by Starman » Sat Jul 09, 2005 7:40 pm
Some thoughts:<br>I am --and have been-- totally stumped by the apparant intent to selectively focus on particular words/phrases at the exclusion of others which are far more indicative of Ruppert's underlying point -- <br><br>Ruppert spoke of "crash program – agreed to by all nations and in accordance with the highest spiritual and ethical principles – to stop global population growth and to arrive at the best possible and most ethical program of population reduction as a painful choice made by all of humanity."<br><br>Doesn't 'agreed to by all nations, in accord with highest spiritual and ethical principles', arrived at by the concerted negotiation of the world's top political spiritual, economic and scientific leaders to address the issue of unsustainable and dangerous resource use and environmental consequences -- MEAN anything? Frankly, this focused discrediting of Ruppert by taking his words out of context and assembling the ediface of a dangerous eugenics program from a few select words is a blatant red-herring that does little but deflect attention to the fact that Peak Oil's premises have greatly contributed to the ongoing death and suffering of many millions -- why are these realities ignored in this 'debate'? That's what I'd like to know. <br><br>"Highest spiritual and ethical principles" evidently means something horrible and evil and foul to so malign Ruppert's intentions and hang-him on the well-qualified references to "crash program" and "population reduction". Why the fanatical zeal to interpret these phrases in the most portentous, frightful and awful sense, completely but thoroughly divorcing them from their meaning in the context of "highest" ethical and spiritual principles??? Man, talk about being welded to one's blinders ...<br><br>Some 8 million people a year, over 24,000 a day, ALREADY die just of hunger and malnutrition directly caused by global elite policies thru secondary actors and bureaucratic agencies, forcing eneormous debt obligations that divert up to half of their GNP to paying International banks usurious rates, curtailing local development and regional control of resources from meeting local needs to satisfy cheap-labour and raw resource exports for debt-repayment requirements and via neocolonial franchises -- money appropriated for grand building-schemes that benefit international corporations instead of local housing and clean-water supplies, clinics and schools -- agribusiness interests that undercut small farmers and displace rural residents who flock to overcrowded, degraded and contaminated urban blights where they compete for cheap-labour and sweatshop jobs, exporting raw materials instead of developing value-added production industries, diverting small-business loans, agricultural import subsidies which small farmers can't compete with which forces their ruin so small land-holdings get gobbled up by transnational development concerns, unregulated pollution and environmental degradation that foreign firms take advantage of to undercut the cost of business ... and on and on and on. <br><br>Cheap, readily-available medicines and clean-water supplies, costing a small percentage of what is spent on wreaking war and building bombs and tanks and attack helicopters, could prevent many millions of readily-preventable deaths -- why ISN'T this money available? SOMETHING is fundamentally wrong with the global system of resource and wealth distribution -- that's an underlying premise Ruppert and others speaking of the dynamics of Peak Oil build on. Seems to me, there's something very dishonest in decrying efforts to manage resource-use and allocation more equitably, and to encourage wise population policies so as to forestall the consequences of mass deaths from famine and pandemics and wars, in not recognizing or discussing the fact that the present system has and IS causing an appalling and needless toll of suffering and death. That was one of my main points in commenting about what I saw as the unsubstantiated discrediting of Ruppert's rep. in the last Ruppert/Peak Oil thread. Apparently I didn't communicate this basic issue very well, as it wasn't even acknowledged. Another cause to question what the point of this calling Ruppert into question is about.