This is the sixth  of a series of guest posts by Dr Danny Weil from an article (World Class Standards: Whose World, Which Economic Classes and What Standards?) he originally published in Daily Censored.

In this sixth section, Dr Weil argues that conservative ideologues and corporate leaders are concealing their true intent in aggressively imposing educational standards and standardized tests on an unsuspecting American public. Besides hammering home the superiority of European culture, free market values and stereotypically male approaches to knowledge, they reinforce the notion that individual deficiency, rather than pernicious social and political problems, are responsible for human misery.

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The Standards Debate as Social Prevarication and Myth

By Dr Danny Weil

“Perhaps the greatest tragedy of modern man is his domination by the force of {these} myths and his manipulation by organized advertising, ideological or otherwise.  Gradually, without even realizing the loss he relinquishes his capacity for choice; he is expelled from the orbit of decisions.  Ordinary men do not perceive the task of the time; the latter are interpreted by an “elite” and presented in the form of recipes and prescriptions.  And when men try to save themselves by following the prescriptions, they drown in leveling anonymity, without hope and without faith, domesticated and adjusted.” – Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 1976

Human beings seek to exist in the world, to make sense of their peculiar relationships with external and internal reality.  They seek dialogue and relationships with others in order to claim their humanness and become free from the external and internal bonds that bind them.  Standards, claim progressive post-modernists, are part and parcel of the sickness, the cognitive dis-ease that is rampant in education today precisely because they reinforce the meaningless of education — giving meaning only to what education can do for one materially, not psychologically or subjectively.  They become little more than a prerequisite for accepting and adjusting to a market society.

To begin with, radical pedagogy and progressive post-modern educational theory, hereinafter referred to as post-formalism (Kincheloe, Rethinking Intelligence, 1999), argues that tests and testing do far more than simply seek to measure academic performance or basic skills.  “From a post-formalist point of view, standards and assessment as put forth by both economic and cultural conservatives, give a false illusion—an ideological myth of meritocracy and objectivity that really operates deceitfully as technologies of power and control (Foucault, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, 1977).”  Standards operate as part of a modernist project, dissecting thinking into minute fragments and then testing the fragments separate from the whole.  They also are part of a mono-cultural or Eurocentric and androcentric tradition that place value on socio-centric truths and cultural claims to superiority.

Post-formalism would argue conservative standards, hereinafter referred to as universal standards, are culturally biased, gender discriminative, and class based sorting and classifying mechanisms that surreptitiously seek to motivate students by holding out the promise of extrinsic material rewards if the standards are met—i.e., better jobs, college entrance, higher incomes and better employment.  They create a false ideology of “fairness” that proclaims that individual effort is the controlling factor in determining success, regardless of ones’ social class, sex, race, cultural background or particular place in the social system.

Post-formalism argues that the current standards debate actually serves to suffocate a truly genuine dialogue about the purpose of education, of history, of human beings as subjects seeking their freedom in the enterprise of life; instead, the debate demagogues and couches the controversy over schooling as market competitiveness, global production, better goods and services, and strong national identity.

“Unfortunately, and yet understandably, the notion of universal standards resonates with many parents, especially minority parents and the economically and culturally disenfranchised, precisely because they want their children to become successful in a racially and sexually biased, class society where wages, for the majority of people, have scarcely risen in more than twenty five years (Sklar, Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the Growing American Wealth Gap 1999).”  And as new jobs emerge and old ones die out, education is increasingly looked upon by citizenry as a way to endure rapid changes in economic life—to get ahead —a way out, or at the very least, a way to stay even and survive.  Lower wages, unemployment, and jobs relocated to third world countries have created economic insecurity, misery and uncertainty among American citizens with people scrambling and trying to avoid being the next victim of reorganization, reengineering, downsizing, restructuring or businesses disappearing, merging, and being bought out overnight.  The Right exploits these fears and economic uncertainties with the rhetoric of universal standards, falsely arguing that if we just had higher, normative standards, education would prepare everyone for the “new world order” and assure that security and equality would be re-instituted in mental and material life.  The message is clear:  don’t change life, change standards.

The Illusion of Individualistic Meritocracy

The universal standards debate disguises the way that history constructs meaning and opportunity by eternalizing itself behind false images of meritocracy, scientific rationality, and truth. By giving illusion to the mythology of meritocracy, standards serve to marginalize, discourage and disenfranchise, precisely because they propose that those who fail to live up to the technicistic standards are individual failures, do not belong in education; that they would be better served in vocational programs or, in the alternative, perhaps not be educated at all.  The failure to meet normative standards becomes defined as an individual problem devoid of social context and culpability. The debate refuses to recognize and discuss socio-economic issues such as crumbling school infrastructure, overcrowded schools, inadequate teaching resources, dysfunctional teacher training programs, the clandestine nature of teaching in isolation without mentorship or guidance, the shortage of qualified teachers (especially among minority communities), poverty, dysfunctional families, the lack of early childhood nutrition, health care or preschool, low salaries, the dismal state of parental involvement, poverty, low wages and the economic and political arrangements of post-modern capitalist society that creates, if not allows these conditions to exist.  Nor does the debate recognize intellectual diversity, cultural distinctions, intellectual diversity, epistemological processes and concerns, language disparities and differences, or gender discrimination.

