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Tag(s): Corporations; Globalization CAFTA; Globalization NAFTA; Globalization-WTO-WB-etc; Lifestyle; Pollution
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November 5, 2007 at 14:37:44

Promoted to column top on 11/5/07:
Like Sacrificial Lambs Slain on the Altar of Globalization

by Barbara Peterson Page 1 of 2 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Are you ready to sacrifice your standard of living on the altar of globalization? That is what is happening at an alarming rate. We the people are being asked to squeeze our belts until it hurts so that the global elite can continue their lavish lifestyle all at our expense. Woodstoves are being regulated out of existence, older cars are on the chopping block, and we are instructed to use mass transit or ride a bike. Wouldn’t you like to see Dick Cheney or Condi Rice riding a bike to the White House? I would. The likelihood of that happening? Don’t hold your breath.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am for doing as much as we can to eliminate pollution and help stop global warming, but pinching the little guy for all he’s worth is not the solution. Targeting the major corporations as well as governmental agencies and suicidal policies responsible for most of the crud in our environment would seem to be the solution. Soon the older cars that the poorer among us drive will be outlawed due to smog issues. Sorry, but if you cannot afford to get a new car, you will have to walk. Yet, businessmen take airplanes everyday for their corporate masters. Billionaires burn thousands of gallons of fuel daily just for fun. These same people blame the average Joe for global warming and force us into untenable positions while gluttonously consuming petrol and traveling the world to educate the masses regarding the ethical use of fossil fuel products. Their mantra of “stop using the oil so we can use it” is beating us to death. Why don’t the super-rich decide to not fly for one day. I am sure that the emission savings will be sufficient to allow thousands of regular people to go to work, get to the store for groceries, and take their parents to the hospital without putting a dent in the ozone. Is that too much to ask? Evidently so. The great unwashed do not count in the grand scheme of things except as pawns for the “greater good.” But just whom are we sacrificing for? That is the million-dollar question.

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…The real enemy, then, is humanity itself….Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one INVENTED for the purpose…(The First Global Revolution: A Report by the Council of Rome) (Aftermath News, 2007).

To the global elite, we are the enemy. Therefore, it becomes necessary to manufacture a common enemy that will take our minds off the target, and redirect our energies into fighting a strawman - a manufactured enemy that does not exist. It doesn’t matter if the enemy is real or manufactured. Do we need to cut down on pollution? Yes. Do we need to be concerned about our planet? Yes – we always have. Are we the people the primary polluters? No. Yet we are asked to fight the strawman so that big business can continue to pollute with impunity while we pay the price.

Do your part! The masses are more ready and willing to sacrifice themselves to “save the Earth” than the elites, just as planned (Aftermath News, 2007).

Logan's Run

(Photo: inmates of the dystopia prepare to voluntarily cull themselves off at the “Carousel” extermination ceremony, from the 1976 scifi film Logan’s Run)

A lawsuit, filed in New York’s federal district court using a common law public-nuisance petition, alleges that the corporations it names are "the five largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the US and are among the largest in the world.” These five - the energy firms American Electric Power, Southern Company, Xcel Energy, Cinergy and the Tennessee Valley Authority - emit approximately 10 per cent of the US’s annual carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions contribute directly to climate change, which, the suit alleges, could lead to severe environmental and health impacts, including a doubling of heat-related deaths in Los Angeles. The suit claims that the melting of the snows that feed California’s water supply could lead to water shortages that would "harm residents, hurt agriculture, disrupt other businesses, cut the source of hydroelectric power and significantly increase the damage caused by wildfires.” The suit points out that means for reducing carbon dioxide emissions are both affordable and available (Red Pepper, 2004).

This does not even take into account the amount of fuel wasted on corporate/government junkets. Here is a 22 page document posted on USA Today that outlines the 2004 corporate plane usage by federal government officials. One would think that our government officials would take heed to the global warming problem and use these planes for important official business in order to save fuel and help protect the environment. Notice that while perusing the document “fund raising” and “campaign” trips comprise the majority of these flights.

And by all means let’s let Mexican trucks roll right through our country courtesy of NAFTA.

