The Scam

The cost of a kilo of onions in India now, is more than the daily wage of two thirds of its population.

India is now considered an economic miracle, while two thirds of its population earns less than two dollars a day.  

India is called an economic super power while half its children are malnourished and go to sleep hungry.

India is promoted as a place with friendly investment environment while half the population does not have access to a toilet and other basic amenities.

We are using India as an example at the moment, though it could be anywhere in the world.

Welcome to the ugly face of the brave new world, where the economy myth reigns supreme. Welcome to the brave new world championing the economy myth. 

As we mentioned in one of the recent postings (the terrorism myth), the two most used words in the media these days, are economy and terrorism.

In fact these two are very closely related. We are being terrorised through the economy and if we offer any resistance to the current economic model we are terrorised by the powers to be.

We have become slaves to the masters in the executive boardrooms of the corporations.

It is very strange this economy story. In most countries where the economy is booming, people are struggling. This is a fact!

Offcourse, a fact never shared by the corporate media feeding our minds.

So if people have less when the economy is booming, obviously, this thing called economy wasn’t really designed to benefit the people.

Let us look for a moment whom benefits when the economy is booming - Shareholders – big shareholders, (in real terms – bankers) and corporations. Which are actually one and the same.

Strangely enough, when the economy is struggling, things are easier for the common folk. Homes are cheaper, food is cheaper, while opportunities still abound.

So they created this myth that the economy is related to you and me and all of us - that we ought to care for the health of the economy. It’s a very clever myth conveyed to us by a media, which is owned by the same elite who created this myth and is ripping all of us off.

When I was in school, you never heard the word economy buzzing around, unless offcourse you were an economist.

Back then people still used terms as society to describe the social order we live in.

Now we don’t live in a society any more. We live in an economy!

At least that’s what they would like us to believe.

Ok, we are not going to go into things such as the debt base monetary system etc.  Lets leave this for future postings. What we do want to get into is why the top one percent of the planet’s population earns as much as the bottom fifty seven percent. Why do we allow this to happen? Are we all so cleverly manipulated?

To me it sounds like utter insanity, and by no means am I a Marxist/ Leninist dreaming of the old communist order.

It just doesn’t sound fair. It smells of exploitation, lies and deceit; other wise, no one in their right mind would accept such disparity.

So what is wrong with the current concept of economy?

First and foremost is the fact that giant transnational companies are in charge and call the shots. They are accountable to no one apart from their balance sheets. These companies operate with impunity across borders and in reality are subject to no rules or laws, apart from the one’s they make.

51 of the 100 biggest economies in the world are corporation and not sovereign countries.

Do you understand what we are getting to? These corporations have stifled all real completion in the ‘market place’ and control the movement of goods and services across the planet.

We are way beyond capitalism now. The cunning word globalisation has put us under the totalitarian rule of the corporations.

The masses all over the world are struggling because of the current system of economy. While few, very few are laughing all the way to the bank.

 Any sign of dissent against the economy is crushed brutally by all means possible.

So, how do we change this, How do we disempower the corporations and take charge of our lives again?

Local – local - local.

Think globally act locally. This is not just a slogan; it’s a roadmap for transformation.

Wherever you are support the local community. Buy local, support local, participate in local and empower each other to be the real decision makers, charting the lives we wish to live.

Another world is possible – we make it happen

(More to come on this subject))

The Great Flood

                                                              

So reality has beaten me to my story. I have just completed writing a novel set in a great flood while Queensland is experiencing floods of ‘biblical proportions’

I watched the saga unfold through the media, as I am far away from home at present.

It was heartening to see the sense of humanity and comradeship disaster brings out in people.

It is though, for a brief moment, we get in touch with our primal roots and identify what is really important – a sense of community and our love and care for each other.

Less heartening was to observe how much coverage was given to the economic loss from the flood - the loses to the mining companies, the growth in GDP etc…

Just gibberish, rubbish, illusion designed to again disempower us, lest for a moment we attune to the power that rests in unity.

The other issue that stands out is a lack of responsibility taken by the authorities for this massive flood. The blame has been pointed squarely at nature, as though we had nothing to do with it.