Education is a uniquely public and cooperative activity done in concert with others for the purpose of reading the world, forging loving relationships, living a productive life and developing personal and social understanding.  Yet standards create a scarcity mentality—a win-lose situation where competition and ruthless grade acquisition landscape educational discourse and practice under false claims of meritocracy.  Standardized tests base themselves on, and reinforce, an ideology of insipid individualism where others exist only as rungs on a ladder, to “get over”, to compete and measure oneself against.  What is uniquely a public, collaborative activity, learning, becomes a privatized, competitive activity, getting good grades.  For this reason, universal standards are antithetical to human agency and authenticity; they are testimonies to class, race, and sex-based privilege and the objectification and reification of human intellectual endeavor.  They tear all forms of educational community asunder, pitting students against students, teachers against teachers, and citizens against citizens.  Universal standards rigidly enforce hierarchies, acquiescence and submission in place of cooperation, collaborative problem solving and shared experience and dialogue.  They operate as an ideological moral authority in the hands of an immoral constituency.

Furthermore, the current standards’ debate gives the false illusion that “we are all in this together” and that the standards proposed are objective, fair and not culturally, racially or sexually biased.  The debate does this by couching rhetoric in words such as “we”, “us”, “our”, and “together”. The discussion provides an individualistic rational that serves to temper resentment when somebody else gets into college, or gets the “good” job.  “After all, we’re all working under the same standards, aren’t we?  If you just would have done better!”  They impose an “unnatural selection” on citizens by proclaiming their naturalness, and in doing so they ideologically manipulate the public with the falsity of their own mythology.  All of this serves to surreptitiously beguile students, teachers and community into believing that there is no political agenda, no cultural norms being advocated, no prevalence of hierarchical classifying and sorting—that standards are a neutral, generic conception and operation applicable equally and fairly in the interests of everyone.

(To be continued.)

Dr Danny Weil is a public interest attorney who has practiced for more than twenty years and has been published in a case of first impression in California. He is no longer active as a lawyer but has written seven books on education, has taught second grade in South Central LA, PS 122, taught K-1 migrant children in Santa Maria, California and Guadalupe, California, taught in the California Youth Authority to first and second degree murderers and taught for seventeen years at Allan Hancock Junior College in Santa Maria, CA. in the philosophy department. Dr. Weil holds a BA in Political Economics and Philosophy, a multi-subject bilingual credential in education (he is fluent in Spanish) and has a PhD in Critical Thinking. He is a writer for the Truthout Intellectual Project.

photo credit: marsmet451 via photopin cc

In the October 21^st Guardian, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reports on a “revolutionary” paper by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to end the current global monetary system, in which banks create money by issuing loans. The paper’s authors, Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof, propose to reinstate government-issued and controlled money (in the West this ended in 1666). They claim that this would instantaneously eliminate the multi-trillion public debt owed by the US and other industrialized countries, while simultaneously creating jobs, stabilizing boom and bust cycles, leveling income inequality and reducing the monopolistic control international bankers exert over the global economy.

In addition to assuming sovereign control over the money supply, national governments would also require banks to hold 100 percent reserves for the loans they initiate. This effectively terminates the ability of private banks to create money out of thin air, as well as massively reducing their political power. To quote Mayer Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild dynasty, “Give me control over a nation’s money, and I care not who makes its laws.”

The Historic Link Between Money Creation and Inequality

Entitled The Chicago Plan Revisited, the IMF paper revives a proposal first put forward by professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher in 1936 during the Great Depression. Fisher, like many modern economic thinkers, was extremely concerned about the extreme concentration of wealth created by credit cycles.

In my opinion, the economic history Benes and Kumhof relate is the most interesting section of The Chicago Plan Revisited. They explode the myth that money developed to replace precious metals as a means of exchange. Anthropological studies show that “fiat” (fiat currency = currency de-linked from precious metals or other commodities) currencies are as old as civilization. The Spartans banned gold coins, replacing them with virtually worthless iron disks. The early Romans used bronze tablets. Their worth was entirely determined by law – a doctrine made explicit by Aristotle in Ethics – like today’s dollar, euro and pound.

Benes and Kumhof also trace the link between control of the money supply and wealth concentration to prehistoric times, where it was the basis of debt jubilees found in early Judaism and other ancient religions. They assert that the Athenian leader Solon implemented the first known Chicago Plan/New Deal in 599 BC to help farmers who were in debt to the oligarchs who minted the private coinage they used as currency. He cancelled debts, returned lands seized by creditors, set floor-prices for commodities (much like Franklin Roosevelt), and consciously flooded the money supply with state-issued “debt-free” coinage.

One hundred fifty years later, the Romans copied Solon’s reforms, setting up their own fiat money system under Lex Aternia in 454 BC.

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, all currencies were publicly controlled (by kings and the Pope) until 1666, when Charles II transferred control of money creation to private banks with the English Free Coinage Act of 1666.

How the IMF Proposal Would Be Implemented

Under Benes and Kumhof’s proposal, the US treasury would issue sufficient currency to repurchase all outstanding sovereign debt from private banks and other parties. This buyback would make up a substantial portion of the reserves banks would be required to hold to generate new loans. They would build up the balance of their reserves by borrowing at low or negligible interest from the US and other government treasuries (as banks do now when they are “bailed out” by the Federal Reserve).