In 2005, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) published a report on Mexican truck traffic in regards to the first phase of the trucking provision. Their findings report the following air pollution concerns:

-         an extra 50 tons of NOx and 2.5 tons of particulate matter a day will be added to California's South Coast Air Basin

-         66% of Mexican trucks are older (pre-1993) diesel models and do not have electronic fuel injection

-         25% are diesel trucks older than 1979 having extremely high emissions of NOx and particulate matter

-         unlike the US, Mexico does not require trucks to use ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel (The Airzone Blog, 2007)

Are you feeling like a sacrificial lamb yet? Can you justify squeezing the last drop of dignity from our nation’s poor as we limit their ability to own a vehicle, heat their homes with wood, and provide for their families just so the corporations as well as our corporate-owned government officials don’t have to limit their gluttonous use of fossil fuels? I cannot. I am sickened by it. The system is broken. We are like sacrificial lambs slain on the altar of globalization.

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Barbara H. Peterson is retired from the California Department of Corrections, where she worked as a Correctional Officer at Folsom Prison. She was one of the first females to work at the facility in this classification. After retirement, she went to college online to obtain a Bachelor's degree in Business, and graduated with honors. The most valuable thing she received from her time with UOP was a realization that her life's passion is writing. Now her business degree sits in her desk drawer, and she counts herself in the category of Writer/Activist. Someday she will make money writing, but that is not why she does it. "I do it because I must. A driving force compels me to reach out to others with what I learn about the condition we the people are in, and that is what I devote my time to. After all, time is the most precious thing we have, and the older I get the more I want to use it wisely." Barbara lives on a small ranch in Oregon with her husband, where they raise geese, chickens, Navajo Churro sheep, Oggie Dog, a variety of cats, and an opinionated Macaw named Rita. She believes that self-sufficiency and localization of food sources will be necessary to survive the coming depression. To this end, she has put up a website to share information at: http://survivingthemiddleclasscrash.wordpress.com. Her philosophy is this: You are on this earth for a reason - to fight for the light. Your words are swords that penetrate the darkness with truth and light. You have a purpose.

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6 comments

Undergraduate degree in political science and philosophy: summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa; with postgraduate work in political economics. Postgraduate degree is a juris doctorate. I am a voracious reader and, although I make no claim to expertise, have self studied in logic, linguistics, theology, theoretical physics, macroeconomics, technical and fundamental market analysis, world history, and many other subjects, which I believed at the time helped explain the world around me.

...

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W.M.L.Undergraduate degree in political science and philosophy: summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa; with postgraduate work in political economics. Postgraduate degree is a juris doctorate. I am a voracious reader and, although I make no claim to expertise, have self studied in logic, linguistics, theology, theoretical physics, macroeconomics, technical and fundamental market analysis, world history, and many other subjects, which I believed at the time helped explain the world around me.

...

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KIND OF A NEW TAKE

on globalization, pollution, and global warming, that forecasts some new details about how the owning class will exploit the rest of us in the near future. Apparently, our industrial base, agriculture, infrastructure, monetary system, and constitutional republic, are insufficient spoils for the Carlyle Group and their internationalist cronies. Now we must also bear the weight of their disrespect for our planet: while they eat cake. Nice article.

by W.M.L. (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 387 comments) on Monday, November 5, 2007 at 5:51:34 PM

Stanimal is ???

I hear cries for freedom elsewhere, while the US becomes less so. I hear support for free markets, then demanding a bailout due to incompetence.
I roll my eyes at those that accuse others being oppressed while the US has and still continues to the same and much worse. Laughing at pinheads who purchase and profit from those they curse.

Every time I return to visit I see a country I no longer recognize. A shredded Constitution, a spineless Congress ...

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StanimalStanimal is ???

I hear cries for freedom elsewhere, while the US becomes less so. I hear support for free markets, then demanding a bailout due to incompetence.
I roll my eyes at those that accuse others being oppressed while the US has and still continues to the same and much worse. Laughing at pinheads who purchase and profit from those they curse.

Every time I return to visit I see a country I no longer recognize. A shredded Constitution, a spineless Congress ...

to see more of bio, click on member name

The New world Order

Soon coming your way!

Developing countries are opening two coal fired electrical power plants a week, and over the next 20 years, over 100 nuclear power plants will also be built.

