Public Intelligence Blog

300 Million Talons…

Degrowth, Anti-Consumerism and Peak Consumption

Degrowth embraces the ongoing devolution of paid work and wealth that cannot be reversed.The anti-consumerism Degrowth movement is gaining visibility and adherents in Europe. Degrowth (French: décroissance, Spanish: decrecimiento, Italian: decrescita) recognizes that the mindless expansion of mindless consumption fueled by credit and financialization is qualitatively and quantitatively different from positive growth.

Degrowth is based on a number of principles:

1. Consumerism is psychological/spiritual junk food (French: malbouffe) that actively reduces well-being (bien-etre) rather than increases it.

2. Better rather than more: well-being is increased by everything that cannot be commoditized by a market economy or financialized by a cartel-state financial machine– friendship, family, community, self-cultivation–rather than by acquiring more. The goal of economic and social growth should be better, not more. On a national scale, the cancerous-growth measured by gross domestic product (GDP) should be replaced with gross domestic happiness/ gross nation happiness (GNH).

3. A recognition that resources are not infinite, despite claims to the contrary. Even if fossil fuels were infinite and low-cost (cheerleaders never mention costs of extraction and refining or the external costs), fisheries, soil and fresh water are not. For one example of many: China Is Plundering the Planet’s Seas (The Atlantic). Indeed, all the evidence suggests that access to cheap energy only speeds up the depletion and despoliation of every other resource.

4. The unsustainability of consumerist consumption dependent on resource depletion and financialization (i.e. the endless expansion of credit and phantom collateral).

Read full article with video.

This is what I mean by the Theocratic Right’s aggressive program to convert armed services personnel.  Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army colonel, and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled “National Security Decision Making.”

Christianity of the Inquisition in the US Army
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, USA (Ret.) – The Real News

VIDEO and also TRANSCRIPT

EXTRACT:

WILKERSON: Right. Well, one group in particular–and you can just Google them and you can see what they’re about, called the Dominionist. This is a group that believes that its mission is to take over the Armed Forces of the United States and then use them in a crusade against all those who don’t believe in Christ in the world. Mikey’s clientele now is over 32,000, some 90 percent of whom are Protestant or Catholic. So you’ve got mostly Christians who were looking to Mikey’s organization to protect them against the chain of command in their own military unit.

WILKERSON: They’re everything from I’ve been ordered to go to a prayer breakfast to I’m being proselytized by my commanding officer or by my platoon leader or by my NCOs to be a Christian; or worse, if you will, on the other side of that coin, people being derided and even kept from promotion and from advancement, education, and training, and so forth because they’re not the kind of Christian they should be, this sort of Dominionist Christian.

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Michel Bauwens

People are raving about this as a possible alternative command and control system for the public to use.

Civilized Discourse Construction Kit

Jeff Atwood

Coding Horror, February 5, 2013

EXTRACT:

After spending four solid years thinking of discussion as the established corrupt empire, and Stack Exchange as the scrappy rebel alliance, I began to wonder – what would it feel like to change sides? What if I became a champion of random, arbitrary discussion, of the very kind that I’d spent four years designing against and constantly lecturing users on the evil of?

I already built an X-Wing; could I build a better Tie Fighter?

Today we announce the launch of Discourse, a next-generation, 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

The goal of the company we formed, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., is exactly that – to raise the standard of civilized discourse on the Internet through seeding it with better discussion software:

• 100% open source and free to the world, now and forever.
• Feels great to use. It’s fun.
• Designed for hi-resolution tablets and advanced web browsers.
• Built in moderation and governance systems that let discussion communities protect themselves from trolls, spammers, and bad actors – even without official moderators.

Our amazingly talented team has been working on Discourse for almost a year now, and although like any open source software it’s never entirely done, we believe it is already a generation ahead of any other forum software we’ve used.

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Berto Jongman

Sampling from Anthology:

Global Economic Crisis and the Coming/Current Depression

Book:

THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS.  The Great Depression of the XXI Century

Here is another potential game changer in the transition to non-carbon energy. More and more breakthroughs are popping up. One can only wonder what it would have been like if we had put the trillions we have spent on war into eliminating carbon energy, and transitioning to energy technologies that were non-polluting.

Inventor Claims Solar Energy Discovery That Is Game-changer
GREG GORDON – Idaho Statesman

This is the difference between the U.S. and European food systems. It is not a pretty picture.

Seven Dangerous Food Practices Banned in Europe But Just Fine in America
TOM PHILPOTT – AlterNet (U.S.)/Mother Jones

Chuck Spinney

Below is a very interesting summary of the political tensions among secularism and religion and modernism and tradition in Tunisia.  I think the author, who I do not know but whose writings I have followed, is one of the most knowledgeable observers of the Arab Spring.

Chuck Spinney

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

April 2013, Pages 41-42

Tunisia in Turmoil:What Next?

By Esam Al-Amin

THE SPARK THAT ignited the Arab Spring over two years ago came from Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia. For 28 days people across the country revolted against the repression and corruption of the 23-year authoritarian regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Finally, on Jan. 14, 2011 Tunisians celebrated their victory and resilience over tyranny and oppression when Ben Ali fled the country. But if getting rid of the dictator was relatively short and easy, the dismantling of his regime and its corrosive effects on society has proven to be very challenging indeed.

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This is not good news. And guess which country is number one in this category? Do you think this might be the result of the toxins and hormones in our environment, food, and water? This is exactly what one would expect to see in large animal studies designed to study the process of disease.

Brain Diseases Affecting More People and Starting Earlier Than Ever Before
Science Daily

Additional unintended consequences of GMOS resulting from a view of the earth that values only profits, with no consideration as to wellness at any level.  Click through to see the relevant charts.  A fully referenced and illustrated version of this article is posted on ISIS members website and is otherwise available for download: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/login.php?location=GM_Crops_and_Water_a_Recipe_for_Disaster.php

GM Crops and Water – A Recipe for Disaster
Institute of Science in Society

Click on Image to Enlarge

Source

Berto Jongman

Being watched by many.

Ventura cites Col Fletcher Prouty.  Asked about 9/11, he would have done a legitimate investigation.

Phi Beta Iota:  Piers Morgan is a certified idiot.  Ventura is kind to him.