The growing movement to end debt-based money is still considered pretty radical, despite the grassroots “social credit” movement started by Ellen Brown, the late Richard Douthwaite and members of Positive Money and the New Economic Foundation more than a decade ago. For the Mainstream International Monetary Fund to take up the call is significant for two reasons:

1) It suggests that the global economic crisis is far more serious and intractable than our governments and the mainstream media are willing to let on, and

2) People in high places know damned well policy makers have run out of other options.

Read more here

For more background on how private banks issue and control the money we all require to live on, I highly recommend the films Money as Debt and 97% owned. Both are free downloads at http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/money-as-debt/ and http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/97-owned/

2011, Directed and produced by Dave Gardner

http://www.growthbusters.org/

Film Review

Growthbusters is the inspiring story of Dave Gardner’s efforts to challenge conservative Colorado Springs’ failed growth promotion policies. The film mainly focuses on the insanity of local councils cutting essential public services to “jump start” growth. However it also takes a broader theoretical look at the overall failure of economic growth to solve the global economic crisis.

While Gardner is clearly an environmental crusader concerned about the long term effects of unlimited growth on carbon emissions, resource scarcity and species extinction, he inserts a heavy dose of economic reality into the discussion. All of us who pay any attention to local government have heard the same insipid assertions about the urgent need to cut taxes and regulations to attract new industry and jobs, as well as the need to spend to spend billions of dollars on new infrastructure to accommodate the hoards of people planning to move to our area. The three billion dollar water project the Colorado Springs City Council recently approved to transport water 62 miles uphill is a case in point. Time after time, the companies jump ship and population predictions fall short, leaving existing residents with mountains of debt, higher taxes and reduced police and other services.

Even though the pattern occurs over and over again, no one ever challenges these unproven assertions – that growth equates with prosperity and that communities that don’t grow shrivel up and die. In fact as Gardner learned during his campaign for Colorado Springs City Council, people who oppose growth for growth’s sake are regarded as somewhat looney.

The reality, as Gardner and the experts he features in his film point out, is that people and institutions who promote growth most heavily are those who benefit from it – at the expense of everyone else. This includes real estate developers who derive profits from building more homes, office blocks and shopping center; the mining and fossil fuel companies that fuel this economic activity, as well as heating all the new homes and powering the new cars; and the banks who finance all this. In other words the super rich.

As our other national and local needs are sacrificed for these gung ho growth policies, this 1% gets richer. The other  99% get poorer, as they lose access to education, health care and other vital social services young people need to reach their full potential. Along with all this wealth comes power, as the 1% uses their vast propaganda network to put out messages to get people to consume more, to incur more debt and work longer hours to pay it off – and most importantly to have more babies.

The Population Bomb

In addition to tackling the pro-growth agenda head on, Gardner also makes the important link between exploding population growth and environmental degradation. Paul Ehrlich, who appears briefly in the film, warned in his 1970 book The Population Bomb that mankind was rapidly outstripping the Earth’s natural resources. Dennis Meadows, who directed the 1973 Club of Rome project resulting in the book Limits to Growth, also appears. Based on advanced computer modeling, this controversial report warned forty years ago that population growth and resource scarcity would cause the global economy to falter at the beginning of the 21^st century. This means, as Meadows reminds us, the 2008 global economic crisis was right on schedule.

As Gardner, Ehrlich, Meadows and other experts point out, humankind is living beyond our means, “liquidating” resources we should be should be saving for our children and grandchildren. If we were still growing all our food locally, as we were at the beginning of the 20^th century, it would be obvious there is no longer enough land in cultivation to feed 7 billion people. However because of globalization, most of the industrialized world has no idea where their food comes from. While the one billion people who die of starvation or gradual malnutrition are virtually invisible.

Family Planning: the Best Way to Reduce Carbon Emissions

Gardner doesn’t advocate for mandatory population control like they have in China. However he argues strongly for major environmental groups like the Sierra Club to use their public profile to begin educating governments and communities to start making informed decisions around family size. The other side – the bankers, mining and fossil fuel industry and real estate developers – clearly see the connection between a booming population and economic growth. This is why they constantly pump out messages pressuring women to have more kids.

The truth is that we can’t possibly change enough light bulbs or plant enough trees to compensate for all the babies born to our children and our children’s children. People can save more carbon emissions through responsible family planning than by giving up jet travel. Population control is a critical ecological issue. The “official” environmental movement is letting us all down by refusing to take it up.

New Paths Forward

Gardner himself does his part. When he’s not running for city council or making movies, he’s out in the street distributing free Endangered Species Condoms on the street. The condoms come in choice of packaging featuring endangered panthers, polar bears and cute critters.

He also encourages people to join the Transition movement to help in strengthening their communities, re-localizing economic life and rebuilding skills that don’t depend on corporations and fossil fuels.

Towards the end the film, there is a very inspiring interview with Australian electronics giant Dick Smith, in which he announces the $1 million Wilberforce* Award he has established for “the young person with the best ability to communicate an alternative to our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy.”

*William Wilberforce was an 18^th century British politician and leader of the movement that abolished the slave trade.

Film Review

If video doesn’t play go to link: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/97-owned/

97% Owned is a documentary by a British group called Positive Money. It’s an ideal film for people who have difficulty comprehending that the government doesn’t issue money – that nearly all money is created out of a thin air by private banks when they issue loans. The film mainly focuses on the British banking system, with numerous comparisons with the US, which operates along identical principles. The total lack of transparency on the part of private and central banks is the main reason people have so much difficulty understanding where money comes from. One of the filmmakers laments that the majority of elected officials don’t understand where money comes from.