Another billion mouths to feed added to the population by 2050, on depleting agrable lands. Continued deforestation of the rapidly declining forests of the world will force extinction on many plant and animal species that help nurture the web of life. The depleation and contamination of fresh water aquifirs and estuary's along with the world's collapse of its fishing industry due to over-exploitation will deny humanity of another valuable food source.

The limited world supply of oil has been squandered by a comparative few for such a sort time-frame of humanity's need for a energy resource. This will be one of humans worst legecy's for the "New World Order" to inheirit. And there is no present alternative fuel source available to continue the current course of the world's economies. Yet, blindly following are the masses in buying the latest gismo, which drives the profit engine of the capitalists world and the thirst for more energy to power them.

Add to the chaotic mix of the industrial weapons complex the world feeds upon and the death and destruction it brings. Used to be that gernades and land mines were the lingering threat, but a new weapon of depleated urainium brings the battlefield to downwind innocent suspects half a world away, with a half life of 250,000 years. So, increasingly the world will become poisoned by this remnant ordinance.

There have been past mass extinctions, but this next one will be the first self induced by a host creature of the planet.

P.S. If you want to go to Israel, you better do it before: the price of fuel makes it cost prohibitive, or the infada makes it unpredictable to visit. I was there 7 years ago, and what I observed was a country practicing apartheid.

by Stanimal (0 articles, 4 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 668 comments) on Monday, November 5, 2007 at 11:11:24 PM

I live in the heart of America, and am haunted by the saying:
"Evil succeeds because good men do nothing." by Edmund Burke.

Albert Einstein had another way of saying it:
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

So I do what I can.
Edward Ulysses CateI live in the heart of America, and am haunted by the saying:
"Evil succeeds because good men do nothing." by Edmund Burke.

Albert Einstein had another way of saying it:
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

So I do what I can.

Like Sacrificial Lambs . . .

couldn't be a more accurate title, simply because most are living it. Through controlled religion, controlled education and controlled government, people's basic self-defense of their mind, body and soul have been short-circuited. That's why we keep getting sheared, and why we now being led to the slaughterhouse, with almost no protest. Not the people who are reading this, because they're already awake. But being one of a large herd makes it difficult to wake up the others. So those awake get herded right along with the others. That's why we're so frustrated. However, we will keep trying.

Barbara, thanks for trying.

by Edward Ulysses Cate (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 221 comments) on Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 6:48:23 AM

Midwesterner, veteran of VietNam era naval service, I still feel an obligation to defend the Constitution against "all enemies, foreign and domestic."
John Sanchez Jr.Midwesterner, veteran of VietNam era naval service, I still feel an obligation to defend the Constitution against "all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Of course

As long as we have a government that is owned by commercial and corporate interests we will have government acting for commercial and corporate interests.

Regarding energy, for a century and a half, oil has been available for a price that was little more than the value of the dirt that it was extracted from. Now, that it is becoming a dearer commodity due to peak production and increased demand, those holdings command a lucrative premium. A little bit of political pot stirring can drive the price higher still. It is no wonder that the oil conglomerates who own such a large share of the government would stay that government from research into developing alternative fuels to compete with their golden goose.

Of course, without alternatives to turn to when the oil runs out, or becomes prohibitavely expensive to use, this planet will only be able to support one half, or less of its current population. Who wants to be the first on the lemming express? Will it be those who profited most from the energy scams? Or will they simply kill off the customers who can no longer afford their product?

That's right, the first ones on the lemming express will be those without a ticket.

by John Sanchez Jr. (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 1266 comments) on Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 9:06:13 AM

Graduated Class of 1965, Hueneme High in Southern California, when I feel there was a large split in society between those for the status quo and those for a better world. I also have 5 plus years of university units with no degree. Activism and politics entered my life just before Bush I. I am a single mother (never married) of 2 adult daughters (ages 38 and 31) one a brittle diabetic since age 4 requiring a life altering amount of hospitalizations for 12 years. I presently live in the Lagun...

