How Personal Development Can Change Our World

Over the last sixteen years, I have offered my personal development clients a whole range of what I call 'mental exercises' - quick meditations that help them focus their minds and keep them clear. Remember that a clear and focused mind opens the floodgates to happiness and success. But how they then practice what they've learned varies wildly. One of them recounted how he locked himself in the toilet at home to do his meditation. He couldn't bring himself to reveal his secret to his wife - God knows what the poor woman thought he was doing! OK, I realize that personal development is actually a personal thing - but I don't understand why someone would wanting to keep the fact that they are trying to better themselves a secret! Indeed, in bettering yourself, you might be even improve the lives of those you claim to love.

Perhaps it's time for personal development to become inter-personal, for like-minded people to actually stand up and be counted for who they want to become - leaders in their own personal lives and a real and positive influence in the lives of all those that they claim to love. Our world needs this positive action because, as things stand, we are faced with an historic dis-empowerment of ordinary people who are simply trying to make the most that they can of their ordinary lives. I've just glanced through the latest news on Europe-wide protests against the austerity measures being introduced by European governments to ensure that the markets' faith is restored in sovereign debt and the euro. But 'the markets' are run by the financiers who created the burden on sovereign debt in the first place.

For example, Ireland's sovereign debt market standing is tarnished to say the least - the market demands that it pays practically three times the interest rate on its debt that Germany is paying. Ireland's sovereign debt is burdened by the State's rescue of Anglo-Irish Bank - a financial institutions, according to Brian Lenihan, Ireland's Minister for Finance, that has no intrinsic worth as a bank but is 'systemically important' as a result of its size. In exactly the same way that the world's financial power-brokers huddled up with the political masters, so Ireland's financial elite were given unprecedented free rein to create a beast of such magnitude that it has ruined Ireland's financial standing internationally, rocked the European Union and dented the value of the euro on international markets. The Anglo-Irish Bank story is one with international ramifications - however it's but one of many similar stories. Royal Bank of Scotland, Lehman Brothers and a whole plethora of US banks. And those banks that are still standing, often as a result of the taxpayer bailing them out, are not lending to re-ignite the economy and are, in the words of on consumer watchdog, 'fleecing' the ordinary bank customer with extortionate interest rates and charges.

Now, a quick question. Which has had a greater day-to-day affect on the ordinary lives or ordinary people, 9/11 or the economic crisis? With 23m people unemployed in Europe, with double-digit unemployment in the US, Osama Bin-Laden need not have bothered. The real terrorists are wearing Hugo Boss suits and these guys are still manipulating the levers of power. And just like all terrorists, these guys are fundamentalists - consumed by a dearly held love. But it's not love of God that's the driving force here but a deep and abiding love of large sums of money - your money, my money.

Now, you may well ask, what has all this got to do with self improvement or personal development? Well, it was Gandhi who said that if you want to change anything that you have to be the change. And it was that same little man, who spun the material for his own clothes, who pulled the rug out from under a super-power that once ruled one third of the world. Wasn't it Martin Luther King who had his dream, perhaps fulfilled in Obama's ascent to power - a victory that resulted from large number of ordinary people, and their individual donations, who really believed "Yes We Can". It remains to be seen if Obama's election actually represents real change - but that's because it took place in the context of a political system that doesn't care about all those grassroots people. And, looking beyond the US, who would have believed that, during the Soviet era, a shipyard worker from Gdansk could set in motion the domino effect that spelt the demise of such a mighty and powerful bloc? A quarter of a century ago who would have ever even considered that South Africa might be ruled by the majority of its people?

The ordinary person in the US and across Europe is, just like the client that I mentioned earlier, hiding behind their toilet door, frightened to stand up and be counted as people who really and truly matter. Personal development and self help books make up a constantly growing major sector of the book market - yet all their readers are closet converts. Sure, you can change your own life for the better - you can be out of work but full of the joys of life, you can find your pay-packet savaged or be up to your neck in debt, but still be happier. But, as I say to my clients, if you don't have concrete results to show for your personal development (and that is not a pun on the concrete mixer that was driven through the front gates of Ireland's parliament!), you're fooling yourself. And, at present, it strikes me that there are just too many fools around.

Current Economic Depression Requires a Thoughtful Debt-Default by Next Election

The current high debt can only be resolved through mass restructuring to create base for post-default recovery, aggressive drive to court foreign investment, and properly timed default itself. It is highly unlikely that American power elites will be able to successfully restructure while preserving large parts of both the political and economic architecture. That is due to 2009 economic foundations being drastically different than in 1870s, 1930s, or 1950s.

United States debt, as % of GDP, has been within 15 to 30 percent range from 1917 to 1930. The last time debt got that high was Civil War militarization and the following long recession of 1870s. Before that, there was the high debt of political restructuring from colony organization into nationhood in the 1780s-1790s period. The long recession of 1870s and the long depression of 1930s, were both used by American elites to restructure minimal state capitalism into a more productive expansionary force. American power elites had access to cutting edge industry and used every crisis to expand it and outproduce their European neighbors. Economic reversals in 1870s served to weed out the less efficient oligarchs and consolidate wealth in the hands of those that remained. Contraction in the 1930s resulted in a managed bankruptcy and then rapid filling of idled industrial capacity through mass military exports and production.

The chance to preserve a minimal state capitalism model in roughly the same form as it existed for a hundred years before 1930s, was lost as soon as US engaged in a second large scale aggression on the European continent. American leadership's focus shifted from improving structural fundamentals ( and continuing to build minimal state capitalism in one country) to mass wartime economy. Repayment of debt became impossible due to the demands of producing goods (tanks, planes, bombs, artillery shells) that are used up without anything given in return. Once war began, the historically crushing debt ( that began with the banker supported war in 1917 and continued into the 1930s), could no longer be repaid through isolationism and exports to either the German or Soviet victors of European unification. Sustenance of minimal state capitalism now involved forceful expansion and passing down of the debt based pyramid scheme to other peoples of the world.

At the time of the disastrous US involvement in another European conflict, there were two mid level state capitalist powers that were on the road that US would undertake from WW2 to the present. They were the forcefully expansionary and indebted economies of Japan and Germany. Both wanted to secure sufficient amount of natural resources and room that England, France, Russia, and America already had. This would allow them to become co-equals on the world stage in terms of pushing their economies, currencies, and exports on others. Japanese leadership knew that the energies of both United States and Soviet Union were heavily focused inwards on building and preserving their own systems. Just like Americans a world away, Soviets were trying to create domestic demand for its industries while consolidating a hybrid of maximum state capitalism with a decentralized socialist base.