The film begins by pointing out that paper money and coins constitute only 3% of the money circulating in Britain. The 97% consists of digital currency. In other words, it only exists as numbers on a computer. Digital currency is created when banks generate loans. A lot of people have the mistaken impression that banks use their reserves or other depositors’ money to loan you money to by a house. What actually happens is that the money creates the money out of thin air by entering the amount of the loan into a computer.

Why Saving Money and Debt Reduction Causes Recession

Because this is the only legal way to issue money, keeping enough in circulation to carry out basic economic activities requires large amounts of debt creation. People must continually borrow money and banks must continually lend it. Although conservative politicians love to talk about the need for individuals and governments to save money, saving too much money throws the economy into recession. Likewise if all the world’s private banks suddenly failed, 97% of the global money supply would disappear.

It’s also virtually impossible for governments to reduce debt without taking money out of circulation and causing recession and/or deflation. We currently see this being played out in Europe, where austerity cuts are causing country after country to experience a decline in economic growth (aka recession). Using a recent speech by British prime minister David Cameron as an example, the filmmakers assert that, like Cameron, like most American politicians, doesn’t have a clue where money comes from.

How Government Increases the Money in Circulation

The only way governments can increase the money supply is by borrowing money by selling treasury bonds (a kind of promissory note) to investment banks or through “quantitative easing.” With quantitative easing, the government itself creates digital money, which it uses to purchase treasury bonds (from banks) or private bank assets. The World Economic Forum that met in Davos in January 2012 recommended that a $103 trillion global credit (i.e. debt) expansion was needed to keep the world economy from collapsing – through government borrowing and/or quantitative easing.

How Debt-Based Money Increases Wealth Inequality

One of the most serious draw backs of debt-based money is that it results in a steady redistribution of income from the poor to the rich. It’s mainly the wealthy elite that profits from the interest charges government pays on the money they borrow. It falls on low and middle income taxpayers to pay this interest, as well as the debt, owing to loopholes and offshore tax havens that result in banks and bankers paying very little tax. Low and middle income workers also suffer the most from the austerity cuts enacted to reduce government debt – by losing public sector jobs and/or access to public services, such as health care, tertiary education and disability benefits and services.

The Financialization of the Industrialized World

97% Owned also discusses the epidemic of deregulation and financial speculation that accelerated debt creation and overinflated the world economy in the decades that preceded the global financial crisis. This related in part to the “financialization” of the economies of the global north. Beginning in the mid-seventies, their focus shifted from producing manufactured goods to selling financial products. Many of the latter – derivatives, futures, options, credit default swaps, foreign exchange – were so speculative that buying them was really a posh form of gambling.

Banning the Creation of Money by Private Banks

The filmmakers believe only solution to the current economic crisis is to ban private banks from issuing digital money. They argue that only democratically accountable public bodies should be given the authority to create money. Until we make this happen, private banks will continue to use their control of the monetary system to undermine genuine economic and political reform.

Economics of Happiness

The Economics of Happiness (2011)

Film Review

The term “economical relocalization,” which has been around about four years, describes the global movement of loosely knit Transition Towns and other grassroots networks working to strengthen local and regional economies and systems of food and energy production. I myself was unacquainted with the term until I came across it in the promotional materials for the Economics of Happiness. Most of the last six years of my life have been focused on grassroots relocalization activities. For four years, I helped run a local mutual credit system (an alternative monetary system allowing people on a fixed income to purchase goods and services from each other). During the same period, I have been a strong and vocal supporter of New Plymouth’s farmers’ market, as well helping to start a local community garden. Along with a group of local energy engineers and other members of Grey Power, I also (successfully) lobbied New Plymouth District Council to promote and support locally produced “distributed” energy (for example local wind farms and grid-connect solar electricity) systems.

What I like best about Economics of Happiness is learning I am part of a global movement to strengthen local communities economically and politically. What I dislike most is the title, which suggests the film relates in some way to New Age spirituality. I have found books and films that smack of New Age touchy-feeliness are often a turn-off for blue collar activists.

The 2011 film, narrated by Helena Norberg Hodge, is based on her 1991 book Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh and her 1993 film by the same name. The book and both films draw their inspiration from the nearly forty years Norberg-Hodge has spent living and working in Ladakh, a small Himalayan region in the India-controlled (and disputed) state of Jammu and Kashmir. The beginning of Economics of Happiness includes footage from the 1993 film. It also includes substantial documentary footage on the global economic crisis and the impending global ecological crisis, a consequence of runaway climate change and mass species extinction.

In addition to examining extreme weather events, mass unemployment, extreme income inequality and skyrocketing energy and food costs, the Economics of Happiness also focuses on “the crisis of the human spirit.” It doesn’t do so from a religious or New Age perspective. Instead it looks at the epidemic level of loneliness, alienation and demoralization that seems to accompany wholesale industrial globalization.

The Psychological Devastation of Globalization

The film opens with the same narrative Norberg-Hodge recounts in her earlier Ancient Futures film. We are shown the “before” image of Ladakh, a rich thriving culture in which residents live in large spacious homes, enjoy respectable amounts of leisure time and have no concept of unemployment. Then we have the “after” image where, thanks to globalization, cheap (government subsidized) food, fuel and consumer goods that have flooded the region and destroyed most residents’ traditional livelihoods. Previously pristine communities face rising levels of air and water pollution, while Ladakhi teenagers are continuously bombarded with consumerist messages.