<br><br>Eugenics may be unconscionable, but the fact is -- business as usual is causing genocide and omnicide and driving America's imperialism and the leading-powers warmongering, with plans in the works for more and more 'pre-emptive' interventions and covert destabilizations under the pretext of fighting terrorism and eliminating brutal regimes -- while apparently ignoring the long history of the west being responsible for a great many of the last centuries' brutal autocratic regimes that have impoverished and decimated hundreds of millions of people, depriving them of the most basic opportunity for governing themselves and making the best use of their resources. <br><br>In this, the developing nations quest for more and more oil is directly implictaed in such atrocities as the US's involvment in the Vietnam war, with an estimated 6 million deaths in SE asia including the US's covert support for Pol Pot's policies, the US/West's tacit support for oil-rich Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and the butchery of some 300,000 (and continual strife), US's interventions in subsidizing and provoking Latin America civil war on behalf of protecting oil cartels (linked with decades-long cultivation and protection of narcotics and arms-dealing empire), also involving chemical warfare under Plan Columbia drug-eradication programs which poison farmland and people, adding to economic refugee displacements which further aggravate civil-strife and provide rationale for US providing arms and financial incentives to reinforcing brutal rightwing militancy and encouraging the non-representative political leadership (Latin America-style Strategy of Insecurity), as well as underming many regimes in Africa and provoking struggles for liberty and accountability and equitable distribution of strategic resource profits -- instead of (as we've seen) their being diverted to corporate coffers (and bribing key politicans and influence-peddlars).<br><br>There's something very insidious and even dishonest about singling out Ruppert for his public advocacy of informed and wise grappling with critical issues, recognizing the many related problems tied to unrestrained oil dependency and the environmental/political/economic consequences of population pressure. Why is there such an unwillingness to address the actual issues instead of attacking Ruppert's assumed motivation or allegiance to special interests? The implication that Ruppert is either a dupe or a stooge for oil interests, and by extensions the Int. Banks and global elites, is esp. baffling considering his meticulously-evidenced condemnation of the global elites and the global neoliberal system for their role in either supporting or necessitating or even requiring the 911 false-flag coup. <br><br>Seems to me, those who have the greatest interest in discrediting Ruppert would be those political and corporate officials, and the whole corrupt and criminal system of theft and murder and fraud that has subverted rule of law and interfered with the soverignty of nations and disempowered peoples from taking more direct control over their lives and lands.<br><br>And too: Like -- What's the deal with the snide bias evident in describing Ruppert's letter as 'angry' instead of, say, forceful or articulate or even spirited or well-reasoned? And what am I to make of the characterization of Africa's 'smelly people'? How can I take such an evidently disrespectful comment with implication of bigotry seriously? I'm hardly convinced there's real attempt at engagement, ie., communication, and not just a line-in-the-sand demarcation. What's the real agenda here?<br><br>My world-view doesn't hinge on, and isn't dependant on, Ruppert. I think he's well-reasoned and articulate, but there are literally dozens of well-established credible academics, researchers and authors who have made a very compelling case that America's energy policy is incredibly reckless, irresponsible and has inherant catastrophic consequences not just for the rest of the world, but for the US as well. <br><br>Again, the key point is that all of these major problems, those directly stated but also hidden, are linked, part of the global system of radical capitalism based on an incredibly flawed neoliberal policy requiring constant growth to avoid accounting for its inherant contradictions and inconsistencies -- such as, passing costs off to the public while accumulating private profits, discounting the actual costs of air and water pollution and community crime and health-consequences and social-services etc. by not taking such costs into account as part of the profit-loss calculation of industries and investors' dividends. <br><br>According to this 'modern' model of neocolonial appropriation and the many hidden passing-along of costs, was the incredible project of turning Yugoslavia into a newly-'liberated' fire-sale property, with the 'costs' of hostile take-over asumed by the CIA/NSA/MI6 etc. special-ops and covert ops and financial/criminal mercenaries (including CIA-cutout enlisting so-called Al Qaeda and Taliban/afghan fighters) hired/induced to undermine Yugoslavia's social institutions and set-up rival-factions (Serbs vs Croats vs. Kosovars), playing-on historical tensions and Allied/Axis past loyalties, and exacerbating Christian/Muslim/Orthodox differences, and then in the 'next' stage the US military/NATO (national taxpayer's assumed debt) absorbed 'costs' of