Japanese strategists calculated that Soviet Union would not be distracted into a destructive cycle of trying to forcefully impose its still developing system on all of Japan. Thus, they probed into Soviet border colonies around Manchuria in 1939 but were repelled with heavy losses. The mere fact that Soviets signed a gentleman's peace treaty after repulsing a Japanese attack, led Tokyo to conclude that indebted isolationist Americans would be equally negotiable and prudent in a colonial skirmish. The rest is history as United States completely overreacted to border pressure on Philippines and Hawaii after only losing a couple thousand men. Thus began a change from Washington's focus on building domestic capitalism to Trotskyist efforts to violently spread it abroad abroad.

The vacuum of imploding Western empires allowed the dollar to become a reserve currency and the cold war provided a perfect excuse to export arms and further dollars around the world. The exports, from American militarism propped industrial base, allowed the national debt to actually get reduced by more than half by 1960s. Relentless Soviet pressure and China falling to Mao, prevented Americans from being as reckless with their debt as they have become in the 1990s. In 1960s, US leadership actually began large scale provisions for social safety nets and moves towards mid level state capitalism as practiced in France and Western Germany. Many political theorists actually spoke of future convergence between evolution of US and Soviet systems. JFK/Lyndon Johnson's Christian democratic efforts towards reduction of socio-economic inequality and increased role for the state complemented Nikita Khrushchev's liberalization efforts of restructuring and partial decentralizing. Both efforts got derailed by geopolitical needs of empire and ideological reactionaries.

One society broke first and the other rapidly overextended and actually allowed Trotskyist minimal state capitalist proponents to come to power (Cheney, Wolfowitz). The American debt as % of GDP is as great in 2009 as it was during the mass industrial production of WW2. This time around, US does not have the industrial capacity (proportional to the size of its economy) necessary to even attempt managed bankruptcy like in the 1930s. Neither does US have the natural resources the way it did in 1950s and 1960s. It also does not have a cold war equivalent to continue to distract the world and push the dollar pyramid scheme on smaller nations. The recent attempts to find a motivational ideological replacement for the cold war (with combination of criminal investigation into religiously motivated organized crime and huffing and puffing over Putin's FDR style policies), is not just a pathetic joke, but a worrying development studied in European capitals.

Volatility of the Dow Jones industrial average between 1925 to 1929 was 22% and was 21% between 2005 to may of 2009. Volatility in 2008 alone has been 38% compared to 22% in 1928. The housing bubble has reached its peak in 2005 just as it similarly reached its peak in 1925. Due to the regionally uneven speculation on housing, the inflation as well as deflation of the bubble was uneven and less observed. 2005 seems to have been the furthest extent in influence of the paper tiger superpower that is United States. 2005 was the eye of the storm in terms of stock volatility nested between the events of dot com collapse/911 and the crash of 2008.

An economic depression does not happen overnight as desperate government efforts create repeated sucker's rallies. The high volatility (44%) in the first few years of The Great Depression made sure that the last drops of capital have been purged from the hopeful speculators before true bottom was hit. It's not difficult to compare the substantive drop over the last 6 months and extrapolate a similar race to the bottom as occurred from 1929 to 1933.

The ease of technological transfer of money and increased access to the stock market by the the masses, allows greater pain to continue on longer as foreigners get in on the act of shorting and buying American assets. The globalization following Soviet collapse allows the current economic depression more potential for widespread economic damage than depression of the 1930s. Even China is not completely immune although much better protected than more globalized neighbors.

American leadership is reverting into the mode of trying to salvage parts of US economic and political system through top down restructuring. Unlike with Gorbachev, most of the world's elites want US to succeed and not become a failed state. There are no rapidly adaptable alternatives other than to have an international cooperative effort by minimal state capitalist countries to work together to make sure US restructuring and bankruptcy is gradual, peaceful, and manageable. US has already been stagnating like Soviet Union for over a decade with real wages not rising for large swaths of the population. Infrastructure is poorly maintained and remains 10-20 years behind more pragmatic hybrid nations. The intelligent and politically connected have already taken advantage of the decades long rot in the form of the finance industry (up to 40% GDP economic growth relying on financial non-producing sector). Cracking down on the money manipulators will be just as futile as Soviet attempts to stamp out the black market. Money manipulation is structurally hard wired into the capitalist system.

Obama is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to options and has very little room to maneuver. The default on debt is coming one way or the other but taking the proper road there can position American economy for long struggle for post-bankruptcy recovery. Obama must restructure the economy from the top down but not rapidly enough to cause a destabilizing reactionary backlash from federal, regional, and military elites. If he restructures too slowly, the stagnation worsens and gradual inflation risks becoming accelerated and then exponential. Obama must strike a balance when using a doomed currency to have the state take control of strategic industrial sectors. Default must occur before 2012 for reasons of social stability. The near future impoverishment of top 20% of educated people, who call themselves middle class, risks election of a leader more willing to dismantle the bonds of federal government rather than make American economy a more hybrid model. The mere fact that American population can be very divided over whether to support their democratic or economic way of life underlines the gentleness with which Obama must approach every step.

The population of the last major ideological power has completely internalized decades of propaganda as well as successfully had millions of foreigners internalize it as well. Even to socially conceptualize alternatives and pragmatic non-ideological approaches provokes instinctive distrust, misunderstanding, and reactionism. American people have been lied to and manipulated by their own politicians for so long that they cannot even imagine politicians abroad or at home who speak pragmatically and analytically. The idea of "American way of life" must not become one that borders on the religious since that risks the use of federal government for internationally dangerous purposes. The greatest burden since Gorbachev rests on Obama today. Hopefully international leaders realize that sheer extent of the domino effect that can occur with a rapid collapse of US economy. The Asian financial crisis in 1998 shows that even medium sized countries need to be helped to prevent a detrimental chain reaction. Leading industrial countries need to take some pressure off Obama for the security of the world.

Graveyard Detroit

Detroit, Michigan is an historic American city. From its humble roots as a French trading post in the early Eighteenth Century, it grew to become one of the largest cities in the United States. It was nearly burned to the ground by fire in 1805, and was scorched by the flames of race riots in 1863, 1943 and 1967. During the Twentieth Century, its fate has waxed and waned with the rise and fall of the American auto industry. However, despite its travails, the city has displayed resiliency and had witnessed a comeback of sorts in recent years with the renewal of its downtown and riverfront areas, at least before the great financial meltdown of 2008.

A graveyard is a place where physically dead bodies are interred. This is its literal meaning. However, the word graveyard also has a figurative meaning. It is a place where worn-out or obsolete equipment or objects are kept. Its meaning can be stretched to include a depository of worn-out ideas. In this latter sense, recent events have conspired to render Detroit a graveyard. The city serves to remind us of many worn out, expired and discredited ideas.

Among them are: the idea that for African Americans the North represented an improvement over the conditions that prevailed in the South; the idea that major American corporations are the engines of economic growth and prosperity for the masses of working people; the idea that an inherent radical "Islamic" threat challenges the hegemony of a militarized American state; and the idea that extremist "Islamist" violence can possibly secure any good for Muslim people and their causes.