It’s heartbreaking to see the psychological effect of all this. Most young Ladakhi have come to regard themselves as backwards and poor, while the communities they live in face rising racial tensions, juvenile delinquency and epidemic levels of psychological depression.

The Destructive Nature of Urbanization

The film goes on to sketch the mechanics of globalization, stressing the deregulation that forces small self-contained regions like Ladakh to open their markets to foreign goods, which quickly supplant higher priced local products. Norberg-Hodge paints an even uglier picture of urbanization, an inevitable result of forcing millions of small formers off their land. In discussing the growing global scarcity of fossil fuels, water and food, she stresses that life in a large city is vastly more resource intensive than rural living. All city residents rely on food, energy and water transported from some distant source, while they burn up additional fossil fuels transferring their waste products as far away as possible. She stresses that most city residents tend to go along with the massive ecological and social devastation their lifestyle produces because they don’t see it. The damage often occurs on the other side of the world.

Rebuilding Local Communities and Economies

The solutions Norberg-Hodge offers for all these problems are similar to those proposed by an increasing number of “latter day” economists. First and foremost we must acknowledge that humankind has exceeded the earth’s carrying capacity – that the corporate drive for continual economic growth must end. Secondly people of conscience need to opt out of corporate economy to facilitate the creation of more efficient and environmentally accountable regional and local economies. In addition to transitioning to local energy and food production, people need to exert collective pressure to break up large investment banks and replace them with local retail banks and credit unions. State and local governments need to stop giving subsidies and tax breaks to large corporations and start supporting their own local businesses. Not only do small businesses create the vast majority of jobs, but they don’t pack up after a few years to move to overseas.

Norberg-Hodge also sees this process of rebuilding local communities as the only way to address the “crisis of the human spirit.” She believes the latter is a direct result of the demise of community engagement that has accompanied globalization and urbanization.  Although the process is most striking in remote regions like Ladakh, where it occurred suddenly, no region of the developed or developing world has escaped it.

The film ends on an extremely optimistic note, with numerous examples of international and community organizations supporting people in reclaiming their lives from multinational corporations.

Leaders from 2008 World Economic Forum

This is the second of two posts on Global Risks 2012, a discussion document the global elite is considering this week at the World Economic Forum meets in Davos Switzerland.

How Global Risks 2012 Came to Be Written

The World Economic Forum’s Risk Response Network (RRN) was launched in 2004 to provide public and private sector leaders with “an independent, impartial platform to map, measure, monitor, manage and mitigate global risks.” This is the RRN’s seventh annual report. It’s based on surveys completed by 469 international experts in industry, government, academia and civil society about 50 potential global risks across five categories: Economic, Environmental, Geopolitical, Societal and Technological. Risks in each category are rated according to both the potential damage they could inflict and their likelihood of occurrence. In addition, a specific risk in each category is identified as “the center of gravity,” which feeds other risks, both within the specific category and across categories.

How 469 Experts Rated the 50 Risks

Economic:

• Most damaging: chronic fiscal imbalances (translation – debt) and severe income disparity.
• Most likely to occur: chronic fiscal imbalances and severe income disparity.

Environmental:

• Most damaging: rising greenhouse gas emissions and failure of climate change adaptation (acknowledging that climate change is already occurring).
• Most likely to occur: rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Geopolitical

• Most damaging: terrorism, followed by critical fragile states and pervasively entrenched corruption.
• Most likely to occur: critical fragile states and pervasively entrenched corruption.

Societal

• Most damaging: water supply crisis, followed by food shortage crisis.
• Most likely to occur: water supply crisis, followed by food shortage crisis.

Technological

• Most damaging: cyber attacks.
• Most likely to occur: cyber attacks

Is There a Split in the Ruling Elite?

It’s clear from the spelling (using “our” instead of “or” and “re” instead of “er” at the end of words) that the authors of Global Risks 2012 are either British or Canadian. I find it extremely hard to imagine a report emphasizing carbon emissions and income inequality coming out of the US. I also think find it significant that three of the four companies listed as report “cosponsors” are insurance companies (see * below). If Exxon had helped write this document, it would surely minimize the danger of increasing carbon emissions, if it mentioned them at all.

At times division develop in the ruling elite – between the banking/insurance and the energy/military sectors – over specific issues. Climate change seems to be one of them. Owing to deregulation, there is significant overlap between insurance companies, which derive most of their income from reinvesting premiums, and other financial institutions. AIG, for example, is supposedly an insurance company but had to be bailed out because they owned a substantial chunk of subprime mortgages.

It’s clearly in the interest of oil, natural gas and coal companies for consumers to continue to buy and burn up as much fossil fuel as possible. Insurance companies, on the other hand, serve their shareholders best by reducing carbon emissions. They already face growing claims losses due to a massive increase in weather-related catastrophes. In this context it makes sense for them to cosponsor a World Economic Forum document emphasizing the need for international agreement about reducing carbon emissions. It also helps explain why Wall Street investment banker (and New York mayor) Michael Bloomberg has given a $50 million donation to the Sierra Club’s Anti-Coal Campaign http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/nyregion/bloomberg-donates-50-million-to-sierra-club-coal-campaign.html

* Marsh and McLennan, Swiss Reinsurance Company, University of Pennsylvania Wharton Center for Risk Management, and Zurich Financial Services

At the moment I don’t sense major commitment on the part of either the public or government to end the obesity epidemic. Given society’s unwillingness to address issues that threaten the survival of the human species – namely climate change and water and resource scarcity – it’s unrealistic to expect a major turn-around on government policies that threaten to cripple 1/3 to 1/2 of the US population with chronic, disabling health conditions.