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ljsGraduated Class of 1965, Hueneme High in Southern California, when I feel there was a large split in society between those for the status quo and those for a better world. I also have 5 plus years of university units with no degree. Activism and politics entered my life just before Bush I. I am a single mother (never married) of 2 adult daughters (ages 38 and 31) one a brittle diabetic since age 4 requiring a life altering amount of hospitalizations for 12 years. I presently live in the Lagun...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Ignorance

Here's what sticks in my craw about the one percenters/military-inductrial-corporate greed. The money being spend on fighting over oil rights for private owners, had it been spent on restructuring our economy to run on wind/solar power would have made us near independent of at least foreign oil. What gets talked about is how many people could go to college for free with that war money. Right now, today, had that Gulf War money alone been spent on restructuring our economy, the rug could have been pulled right out from under these oil pirates and we would be a safer country from terrorism. If the US get its military out of other people's countries and quit messing with their assets and governments, we would not be incurring the wrath of the "terrorists." One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Right now, that Iraq oil is just being sat on (capped wells) and is not some grand plan for oil for the US like war supporters would like us to believe. It is a really just a plan for personal greed of the oil pirates and the military-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex makes a fortune bombing other countries into toxic waste landscapes (and murdering all those civilians) while the oil pirates are demanding Iraq (and other oil countries) to take a tiny fraction of their oil to rebuild their own country. The oil pirates have destroyed the oil countries like Iraq and Afganistan with the use of our US treasure and demand they sign over the rest of their oil to private oil pirates. Then those oil pirates are dripping it out to the US at highly inflatted prices and putting their profits away for themselves and nothing for the people of the US who provided the money for their piracy. Sick. And our elected Congress lets it happen because they line their own pockets and entrench themselves in our government stating they must in order for we the people to have "good" representation. Congressmen who votes for this sickness must be voted out if we ever get a free and fair election again.

The poor are already without cars and eating beans and making their own bread and clothes or buying thrift store stuff. The ones this article is really talking about are what is left of the bottom half to the middle class who are now becoming the poor without a clue how to survive for the most part. The upper third of the middle class just seem to be getting richer and less connected to how people with less than themselves are really living.

Have you heard those TV talking heads talking seriously about how to have your party catered. Arrgh. Disconnect. Show the people how to live from scratch. But the elitists just do not care. Push the poor out of downtown so you don't have to see them. Don't count the unemployed when they are no longer eligible for Unemployment and they just disappear. ERs act like the poors health issues are all in their head and they are just abusing the system, but if you have insurance boy that really is a health problem you have come in with and you don't get the verbal abuse. It goes on and on - class warfare.

by ljs (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments) on Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 9:12:49 AM

Barbara H. Peterson is retired from the California Department of Corrections, where she worked as a Correctional Officer at Folsom Prison. She was one of the first females to work at the facility in this classification. After retirement, she went to college online to obtain a Bachelor's degree in Business, and graduated with honors.

The most valuable thing she received from her time with UOP was a realization that her life's passion is writing. Now her business degree sits in her d...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Barbara PetersonBarbara H. Peterson is retired from the California Department of Corrections, where she worked as a Correctional Officer at Folsom Prison. She was one of the first females to work at the facility in this classification. After retirement, she went to college online to obtain a Bachelor's degree in Business, and graduated with honors.

The most valuable thing she received from her time with UOP was a realization that her life's passion is writing. Now her business degree sits in her d...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Trickle-down effect

You wrote:

The poor are already without cars and eating beans and making their own bread and clothes or buying thrift store stuff. The ones this article is really talking about are what is left of the bottom half to the middle class who are now becoming the poor without a clue how to survive for the most part. The upper third of the middle class just seem to be getting richer and less connected to how people with less than themselves are really living.

Exactly! The middle class is getting poorer and lacks the skills to survive in poverty. Being poor and surviving takes skill. If you don't think so, try living on $100 or less per month for food, without health insurance, with an older car that takes $15 per day to go to town and back, and still make a house payment, insurance, electricity, and telephone on an income of less than $950 per month. That is what my mother got when she retired after 20 years of service.

I live in an area where there are "haves" and "have-nots." There are several people who have very large ranches, nice homes, and plenty of money to buy new cars and most anything else they want. The majority of people who live in this area are poor. They have learned to survive on very little - using ingenuity, a social network, and wits. These are the ones who are waking up and are the best bet for survival.

by Barbara Peterson (46 articles, 80 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 416 comments) on Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 10:04:02 AM