The Myth of the "Promised Land"

Many African Americans viewed the North as a mythical "promised land." The racist terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, the White League and similar groups, which was almost omnipresent in the South, was absent from the large cities of the North. Furthermore, factory work promised relatively high paying jobs, free from the vagaries of the oppressive farms of the South where work, in many instances amounted to legalized slavery. For many black folks, Detroit epitomized the promise of the North. They found plentiful work in the burgeoning factories springing up around the city's auto industry. As a result, through the middle decades of the Twentieth Century, an expanding black middle class would gradually leave an extensive imprint on the social, cultural and political life of the city.

Detroit's black middle class would contribute intellectual giants such as Reverend C.L. Franklin to America's civil rights struggle. Individuals such as the boxer Joe Louis, Franklin's daughter, Aretha, and the many recording artists of Berry Gordy's Motown Records became American cultural icons. The prosperity of Detroit's black middle class, in the 1940s and 1950s, was symbolized by "Paradise Valley" and its scores of black owned establishments such as the elegant Gotham Hotel.

However, the overwhelming majority of black folks migrating to Detroit did not find heaven in the North. They found hell. They were housed in dirty, dilapidated slums as racially segregated as any southern neighborhood. Fluctuating economic cycles and the gradual exodus of manufacturing jobs led to high unemployment rates that would exacerbate tensions between the new arrivals and more established white workers. Tens of thousands would never find meaningful employment, or decent housing.

The harsh economic realities of life in the North were exacerbated by harsh social realities. Crammed into rundown ghettos, cut off from the safety net of their extended southern families, denied access to higher education that was available in the historical black colleges and universities that had been established in the South, -Howard, Morehouse, Fisk, Tuskegee, etc. -many sought refuge in readily available drugs such as heroin or cocaine, and alcohol.

The highways built in the 1950s -the construction of one, Interstate 75, led to the bulldozing of Paradise Valley- facilitated the massive white flight of the 1950s and 1960s from Detroit to now accessible distant suburbs. Another flight, that of the black middle class from the inner-city areas to the abandoned white neighborhoods, rendered Detroit's inner-city neighborhoods poorer and more dysfunctional.

These developments, culminating in the destructive riots of 1967 (over 2,500 structures were destroyed), rendered Detroit the symbolic graveyard of the "Promised Land" idea that had attracted so many black folks to the North. Its tombstones are the blocks of burned out and ravaged buildings and homes. Many of these areas have been abandoned and they give those parts of inner-city Detroit the look and feel of Berlin or Tokyo after the firebombing of those cities.

The obituary of that dream was twice written, both times in Detroit, in July 1984 and a decade later in August 1994. First, by the death of Reverend C.L. Franklin, who had fallen into a coma after being shot during a robbery of his home five years earlier. Second, when Rosa Parks, whose heroic defiance had ignited the even more heroic African American civil rights struggle, was robbed and beaten in her Detroit home. The dream they represented was no longer deferred. In Detroit, it was dead.

As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation

The Detroit auto industry represented a different type of dream for another set of people: the white middle class. Karl Marx, posited that capitalism, and the bourgeoisie it disproportionately benefitted, would collapse in the face of a massive worker or proletariat revolution brought on by the systematic expansion and impoverishment of the laboring class, and the equally systematic shrinking and enrichment of the owning class.

The emergence of the Detroit auto industry in the early years of the Twentieth Century, catapulted by management and production techniques introduced by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford, would lead to levels of proficiency and scales of production that facilitated the popularization of easily affordable automobiles and unimagined profits. During the middle decades of the Twentieth Century, increasingly large shares of those profits would find their way into the pockets of laborers, owing in large part to the unionizing efforts of the AFL-CIO (AFL -American Federation of Labor; CIO -Congress of Industrial Organizations) and its sometimes estranged sister, the UAW (United Auto Workers).

The unionized auto industry, largely serving a white constituency, would never know the kind of revolutionary upheavals Marx and others had predicted. The white middle class emerging in Detroit not only escaped the collective misery Marx had envisioned for workers, but the automobile and its associated mobility, lifestyle and restructuring of urban and rural space led to the creation of an entirely different and deceptively enticing way of life, suburbia.

It is not coincidental that suburbia, and the deeply fragmented, alienated and racially segregated lifestyle it encouraged would be most startlingly illustrated in the vicinity of Detroit, home of the auto industry that drove white flight nationwide. "Whitetopia," a mythical land where home ownership, having become the signal designator for attaining the American dream, where the poverty of menacing black folks, and the perceived or real criminality it breeds, was a distant reality left for others to deal with; and where consumerist passions, fueled by the salaries gifted to workers by decades of unionizing, could be freely engaged, first in the strip malls that littered the suburban landscape, and latter in huge self-enclosed mega-malls.

Unfortunately, labor's victory would prove ephemeral. The auto industry, colluding with big oil, would pay little heed to fuel efficiency. When global economic conditions led to exponential increases in fuel prices, American gas guzzlers could not compete with far more fuel efficient and increasingly better-made foreign cars, especially Japanese ones. The rising strength of the Japanese and European auto industries and the ever larger slices of both the American and global markets they were able to win from their American rivals led to declining profits, and accelerating numbers of layoffs and plant closures in the States.

During the 1980s and 1990s unions were forced to give back many of the hard-earned benefits they had garnered for workers. Those workers who still had jobs in the auto industry found themselves struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the Detroit-based automakers, seduced by the infusion of bogus wealth into the American financial system during the late 1990s and the first few years of the Twenty-First Century, in the aftermath of the liberal policies of Bill Clinton, policies epitomized by his gutting the Glass-Steagall Act, banked on the continued popularity of energy inefficient, but highly profitable sports utility vehicles (SUVs). However, in the wake of steadily rising fuel prices beginning in 2003 and the financial meltdown of 2008, both the demand for SUVs, and an already hampered American auto industry, collapsed.

That twin collapse, automotive and financial, would severely cripple the "Whitetopia" surrounding Detroit. Thousands of homes fell into foreclosure or were sold at a loss as their owners packed up and ironically headed south. Many of these properties were abandoned to the rapacious banks that encouraged their purchase through levels of manipulation and mendacity that have not been witnessed in this country since the era of the Nineteenth Century robber barons.

With the collapse of the Detroit auto industry, and the refusal of a government that had given trillions of dollars to "bail out" the banking and financial sectors to save it, the idea that big business would be the engine pushing the prosperity of the American, mostly white, middle class has died. Like the African American dream of a promised land, its graveyard is Detroit. One of its tombstones is the rusting factories in and around the city, surrounded by acres of abandoned parking lots that resemble lonely blacktopped deserts. Another is the vacated, puddle-splattered, unfinished concrete foundations and weed-filled lots of distant suburban developments started at the height of the housing bubble in 2005-2006, now given up for dead.