However if the public miraculously decided to tackle the obesity epidemic, the first step would be to own obesity as a social/political condition, rather than blaming individual fat people for social and biologic factors that are largely beyond their control. The second step would be acknowledging that reducing our high rates of obesity is virtually impossible unless citizens of western democracies retake control of their elections, legislative bodies, and public airways, as well as banning corporate monopoly control over publishing and the Internet. Although statistically obesity spreads among populations just like a contagious disease (see http://www.desdemonadespair.net/search/label/Graph%20of%20the%20Day?updated-max=2010-11-08T09%3A58%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=20), it also has the distinction of stemming from causes that directly relate to total corporate dominance over both government and public information.

At present the best option at present for ending corporate dominance is via a national grassroots movement called Move to Amend. Move to Amend seeks to end the ability of corporations to claim Bill of Rights protections for something called “corporate personhood.” The movement, which started in rural Pennsylvania, has successfully passed local laws across the US forcing corporations seeking to respect community interests. As the name of the movement suggests, the ultimate goal is to amend the US Constitution to reverse one hundred years of Supreme Court decisions that have granted corporations the same “rights” as individuals. This was clearly never intended by the Constitutional framers, many of whom wrote extensively about the risk of powerful corporations corrupting government.

Go to www.movetoamend.org and click on the “Move to Amend” tab in the lower left hand corner. Then click on the “Sign the Motion” tab on the right to add your signature to the 95,000 on the petition to amend the Constitution.

Short and Medium Term Solutions

Ending corporate rule is obviously a long term solution. Nevertheless, as with many social problems, there are also more immediate short terms steps than can be taken. There are already hundreds of groups and organizations all over the country working to address the ideological and economic factors that contribute to excessive weight gain:

• Abolishing “food ghettos” via the urban garden movement

What is happening in Detroit is truly inspirational. Housing foreclosures and vacancies have turned many blocks of downtown Detroit into empty, abandoned land – which local residents are converting into urban gardens to produce fresh fruits and vegetables. (see http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2521061/detroits_urban_gardens_a_food_revolution.html?cat=62). There are similar grassroots projects in Milwaukee (see ) and Los Angeles (see http://www.good.is/post/five-innovative-urban-gardening-programs-in-los-angeles/) If there isn’t one in your city, you need to start one.

One of Detroit's urban gardens

Growing Power in Milwaukee

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• Eliminating federal agricultural subsidies

Last week Congress took the first momentous step of ending federal subsidies for school junk food lunches by passing the Child Nutrition Bill, which had been stalled for two years. The next step is to eliminate federal subsidies on corn, soy, and wheat. These were initially enacted during the Depression to keep small family farmers from losing their farms when there was an oversupply of these commodities causing a steep drop in the price they were paid for them. Now that these subsidies mainly go to corporate farm giants like Monsanto, Cargil and Archer Daniel Midlands, they actually hurt small farmers more than they help them. There is currently a proposal on the budget cutting table to eliminate the $14 billion in annual food subsidies, and citizens need to organize and get behind this proposal (see http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html)

• Banning junk food ads on TV

Viewers have already pressured the federal government to ban cigarette ads on TV, as well as pressuring the alcohol industry to self-regulate by not showing liquor ads prior to 10 p.m.

• Guaranteeing access to preventive care (and nutritional counseling) by expanding Medicare to cover all Americans

The reality is that ObamaCare, Obama’s corporate welfare plan for insurance companies, simply cannot be funded in a recession. It will have to undergo major amendment before it’s fully implemented in 2014. The only affordable way to finance health care for all Americans is to eliminate insurance company profit, advertising and overhead from the health care equation by expanding Medicare, an highly popular, efficient, and economical program, to cover people under 65. (see http://www.healthcare-now.org/ for how you can help)

• Reducing income inequality (via fairer taxation) – the root cause of insulin resistance

Warren Buffett (the world’s second richest man) is the most prominent American arguing for an urgent reduction in income inequality (see http://www.slate.com/id/2266025. However other business analysts and economists are coming around to the view that economic recovery will never occur in the US without a “consumer recovery.” Which will be impossible until workers have adequate take home pay to enable them to purchase the goods they produce.

As a doctor, I am well away of the negative health effects of smoking. Studies show a life time of smoking subtracts an average of ten years from your life expectancy. I also read about the considerable health costs of treating smoking-related illnesses, such as chronic bronchitis, emphysema, heart disease and stroke. However other studies suggest that non-smokers actually generate higher health care costs because they live ten years longer (see http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-04-08-fda-tobacco-costs_N.htm). These studies receive limited publicity because the Center for Disease Control prudently chooses not to promote the cost savings associated with premature death.

Owing to a chronic sinus condition, I am painfully aware of the effects of second hand smoke. Prior to the public ban on smoking, I had no choice but to avoid public areas (restaurants, bars, theatres and even airplanes) where smoking was likely to occur.

The Stigmatization of Smokers

However, as a civil libertarian, I am also very concerned about the increasing stigmatization of smokers – especially when I see that employers are using “smoker status” as a justification for not hiring people. In this regard, I think the right wing may be justified in labelling liberals (who were largely responsible for smoking bans) as “green fascists.” In an era were corporate and government interests are looking for every possible opportunity to pit working Americans against one another, we need to be wary of becoming hypercritical over lifestyle choices.