bombs and troops and fighters and navy support-fleet, with follow-up invasion/occupation by 'peacekeepers' which were the Police shock-troopers for the armies of lawyers and CEOs and functionaries and the subsequent sell-off of former Yugoslavia's industries and resource access (oil production facilities and pipelines, oil reserves, steel and fertilizer and cement plants, telecommunication infrastructure and licenses, power and water plants (and wires and pipes, etc.), hospitals and pension funds, businesses, banks and equities firms and insurance companies, state-institutions, properties, etc. -- often for pennies on the dollar of capital expenditures or amortization or future earnings and/or true market-value -- an incredible legalized 'theft' thru massive concerted fraud backed-up by force of arms and the political capital of the US, Germany, Italy and GB -- with the long-term costs of Depleted Uranium contamination still unacknowledged and thus not yet 'paid' for).<br><br>Re: Ruppert specifically said a crash-program to deal with deferring the likely human-suffering costs of immanent catastrophe should consist of --<br>"political, economic, spiritual and scientific leaders from all nations to address the issue of Peak Oil (and Gas) and its immediate implications for economic collapse, massive famine and climate destruction."<br><br>Thus, Ruppert's 'plan' is 1. Not his plan. 2. Not something he would be responsible or involved in deciding. 3. Not something that he could anticipate it's resulting conclusions and decisons.<br><br>It's not hard for me to readily imagine the enormous benefit in such a confab of experts and officials articulating and recognizing there IS a major problem in how our 'leaders' have been remiss in not serving the greater public's needs and interests, in thereby educating the world and each other and empowering 'just folks' to understand what's at stake, clearly defining the issue so that 'ordinary' people (who could then demand their 'leaders' take effective action) could better evaluate the serious quality of life issues involved, esp. in condeming military violence and covert political scheming that subverts authentic democratic institutions and delimiting peoples authority for taking-control via elected leaders and cooperatively governing themselves --<br><br>Voluntary child-control, perhaps with an economic subsidy and tax-benefits could be very effective in helping to lower population growth to more sustainable levels, as would a concerted effort to improve people's standard of living which has been shown to directly correlate with smaller families (sometimes for sociocultural reasons, ie. not needing 'insurance' of offsetting high infant-mortality risk factors, large families for dowry and marriage-benefits, or to distribute labour responsibilities and earning capability of children, or to provide in old-age, etc.). <br><br>Michel Chossudovsky working with colleagues thrugh globalresearch.ca/ is a good information resource for issues on human rights and social justice, and how they are affected by the US, Europe's and the global elites' heavy dependency on oil (a key premise of the Peak Oil thesis).<br><br>BTW: Why is it somehow sinister that oil industry experts would be among those most vocal in warning of peak oil? Many of these 'experts' aren't directly employed by oil companies, as they're involved in such peripheral industries as investment analysis and banking and support-services and market research. But also, the point is that the major oil companies have been and for the most part are resistant in acknowledging that their reserves and capability is insufficient to dramatically ramp-up production to meet anticipated needs with no problems for the foreseeable future, say the next twenty-years. <br><br>It was only recently, recall, that a couple major oil firms confessed their stated reserves were greatly overstated, and even Saudi Arabia acknowledged their production capability is at maximum and can't be increased for the next several years, and their largest fields are showing maturity. In any case, who would you expect to know more about true oilfield reserve potential, oil industry and related experts, or oceanographers, or perhaps entertainment professionals, factory workers, politicians, web designers, cosmologists, artists, hairdressers .... ???<br><br>Well, that's about as far as I want to take these comments -- it either resonates and provides food for thought or additional debate addressing some of these observations or it won't -- in which case, there's probably little I could say to shed more light on the way I see these things and why.<br>Regrdz;<br>Starman<br><!--EZCODE EMOTICON START :smokin --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/smokin.gif ALT=":smokin"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> <p></p><i></i>