The Menace of "Islamic" Terrorism

Detroit is also the graveyard of the idea of the menacing Islamic enemy. That there is the threat of a minuscule percentage of alienated, suicidal or just plain angry Muslims engaging in acts of mindless violence that threaten the lives of an even more miniscule percentage of Americans is undeniable. However, the idea that there is a strategically significant Islamic threat possessing any significant resources that can be translated into the kind of power needed to challenge a militarized America or its global financial empire is a baseless fiction.

The killing of Imam Luqman Abdullah, a Muslim activist in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Detroit exposes that fiction. Imam Luqman was allegedly the leader of a group of radical, separatist-minded Muslims whose potential danger warranted the infiltration and surveillance of their mosque, entrapping them in an elaborate scheme involving stolen property and finally the staged ambush and brutal slaughter of the Imam.

The entire operation exposes the fictitious and empty nature of the Islamic threat. While it is true that Imam Luqman was known to engage in fierce anti-American rhetoric, what actual capabilities did he and his followers possess? Their mosque, in one of the poorest sections of Detroit, is in serious disrepair and threatened with foreclosure. The state of the mosque alone demands that one asks, "How could a group so poor that it could barely afford to operate a small mosque in one of the poorest neighborhoods in America overthrow the United States government or establish a separate state anywhere on American soil?" The answer is obvious except to those whose minds are so poisoned by their narrow, self-serving agenda that they cannot see reality for what it is.

Hence, when Imam Luqman was gunned down by a hail of bullets unleashed by the agents arrayed against him, the real nature of the threat he represents was exposed. Even if he did possess a single firearm, as it is alleged, what threat did he represent in the face of the fully automatic high caliber arsenal in the hands of the bulletproof vested, numerically superior forces arrayed against him? Little or none! Extrapolate from that situation to the global confrontation between America and "radical" Islam and you will understand the true nature of the "Islamic" threat.

With the brutal murder of Imam Luqman, Detroit is once again a symbolic graveyard. In it is buried the idea of the existential Islamic threat. Its tombstones are the tiny mosque Imam Luqman once headed and the cold warehouse in nearby Dearborn where he was gunned down, handcuffed, and then left to die with less dignity than the shot government dog that was evacuated by helicopter from the scene.

The Glorious "Jihad"

Finally, Detroit is a graveyard for the idea that "Islamic" terrorism can secure any benefit for the Muslim people. That idea fizzled as surely as the bomb allegedly hidden in Farouk Abdul Mutallab's underwear fizzled over the skies of Detroit -an unexploded, unspectacular, yet unmitigated disaster.

In the aftermath of that event we are left to ask, "What benefit would have accrued to Muslims had that bomb exploded, murdering three hundred unsuspecting, innocent passengers in American airspace on Christmas Day?" None whatsoever! Instead, an exponentially larger number of impoverished, innocent Muslims than those already experiencing American-style justice would have bombs and rockets raining down on their towns, hamlets and villages. An exponentially larger number of innocent Muslims than those already herded into dungeons scattered around the world would be hauled off to be tortured, brutalized and humiliated.

Ordinary Muslims, with no connection to the troubled stranger who operated so ruthlessly in their name with neither their permission nor their counsel would have been left to bear the consequences of his act of unenlightened self-negation. The noble actions of those people resisting the occupation of their lands, the usurpation of their resources, and rankled by the murders and humiliation of their countrymen and women would be callously dismissed as wanton "terrorism." Furthermore, the patience of even sympathetic Americans, rendered insensitive by the coldblooded action of a clearly disturbed individual, would have been seriously challenged.

There are deeper questions one can ask concerning the nature, targeting, timing and efficacy of the violence of the so-called "Jihad" movement, but we will leave those for another time. For now we will just state that the idea of any benefit accruing to Islam as a result of "Islamic" terror died December 25, 2009 aboard Detroit-bound Northwest Flight 253. Its tombstone is in the Detroit-area dungeon Farouk Abdul Mutallab has been thrown into.

Conclusion

So what is the connection between these disparate ideas buried in Graveyard Detroit? African Americans, most of whom are still waiting for the deposit of the funds to cover the bad check Dr. King referred to in one of his speeches, the white middle class whose homes, retirement and pension funds, jobs and sense of security have been stolen by the latter-day robber barons, and Muslims along with others whose lives and lands have been or will soon be laid waste by the American war machine? They must all be made to see that they are being brutalized by the same globalized corporate forces. That being the case, they must find ways to unite if their resistance to those forces is to have any efficacy.

For example, African Americans cannot see Latinos who are "stealing all of the jobs" as the enemy. They must understand that the system that forces campesinos from their land through unjust and inequitable agricultural policies and sends them flowing desperately northward is the same system that structurally marginalizes and criminalizes young African American men and then profits off their incarceration.

Disenfranchised white folks must understand that Islam is neither their enemy nor a threat to their existence any more than the Vietnamese in the 1960s, Latin Americans leftist organizations in the 1980s or tomorrow's bogeyman, whoever it may be. All of our "enemies du jour" are just desperate people trying to the best of their understanding and ability to preserve their land, culture, and resources against the rapacious appetite of a global empire. The white middle class must understand that it is not the Muslims who have closed down their factories, eliminated their jobs, stolen their retirement funds, devalued their homes, and burdened their children with a mountain of debt by bailing out the banks, insurance underwriters and finance houses.

Furthermore, the white middle class has to stop playing the silly game of political musical chairs, blaming the incumbent party, be it the democrats or the republicans, for the ravages of a morbid system. The problem is not the democrats or the republicans when both parties have sold out to the corporate interests whose army of lobbyists floods Capital Hill shelling out money to the quislings of both parties who in turn sell out the voters they pretend so hypocritically to serve. The problem is a system that facilitates such a pernicious farce.

The mounting frustrations of the white middle class against the failures and excesses of the political system will not be solved by tea party protests or scapegoating hapless groups such as Muslims or Latino immigrants. Only united and focused nonviolent political action that works to undo the oppressive structures that advance what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to as the evil triplets of poverty, racism, and militarism will lead to any lasting change in this country. The white middle class, or its surviving vestiges, must be an integral part of such action.

For their part, Muslims must have the wisdom, insight and sagacity to realize that the current wars being visited upon Muslims are not evidence of an American or Jewish-led crusade against the faithful, any more than the Vietnam War, the first Iraq War or the invasions of Panama or Grenada were crusades -despite the existence of some rhetoric that conveys that impression. They are all geostrategic conflagrations fueled by an outdated Machiavellian logic that ultimately transcends religion.