Most of us know better than to stigmatize the unemployed and homeless (since many of us may be joining them soon). Yet some of us don’t give a second thought about coming down on smokers, alcoholics or the obese. All three seem to popular targets right now, owing to liberals’ willingness to embrace what is essentially conservative ideology – the need to take “personal responsibility” for our lives.

The Cult of Personal Responsibility

Taking “personal responsibility” simply ain’t going to cut it right now. Not for the 22 percent unemployed, nor for the 1.6 million American homeless, nor for the thousands of families facing imminent foreclosure on their homes. And singling out designated groups for their poor lifestyle choices distracts us from the real problem in the US – a concerted attack by Wall Street and our corporate controlled President and Congress on working people.

Decades of epidemiological research show that lifestyle choices account for only 10% of the causation of illness (see Aug 30 blog). If we are really serious about improving Americans’ abysmal health status (near the bottom for industrial countries), it’s time to address the real cause of poor health. Study after study shows a direct link between the extreme income disparity in the US (where 10% of the population controls 70% of the wealth) and our high rate of both acute and chronic illness.

It’s time to focus on the real problem – the corporate deregulation and tax cuts responsible for our extreme income inequality. Instead of scapegoating smokers and fat people.

***

The Most Revolutionary Act on radio:

Gorilla Radio – Chris Cook, Victoria British Columbia

(click on link)

Chris and I discuss how I was first targeted, following my decision to support the occupation (of an abandoned school)  that led to the formation of Seattle’s first African American Heritage Museum – as an alternative to the crack cocaine epidemic among the city’s African American teenagers. We also talk about my research into HIV AIDS, my hospitalization and the Veterans Administration psychologist I worked with who also helped GIs illegally stationed in Cambodia in the sixties and seventies (and terrorized into keeping quiet about it).

XZone Interview with Rob McConnell

(click on link  – show is syndicated – fast forward the music to hear interview)

Rob and I discuss the phone harassment, break-ins, attempts to run me down – and my psychiatric hospitalization. We also talk about the political activities that seemed to lead the government to target me – including my research into HIV AIDS – and my inability to get help from the Seattle police. Then we cover the whole area of conspiracies in general, which are more accurately called State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADS)

The University of Washington epidemiologist Dr Stephen Bezruchka has been writing and speaking for nearly two decades on the real cause of illness and poor health. As he repeatedly points out, lifestyle factors (including smoking) only account for ten percent of the causation of illness. According to Bezruchka, the single most important determinant of adult health status and life expectancy is your mother’s income and social status during pregnancy and the first three years of life.

Although more than fifty years of epidemiological studies bear this out, it is only in the last decade scientists could explain why this is – thanks to the new science of epigenetics. While the early Freudians used to make similar claims about unfavorable “psychological” influences on infants and young children, it is now clear the effect is biological rather than psychological. That it relates to “epigenetics” – a term referring to changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than the underlying DNA sequence.

Numerous studies show that environmental stress and hormones (particularly stress hormones) produced during pregnancy can cause genetic code to be transcripted (into proteins and enzymes) in such a way to negatively affect the development of the immune system – in addition to predisposing the fetus to biochemically based mental illnesses.

The Link Between Income Inequality and Poor Health

However the most important epidemiological finding, according to Bezruchka, is that the effect of low income status on health is much more pronounced in societies with extreme income inequality. Study after study bears this out. In other words, a poor person’s adult status and life expectancy will be worse if he is born into a country with big gap between the economic status of its rich and poor residents (such as the US where 10 percent of the population controls 71 percent of the wealth). In fact the US is near the bottom of the charts if you look at statistical indicators that measure the overall health of a country. In life expectancy it rates 38^th, just behind Cuba. In infant mortality it rates 30^th, just above Slovakia.

These findings also belie the efforts of policy and opinion makers to convince us that class differences have disappeared in the US. For example, it’s extremely rare to see working class families depicted on American TV. In fact some Republican commentators accuse their opponent of “class warfare” for even mentioning the existence of an underclass. Nevertheless with a double dip recession on the horizon, in the face of healthy corporate profits and CEO bonuses, American’s class divide is receiving more and more attention.

A Mindset Driven By Social Service Cuts

Dr Susan Rosenthal, in Sick and Sicker, also points out that it’s only in the last thirty years that politicians and policymakers – on both sides of the aisle have made sick people responsible for their own illness. Epidemiological studies – as long as scientists have been doing them – have always shown that poor health correlates directly with low income and social status. Rosenthal notes that even in Dicken’s time it was taken for granted that the poor – undernourished and living in cold, damp, overcrowded tenements – were far more prone to illness than their middle class counterparts. In her mind this shift to a new “blame the victim” mentality has been deliberate – to justify aggressive social service cutbacks (by both Republicans and Democrats) that became fashionable with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The Role of Oppression and Exploitation in Illness

Although the data establishing the link between income inequality and poor health is unequivocal, epidemiologists are still at a loss to explain why poor people have poorer health in countries with more income inequality. Bezruchka relates it to the fact that people in more egalitarian societies look after each other more. I like Rosenthal’s explanation better. She relates it to the extremely high level of oppression and exploitation in societies with extreme income disparity.