From 1968 to 1987 Queensland was ruled by a right wing, fascist,  named 'Joh Bjelke-Petersen.' It was a time when even the white rulers of South Africa were jealous of the perfect apartheid exercised in Queensland. He was so admired for his white supremacist christen ideology, that he was even knighted by the queen of England.

A corner stone of this ideology is the premise that man is the supreme ruler of the earth. Thus He exercises total domain over her, exploits her and uses her as a resource to advance His agenda.

Of course what you do the great mama, you do to all mothers.

Anyway, back to the flood and its causes. During the years of Joh’s regime and before hand, Queensland has been clear felled systematically, in order to make way, for farms, beef grazing, mining etc.

No country in the world has experienced such earth carnage as Australia. In fact the environmental degradation we enacted in Australia in 200 years, took Europe a few thousand and western Asia almost ten thousand years.

We were in a hurry; we wanted to act fast, to rid the land of its native primal look - so to make it in the image of ‘mother England’.

We cleared the native people and we cleared the native flora and fauna.

Now, every kid knows that deforestation causes floods. Here are a few reasons…

•      Some rainwater stays on the leaves, and it may evaporate directly to the air (the more water used in the watershed, the less remains to run off).

•      Leaves reduce raindrop impact, and gentler rain causes less erosion.

•      Tree roots absorb water from the soil, making the soil drier and able to store more rainwater.

•      Tree roots hold the soil in place, reducing the movement of sediment that can shrink river channels downstream.

•      In short, the trees actually regulate the absorption and movement of water. With no trees left… the water is left to fend for itself and runs riot.

So once the clean up is over and we get back to our ‘normal’ lives, wouldn’t it be nice to start a massive reforestation drive in order to return the trees to the land.

I suspect the government would be talking nonsense again, money, economy etc.; building higher flood levies and waiting for nature to retaliate again.

Lets tell them it’s not what we want.

We want the trees back!

Another world is possible… lets plant more trees and stop cutting the few that remain.

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Creating new Myths – while discarding the old ones

                                                        

So, at last we have greeted the New Year and have ventured into the 2011 story.

Australia is experiencing its worse floods ever, Europe is under a blanket of snow like never before, in south India they are sleeping under 3 blankets, where cold has never been experienced and in America tornado’s are appearing out of season.

Despite all this, many out there in the corridors of power claim that nothing is out of balance with the systems governing the cycles of Mama earth.

Forget the word Global warming - some of us are freezing.

How about global meltdown?

We have held such little respect for the health of our Mama for so long, that now she is just convulsing. Perhaps she is trying to rid herself of this parasite that has been leeching her life force for so long.

This parasite that calls HimSelf , human being though in reality has long lost touch with the essence of his being.

So we celebrated and danced and welcomed the New Year, while half the children in the world went to sleep hungry. Some of us even spared a thought for the less fortunate, though most of us did nothing and will continue to do the same.

On the news they keep on babbling how the floods, and snow, and other weather chaos would affect the health of the economy, the GDP and growth.

Fuck this insanity!!! What are they talking about? Can’t anyone talk about real things for a moment?

Like, how, we as a people are affecting the planet, and how we as a people can affect positive change - change that has nothing to do with words such as economy, terrorism, GDP, IMF, WTO and other dirty words, designed to distract us from the issues at hand and the moment that IS.

What if each one of us let go of, a few of the gadgets cluttering our lives and brains. Would we be less happy? Will our connection with the life around us; the people surrounding us somehow diminish, or perhaps be enhanced.

Where is our true meeting point with life? And why have we come to accept some mediocre consensus to what our lives are meant to be.

Our brains are shattered by an overload of meaningless information that is utterly irrelevant to our walk on planet earth.

We have been led to believe in the myth of terrorism, the myth of economy, the myth of separation, whilst at the same time we have forgotten the true myths; the ones aligned with the earth Mama and all our relations.

So how about we affirm to connect with the myths of magic, wonder and awe. Wouldn’t myths such as these serve our lives and the purpose we attach to them, in a more meaningful way?

Another world is possible. We have to dream a new parable to life on earth.  Its all what it takes. Change the dream, the reference point, the story we are sharing with each other and life will co – create with us the coming of a dawn full of smiles.