Muslims must also realize that in some instances poor people in America are brutalized by the police, prison guards, ICE officers and other agents of the state in ways that make many poor neighborhoods in America microcosms of occupied Muslim lands. The validity of this comparison is reinforced by the image of Blackwater mercenaries prowling the streets of New Orleans keeping the "refugees" in check in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Muslims must also understand that there are many American groups and individuals, including Jewish ones, who are working tirelessly to reverse the policies that demonize Muslims and direct bombs and missiles towards their lands. Furthermore, Muslims must see that only by forming bonds of solidarity with those oppressed groups in America and elsewhere will they gain the critical mass needed to begin addressing their grievances and alleviating their suffering.

There is no group, which alone can undo the dangerous policies and politics of a global empire that in many ways threatens the very existence of our planet. Opposing that oppressive force will require a globalized resistance that has the ability, like transnational corporations and their surrogates, to transcend national boundaries. That resistance must have the insight to engage in a deep level of analysis that looks beyond the superficial categories presented by corporate-sponsored pundits and ideologues to see the underlying causes of our collective problems, the structures that unite the disparate groups that suffer as a result of the policies that facilitate the corporate dominance of the world, and the strategies that will be needed to move forward.

If Graveyard Detroit can teach us anything, it is the degree to which our lives have become intertwined. Whites, African Americans and large numbers of Arabs, many of them Muslims -Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Syrians and others- live in and around Detroit. Globalizing economic forces have brought them together, and despite the periodic traumas and great stresses that threaten to tear them apart they have been able to form a civic community, which had begun, prior to the 2008 financial meltdown, to come together to begin to rebuild their city. If these communities are able to regroup and then cross the lines that divide them, perhaps their example will inspire a world in desperate need for a new direction, and Graveyard Detroit can become a symbol of rebirth.

The 2008 Election Results, Dysfunctional Democracy and Constitutional Crisis

On November 4, 2008 after another bruising and divisive campaign as the night wears thin it becomes clear for the second time this decade that the Presidential candidate with the most popular votes is not the winner of the Electoral College system. That next morning Americans wake in disbelief with the world asking how did this happen again.

As the weeks pass the popularly chosen candidate decides not to concede, as Democrat Al Gore did in 2000, leading to a Constitutional crisis. In this state of confusion, many Americans take to the streets in support of their favorite candidate, further dividing the nation while believing that their visible show of support could sway the Supreme Court. However, this time the Supreme Court is demanding a political resolution to the crisis.

The United States of America is now the only country in the world with an Electoral College system, which has four times prevented the candidate with the most popular votes from becoming President. The Electoral College system was created as a compromise to the slave owning states, offering greater electoral power without requiring them to extend voting rights to African-Americans. Currently voters in smaller states like Wyoming and Delaware have more than four times the voting strength for President as do Californians and New York voters. With most states either strongly Democratic or Republican, this divisive system leaves only a hand full of states, or swing states, to determine the final outcome of the election.

Now we now know the signs were all around us. In March 2007 an Associated Press poll found that 75% of Americans believed our country was moving in the wrong direction. The percent is even higher after another divisive election season with the candidates, political parties, and special interests spending over two billion dollars advocating for their candidate while criticizing their opponent. During the final weeks before the election, again the two battleground states were Florida and Ohio. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the final days to sway those few undecided voters and to suppress the turnout of their opposing voters. Once the beacon of democracy, how did the United States of America become a nation with such a dysfunctional democratic political system?

What is democracy? As President Lincoln proclaimed, "Government of, by and for the people." According to many democracy advocates there is a three step process to creating a government of, by and for the people. The first and most important step is the belief that it is possible and desirable. The second is to learn more about democracy reform efforts. The third step is doing something specific to revive democracy. Additionally, advocates include at least four reforms: Electoral College, national voting system, campaign financing and a National Democracy Day Holiday.

To create a one person one vote election, all advocates agree the path to reviving democracy in America starts by reforming or removing the undemocratic Electoral College system. To do this requires either a Constitutional Amendment or the passage of state compacts. Several states have already taken legislative action to allocate their Electoral College votes to the candidate with the most popular votes. The organization National Popular Vote at http://www.nationalpopularvote.org is leading the effort to create a one person one vote democracy in America.

To have confidence in the election results, an import democracy reform is a national and verifiable voting system. For instance, the Count Every Vote Act of 2007 (HR 1381) is national legislation that would create a nonpartisan uniform election standard. The current highly political fifty state election system with voting machine corporations donating to candidates creates a situation where our vote can not be guaranteed. For instance in 2004, the state of Ohio, the state that ultimately gave the election to George Bush, the Secretary of State was Bush's campaign co-chair and the state's electronic voting machine company donated heavily to the Bush campaign. In a democracy, elections are transparent, professional and non-partisan.

Special interests with big money spent over two billion dollars influencing the outcome of the Presidential election. Taking the special interest money out of the political system has proven to be very difficult. The 2007 Supreme Court decision gave the big corporations, wealthy individuals, and Political Action Committees even greater influence over the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election. In dissent Justice David Souter warned, "This kind of corporate and union spending seriously jeopardizes the integrity of democratic government." After the results of 2008, Americans are now willing to listen to advocates of publicly financed elections, the only way to ensure that the people own the political system and not the special interests.

Like most Tuesdays on November 4th Americans were busy working, some with two jobs and thus they found it difficult to go vote. In many democratic countries the election-day is a national holiday. The National Democracy Day Holiday Resolution (H.R.) 63, entitled Democracy Day Act, proposed by Rep. John Conyers to celebrate those who have dedicated their live to the advancement of democracy and to give all Americans the time to vote is finally getting the attention it deserves.

Will it take a Constitutional crisis for us Americans to act to revive democracy? To create a functional democracy with Constitutional integrity, lets start today by believing we have the power, lets take the time to learn more about democracy and then lets do something to revive democracy.

Sustainable Agriculture is Important to the Environment But So Are Sustainable Finance and Economies

Only the bad stuff makes news and the end of July was no exception with three different environmental reports that financial institutions, businesses and politicians should take heed of.

Yet somehow, it all seems to carry on regardless. In the aftermath of the most catastrophic economic situation since the 1930s, there is still no sign of contrition from those widely regarded to be most culpable.

They are the financial institutions that speculated wildly on continued growth when bundling dodgy property loans (given to people who had little prospect of repaying them) into obscure financial packages - called mortgage backed derivatives - that not even some bankers and economists understood.

Is this writer the only person on the planet who can see a similarity to pyramid selling?

Legislation to tighten control and regulation of banks and other financial institutions in the USA, UK and Europe, according to economic experts like Prof Raghuram Rajoram, of Chicago University, and former member of the UK's Monetary Policy Committee, Dr Sushil Wadhwani, are toothless while the emphasis is still on a recovery based on growth.