She points out that minimum wage workers aren’t just poor. They also work in exploitive, arbitrary and often punitive job settings that they feel powerless to change. The immense stress of confronting this massive stress on a daily basis takes an enormous toll on both the human body and psyche.

Dr Susan Rosanthal’s website: http://susanrosenthal.com/

A bibliography of Dr Stephen Bezruchka’s writings can be found at his faculty website http://depts.washington.edu/hserv/faculty/Bezruchka_Stephen

***

The Most Revolutionary Act on Radio:

Gorilla Radio – Chris Cook, Victoria British Columbia

(click on link)

Chris and I discuss how I was first targeted, following my decision to support the occupation (of an abandoned school)  that led to the formation of Seattle’s first African American Heritage Museum – as an alternative to the crack cocaine epidemic among the city’s African American teenagers. We also talk about my research into HIV AIDS, my hospitalization and the Veterans Administration psychologist I worked with who also helped GIs illegally stationed in Cambodia in the sixties and seventies (and terrorized into keeping quiet about it).

XZone Interview with Rob McConnell

(click on link  – show is syndicated – fast forward the music to hear interview)

Rob and I discuss the phone harassment, break-ins, attempts to run me down – and my psychiatric hospitalization. We also talk about the political activities that seemed to lead the government to target me – including my research into HIV AIDS – and my inability to get help from the Seattle police. Then we cover the whole area of conspiracies in general, which are more accurately called State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADS)

What I find most troubling about the reactionary “useless eater” mentality (see May 24 blog) pushed by policy and opinion makers is the way Americans have internalized the belief that it’s their own fault if they become ill. In fact much of the US population seems more freaked out about getting sick than dying. I can’t say I blame them, as so many American workers have no sick leave and lose a day’s pay every time they are ill.

Americans also spend billions of dollars on alternative health care and vitamin supplements and other non-prescription remedies. And many are practically obsessed with healthy eating, only drinking bottled or filtered water, compulsive exercise routines and meditation, yoga and other stress reduction techniques to keep their massive job stress from making them sick (at present those who still have jobs do the work of 1.5 to 2 people on average).

The media compounds the problem by promoting a variety of cough and cold remedies and caffeine and mega B vitamin “boost” drinks to enable people to attend work when they have colds or even quite serious illnesses, such as bronchitis and influenza.

Medicating Kids

Parallel to this pressure for adults to be healthy, is immense pressure for children to be “normal.” While parents seem to be appropriately skeptical about taking unnecessary drugs themselves, they seem far too eager to and medicate children with behavior problems. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I am well aware that ADHD is a genuine disorder affecting 1-2% of children (but not childhood bipolar disorder – this is a diagnosis heavily marketed by drug companies and totally unsupported by developmental or epidemiological research).

At the same time I see absolutely no reason why American children should be three times as likely to be diagnosed and treated for ADHD than children in other parts of the world. In my work, I come across psychiatrists from all over the world. Based on their input, I can safely asserted that the eagerness of US doctors (at the behest of drug companies) to prescribe psychotropic medication for children is an international scandal that casts the standard of  American pediatric and psychiatric care in a very bad light.

Sending Sick Kids to School and Day Care

However I am even more concerned about the number of kids who have to go to school or day care when they’re sick because their working parents can’t afford to stay home and have nowhere else to send them. In doing so, they will also expose all their child’s classmates. Who, because their immune system is still forming, are very likely to develop the illness themselves and expose other children. Over the past decade, I have seen many children who suffer 12 or more serious (requiring antibiotics) throat, ear, sinus or chest infections a year.

This is a major public health problem, especially now that asthma (often triggered by chest infections), is reaching epidemic proportions among American children. Allowing children to suffer one respiratory infection after another can have permanent lifelong health consequences.

Take Home Message

Good health is elusive. In general we have a very limited ability to stay well by eating right, exercising and reducing stress. Epidemiological studies show that only 10% of illness is accounted for by lifestyle factors (including smoking).

The reality is that illness – both acute and chronic – is fundamental to the human condition. In my experience, people willing to allow themselves to be ill and take time off to get well recover faster and cope better with other life stresses better.

Obviously adults have the choice whether or not they want to work when there are sick. Parents with sick children must make that decision for them. They are also entrusted with that child’s future health and welfare. And I think they need to weigh that responsibility carefully in deciding to send a sick child to school or daycare.

To be continued, with a discussion of the role of socioeconomic status (at birth) and income inequality in determining adult health status and life expectancy.

***

The Most Revolutionary Act on radio

Gorilla Radio – Chris Cook, Victoria British Columbia

(click on link)

Chris and I discuss how I was first targeted, following my decision to support the occupation (of an abandoned school)  that led to the formation of Seattle’s first African American Heritage Museum – as an alternative to the crack cocaine epidemic among the city’s African American teenagers. We also talk about my research into HIV AIDS, my hospitalization and the Veterans Administration psychologist I worked with who also helped GIs illegally stationed in Cambodia in the sixties and seventies (and terrorized into keeping quiet about it).

XZone Interview with Rob McConnell

(click on link  – show is syndicated – fast forward the music to hear interview)

Rob and I discuss the phone harassment, break-ins, attempts to run me down – and my psychiatric hospitalization. We also talk about the political activities that seemed to lead the government to target me – including my research into HIV AIDS – and my inability to get help from the Seattle police. Then we cover the whole area of conspiracies in general, which are more accurately called State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADS)