itself organized and guided by a superquantum potential, representing a second implicate order, or superimplicate order. Indeed he proposes that there may be an infinite series, and perhaps hierarchies, of implicate (or “generative”) orders, some of which form relatively closed loops and some of which do not. Higher implicate orders organize the lower ones, which in turn influence the higher.
Bohm believes that life and consciousness are enfolded deep in the generative order and are therefore present in varying degrees of unfoldment in all matter, including supposedly “inanimate” matter such as electrons or plasmas. He suggests that there is a “protointelligence” in matter, so that new evolutionary developments do not emerge in a random fashion but creatively as relatively integrated wholes from implicate levels of reality. The mystical connotations of Bohm’s ideas are underlined by his remark that the implicate domain “could equally well be called Idealism, Spirit, Consciousness. The separation of the two — matter and spirit — is an abstraction. The ground is always one.” (Quoted in Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe, HarperCollins, New York, 1991, p. 271.)
As with all truly great thinkers, David Bohm’s philosophical ideas found expression in his character and way of life. His students and colleagues describe him as totally unselfish and non-competitive, always ready to share his latest thoughts with others, always open to fresh ideas, and single-mindedly devoted to a calm but passionate search into the nature of reality. In the words of one of his former students, “He can only be characterized as a secular saint.” (B. Hiley & F. David Peat eds., Quantum Implications: Essays in Honour of David Bohm, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1987, p. 48.)
Bohm believed that the general tendency for individuals, nations, races, social groups, etc., to see one another as fundamentally different and separate was a major source of conflict in the world. It was his hope that one day people would come to recognize the essential interrelatedness of all things and would join together to build a more holistic and harmonious world. What better tribute to David Bohm’s life and work than to take this message to heart and make the ideal of universal brotherhood the keynote of our lives.
Learning from Dogs 