Yet it's feared that the strict austerity measures introduced in the UK, US and Europe are endangering economic recovery and while it may be necessary to cut the massive government debts that propping up the banks has caused it should be done more gradually. Some would go further.

What's needed, according to Dr Wadhwani, is a more sustainable - and differently structured - economic model. Yet, he says, policy makers and financial regulators are still using the same techniques used in previous recessions and making the same policy mistakes and has said: "there's not enough contrition being shown.... Banks haven't absorbed the appropriate lessons of the mistakes they made, in fact they're not even willing to admit that mistakes were made."

There's that word sustainable again. It's familiar in the spheres of environment, agriculture and the need to grow more food. It should be familiar in the financial and political worlds also.

But what have financial investors and Funds done? They've turned their attention to other sources of investment in the form of speculation on basic commodities like grain, artificially pushing up prices of basic foods beyond the means of the poorest on the planet.

Of course, in their small and insular world, any commodity in short supply is likely to be a good investment - buy up scarce stocks or options in future trading and the price will rise giving more profit for the investor.

There's plainly no room in the world of money for ethics.

It's instructive to put the reports mentioned earlier into this context. Firstly a report on climate change revealed 2010 has been the warmest year on record.

Then came a report that global warming might be the cause of micro-organisms dying out in the world's oceans. Phytoplankton have been diminishing at the rate of 1% per year since the mid-20th Century. They are crucial to the marine food chain and to drawing down carbon dioxide as well as producing around half the oxygen we breathe.

Finally the Financial Times, London, revealed the leaked contents of a report by the World Bank into investors from rich nations buying up African farmland. It's due in August and expected to conclude that foreign investors without the slightest agricultural expertise are threatening local resources by buying up farmland in places like Africa in order to gain on commodity prices.

Anti poverty campaigners have raised concerns about the effect of speculative land buying on the poorest local producers, whom they push out while at the same time investing little in improving agricultural techniques to meet the huge growth of food production needed to feed a growing global population.

It may be naïve but wouldn't it actually benefit investors to put their resources into those techniques - such as the new generation of low-chem agricultural products, including biopesticides, biofungicides and yield enhancers - into training small producers to use them and into infrastructures to get the produce to market to ensure a sustainable return on their investment?

Or is it all about short term gain and selfishness for a minority of already-powerful people with no real concept of living on the same, shared planet, in the same, rapidly-deteriorating environment, breathing the same globally warmed air?

It has to be more than chance that running the world on a continuous economic growth model in a largely unregulated market coincides with accelerated destruction of rain forests, soil fertility, global warming and a host of now annual extreme weather events, like the latest devastating monsoon in Pakistan.

Sustainable economic systems are plainly as important to people's survival as they are to the planet's and it's a lesson of history that financial institutions, regulators, politicians and powerful multinational businesses all need to learn - fast.

Politics in Modern Africa

Africa is a mosaic of natural wonder, cultural richness, and sundry ecological features; nonetheless, it stands out as one of the poorest and least stable continents. Because of divisive European practices, namely diving and conquering, African nations have endured seemingly endless generations of despotic kings, brutal strongman, and military juntas amid fighting small-scale battles with neighboring countries. In short, civil unrest, genocide, and war have retarded Continent-wide improvements. Numerous strategies for development have been tested; however, the fate of Africa ultimately rests on the shoulders of her leaders, whom many Africans greatly distrust or fear. Notwithstanding, the countries of Africa have immense potential.

The challenges facing Africa as it attempts to meet, or even remotely advance, depend heavily on the willingness of MDCs (More Developed Countries), international institutions, and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations).

With a strong GDP, an MDC can easily afford to placate some of Africa's most immediate woes. Moreover, directly linked to some of the largest and most prosperous financial institutions, gives them an extra edge, furthermore, obligation to lend. Funding can be an arduous task, though there are many different methods.

Loans, for example, are when an LDC borrows money on the condition that the money is used to build new infrastructure. The two biggest lenders have been the World Bank and the IMF-which together lend $50 billion a year. Money is given to poorer countries on the promise that it be used on projects that stimulate domestic and/or international trade. But these investments can come with a huge risks, especially when the recipient country is ruled by an undemocratic leader; he usually amasses the wealth for himself. There are a myriad of horror stories of African leaders using aid to build lavish palaces in adoration of themselves. Problems with lending money aren't always kleptocratic however.

In Mali, for example, a French-sponsored project to pump water from the Niger River using renewable solar energy proved nugatory despite its most well-intentioned efforts. In fact, even when it worked (albeit weak), the project, which cost no more than $1 million, produced no more water than could two diesel pumps that together cost $6000. In addition to traditional methods of lending, there are indeed less conventional ways of financing development. For example, MDCs together have created a system whereby banks give money on micro-credit to individuals living in absolute poverty; e.g., The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh gives money on micro-credit. In addition, there's structural adjustment programs, which are economic policies designed to promote trade, such as raising taxes and reducing government spending-both of which are western in practice.

In summation, there are a great many different methods of improving the daily lives of so many miserable Africans. The fate of their lives, again, depend solely on the intentions of her leaders. Robert Mugabe, the draconian ruler of Zimbabwe, is an example of a leader who's more concerned with power than the ability to help his own people. Now, whether tribal propensities are indicative of African plight, is certainly a matter of debate. If dramatic change never arrives it's not going to because of tribalism, for my part, it's because of African leaders' susceptibility to corruption.

Creative Money-Saving Ideas to Recession-Proof Your Finances

Every day we hear more depressing news about the current global economic situation. More and more people are losing their jobs and their homes, and still the experts tell us there is worse to come. However, while governments concentrate on pouring billions, and even trillions, into the economy to save us from financial meltdown, there is much that we can be doing on an individual and much smaller level to put our own finances into order.

There are many simple, practical cost-saving measures that every household can adopt which can make a dramatic difference to the domestic finances without having a real impact on a family's standard of living. Obvious measures include shopping in the sales, buying own-store products rather than branded goods, taking advantage of discounts and deals and borrowing rather than buying where at all possible. However, we can also take a more creative approach to saving money - for example, by asking for a discount where it has not been offered, or by planning ahead and buying strategically.

If you don't ask, you don't get!
In straitened times, many shop keepers would prefer a sale at a slightly lower price than no sale at all. This is a perfect time to hone your negotiation and bartering skills. Even if the price does not seem excessive, swallow your pride and ask for a discount. Always be polite, and never become confrontational or aggressive, even if the manager has to be called. Adopting a pleasant approach will make people want to help you and will increase your chances of success.

Other tactics you could use to secure that discount are:
1. The "Good cop/bad cop" routine. Tell the clerk that you will need to discuss it with your spouse because it is more money than you really wanted to pay. At this stage, the shop keeper will probably reduce the price rather than let you out of the shop without making the purchase.
2. Ask them to match the price you have seen in another store. The manager will usually readily agree to this, and may even add in a further discount as a gesture of goodwill.
3. Keep hold of all out-of-date coupons as these can sometimes be accepted up to 6 months after the have officially expired. It's worth a chance, and you have nothing to lose!
4. Try to make a deal if a straight-forward discount is rejected. For example, offer a proportion of the money up front instead of paying in monthly installments, or try to negotiate an additional warranty or free batteries (or anything!) for the product if no discount is forthcoming.

A disciplined approach to shopping
The number one rule of saving money is only to buy things that you actually need and can use. It sounds obvious, but is actually very difficult to achieve. Who can say they have never bought an item of clothing simply because it was a 'steal', only for it to remain unworn in the back of the wardrobe for ever after? Don't be a sales victim - make sure you win the shopping game. Buying things purely because they are reduced in price leads to overspending and a cluttered house. Reduce the temptation to impulse buy by setting a firm limit on your spending budget before you leave the house.

One great way to save time, money and last-minute panics, is to buy suitable presents when you see them at a good price and keep them for the appropriate occasion. Make a chart before you begin shopping and buy only what you need for each person. Not only will this help you keep track of what you have bought, but will also help you locate these carefully selected items when the appropriate occasion comes round. Keep the items in a special drawer or closet and enjoy the satisfaction of simply taking them out during the year as required.

Effect of Modern Finance on Small and Medium Enterprise - SME

There are views about the relevance of modern finance which is usually tailored or formulated with the view of large organisations in mind thereby ignoring small enterprises (McMahon et al, 1993). This neglect of financial management in SMEs is understood to be as a result of neglecting SMEs in the development of economic theory. However, the situation is changing due to globalisation. Thus there is the view that small enterprise financial management has not been developed with the small enterprise in mind. New empirical evidence raises the possibility that size may affect financial relationships in an important manner. These findings might themselves justify an expanded research emphasis on the effect of business size on financial policy. Sahlman (1983, 1990) refers to what he terms as 'primitive rules' in modern finance. In effect this attitude accounts for the inefficiency of small enterprises in financial management.

Ghanaian SMEs like other SMEs are missing out on modern finance theories. For example, CAPM is based on the following:
o The principle of risk aversion i.e. investors seeking higher returns and lower risks all things being equal.
o The principle of diversification i.e. investors do not place all their wealth into one investment portfolio, and
o The principle of risk-return trade-off i.e. the willingness to face a higher risk for a higher return. (Emery et al, 1991).

This can be related to the behaviour of the owner who is not risk-adverse .He is looking up to make a lot of profit by importing from other countries with unstable political situation.

These uses to CAPM to the SME are really unparalleled in the study. Most owner-managers in Ghana are risk-averse yet they seek higher returns from their investments.

Working capital policy is somewhat related to SMEs in terms of its operations. In relation to the reasons with which an owner-manager operates a business, there is no obligation to account for their actions. Thus the management of working capital is influenced by this style of running the small enterprise.

Working capital management thus seeks to meet two objectives-

i.to minimise the time between the initial input of materials and other materials into the operating process, and the eventual payment for goods and services by customers; and

ii.to finance those assets as efficiently as possible for an optimal return on capital employed.

Operations of SMEs in Ghana were found to relate to the working capital policy in their quest to be efficient and timely.
With all intents and purposes, debtors' control and management are difficult tasks. To effectively-manage debtors, the following issues must be carefully considered, well-planned and controlled:

Credit period- The credit period given to each customer must be considered in terms of the customer's credit rating; whether the costs of increased credit matches the profit to be made on the sales generated by the credit terms; and the general credit period being offered in the industry.

Credit standards must be set- For example customers must be taken through credit assessment ratings to weigh the risk they pose. Usually in giving credit to customers, the appropriate standard rule is to check the maximum period of credit granted; the maximum amount of credit; and the payment terms including any discounts for early payment and the interest charges on overdue accounts.

From my working experience in Ghana, one of the effective means was to take post-dated checks in addition from debtors. These must be spread across the duration to make the payment as agreed with the customer. Default, however, is inevitable in all circumstances.In spite of any shortfalls, the techniques used above can enhance a firm's ability to control working capital effectively. For most small business enterprises whose total investments are represented in greater proportion by current assets, the techniques discussed above prove to be as useful for their management as the importance of their financial management.

This is very significant here because it clearly shows that most SMEs could stay in business for a very long time to come if they could apply financial management techniques effectively.

There are many published research including those of Olsen et al. (1992); Higgins (1977 pp7); and Babcock (1970) who are strongly of the view that growth must be viewed in a strategic context of financial management. They emphasise on a concept, which has variously been referred to as sustainable or affordable or attainable growth. This sustainable growth is defined by Higgins (1977) as "the annual percentage of increases in sales that is consistent with the firm's established financial policies".

Agreeing with this definition in this context; suffice it to say that it makes sense to relate a firm's growth to its financial policies. By tailoring one's financial management policies to the annual percentage increase in sales(which might be controlled),there is the possibility of achieving the sustainable growth and the ability to finance its permanent current assets as well as the non-current assets due to the rapid expansion in growth.

One can, however, argue that the rate of growth in sales can be influenced. For an enterprise which is intended to realise its full growth potential in the long-run in spite of the problems in securing an external equity funding, the only viable growth strategy is the profitability of the firm's operating activities and the careful profit distribution policy. It could also be argued that those SMEs which "do not want to grow" can also apply the financial management techniques effectively and survive in the market.

Financial Management of small enterprises is thought to be different from that of large enterprises. In a paper entitled 'Small business uniqueness and the theory of financial management' Ang (1991), and 'On the theory of finance for privately held firms' Ang (1992), Ang considers businesses to be small if they have certain features and small business to share common circumstances, respectively. He later on concluded, "Small businesses do not share the same financial management problems with large businesses...the differences could be traced to several characteristics unique to small businesses. This uniqueness in turn creates a whole new set of financial management issues.... There are 'enough differences between large and small firms' financial management practices and theory that justify the research effort to study the latter".

Another significant difference between SME financial management and modern theories on financial management is Capital Assets Pricing Model theory (CAPM). It is a finance model which captures the relationship between return and risk; specifying how it affects the valuation of financial and physical assets.

CAPM is simple, market-based and an objective means of estimating required rates of return for investments which reflect the collective preferences of all investors in the capital market. To a small enterprise, however, there is difficulty in estimating systemic risk-the risk that the whole system will fail, for example the stock exchange- because small business enterprises are not publicly traded or the investment is in a physical asset with no well-informed market due to the fact that the parameter is more effective if the investment is publicly traded. (McMahon et al.1993). The question then arises. What has this got to do with a small business enterprise then?

In real-life situation when there is a degree of uncertainty, the financial manager(just as the owner-manager) decides on the course of action to determine the level of finance required and for that matter the long-term financial strategy.

Because Owner-Managers have many duties to carry out,it was found out in the study that they frequently do not have enough time to devote to long-term planning of the company. Instead, most of their time is spent on day-to-day operational activities and in solving the current day's crisis.Also due to cyclical or seasonal nature of many small businesses the amount of working capital required can vary enormously. The greater the seasonality the less permanent capital a firm has in relation to its total requirements in peak periods. SMEs are for that matter vulnerable to working capital management fiasco which can degenerate into poor financial management.

Politics and Hydrocooperation

Environmental deficiencies, not abundances, explain the development of irrigation technologies - and irrigation permitted the emergence of urban civilization. One anthropologist states, "the remarkable truth concerning the origins of sophisticated agricultural economy and urban civilization within the ancient world was its area in regions of limited in drinking water supply".

Researchers have noted how the quantity of available water may be paramount in determining the sociopolitical structures. For example, the temperate and humid climate along European rivers did not force population nucleation and therefore urban civilization appeared late. Others suggest that the continual shifting of centers of power in Mesopotamian background had been connected using the degradation of irrigation systems as nicely as military and economic situations.

Wittfogel (1956) attributed the growth of centralized bureaucracy and autocratic rule to growing connection of water through irrigation and navigation. The combination of hydraulic agriculture, a hydraulic government, plus a single-centered society constitutes the institutional essence of hydraulic civilization.

This permitted an accumulation of rural and urban populations that, though paralleled inside a couple of nonhydraulic territories of small-scale irrigation, such as Japan, has not been matched by the higher agrarian civilizations based on rainfall farming.

These hydraulic civilizations covered a vastly larger proportion of the surface of the globe than all other substantial agrarian civilizations used together. Other research workers support these views. Some note that the centralized authority of Sasanid rule, within the Sistan region, which can be within the southwestern corner of present Afghanistan, created the establishment of a complex irrigation network possible.

This was the region wherever Zarathushtra discovered refuge (Gyuk, 1977). Others argue that the capability to manage drinking water lies at the middle of vigorous debate more than the rise and fall with the Mayan civilizations. They theorize that intense agriculture, coupled with centralized drinking water management, most likely needed a high degree of social group.

They use archaeological work at Tikal as evidence to additional speculate that lack of adequate water reserves in drought, instead of military or political conflict, may have triggered abandonment of lowlands (Booth, 1991). At the other end with the spectrum, research workers talk of how online community irrigation engendered a democratic spirit and a feeling of online community (Glick, 1970).

For instance, sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spanish irrigation was generally initiated, organized, financed, built, and maintained by local communities. Some suggest that the change in political organization toward higher or lesser centralization may better be observed as social responses to environmental degradation.

Even though initial responses to increased environmental degradation might have been elevated centralization, long term degradation resulted in decentralization. Communities have moved from sedentary farming to nomadic pastoralism and back. The conclusion is that irrigation in and of by itself does not necessitate political centralization. Also political centralization doesn't require the use of canal irrigation. In fact, the main civilizations seem to have experienced repeated expansions and collapses of political empires (Lees, 1973).

The Wittfogel thesis may be accustomed to partially explain the development with the irrigated western United States. The western United States is seen as an example of the motion to large-scale bureaucracy, if not centralization of arid societies, based on large-scale irrigation (Worster, 1992). Another political scientist finds that regardless of which political framework is utilized, distributive techniques, collective goods and so forth, the outcomes are the same.

Those with energy will obtain the access to the drinking water whether through prices, participation, or, administrative procedures (Ingram, 1990). This is definitely borne out in American literature and films dealing with western drinking water, such as the Milagro Beanfield War (Nichols, 1974) and Chinatown (1974).

One of the primary reasons that no more entities like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) had been begun within the United Says is because of the resistance from other large-scale water bureaucracies, which felt threatened (Leuchtenburg, 1952). By implication this notion of irrigation's tendency to large bureaucracy, or "impulse to empire," is sometimes extended towards the history of foreign help given by Western nations.

Some of that help, in part, helped create "clones" of large-scale irrigation bureaucracies, which today are now being asked to change. But strong community and participatory traditions have also flourished amid the large-scale motion of bureaucratic irrigation discussed above. For instance, in the United Says, there's a rich history of farmers' associations.

The Soil Conservation Support (SCS), which was the child of the large central bureaucracy, existed to foster community administration of soil. The agricultural extension services are another this kind of instance. Likewise, small-scale drinking water markets and trading have also flourished throughout the arid areas. Even the U.S. examples are greatest understood, like significantly of what we know historically, like a mixed program.

Making the physical water infrastructure in a collaborative and participatory way is now an important signifies for building the civic infrastructure and also the civil culture, or what numerous call the governance atmosphere.Water source management, with its existing debates over markets, pricing, planning, participation, and environmental assessment, is a meeting ground for these forces.

Such issues have historically been at the middle of drinking water means administration and also the rise and fall of civilizations. The fountains of old Rome, like standpipes in little villages these days or medieval cities of Europe, played roles in building civic lifestyle, as nicely as to quench thirst.

They have turn out to be occasions for civic dialogue and meeting locations central to creating sense of civic belonging and responsibility. Indeed the fountain was truly a civic function. It was the gathering place of the nations, believers and unbelievers. We ought to not forget that civil society, civic culture, and civil engineering share commons roots.

Whether it be irrigation associations, online community drinking water and sewage, as well as large-scale multipurpose river operations, water management forces us to connect and balance rights and responsibilities. Although this process is imperfect, balancing is undertaken, and the physical exercise is frequently useful in and of by itself.

Most democratic theorists see the experience of this kind of balancing as central to development of civic culture (Barber, 1985). Today there are many signs of how particular technologies are subtly transforming conflict resolution, negotiations, and choice dynamics in water conflicts.

For example, software and visual displays facilitate the joint creation of models of water resources by political and technical stakeholders (USACE, 2004). They also raise the real potential for expanding options for political negotiators and choice makers. And as negotiation theory tells us, the ability to expand choices is often the crucial to prosperous negotiations.

Remote sensing technologies, even though not replacing the require for "ground truthing," provides countries and jurisdictions the ability to construct a pretty precise picture of drinking water flow in other jurisdictions, irrespective of the level of data sharing.

This technological capability transforms the relationships and negotiations between jurisdictions and will continue to do so. Trying to maintain it all secret or giving misleading information just won't function like it accustomed to; a lot more people have more access to information.

And all of this technology is disseminating, democratizing, faster than anyone predicted. Virtually all of the world's viable river basin organizations evolved, generally more than a period of a number of decades, in response to extreme hydrologic events. The achievement of shared data and trusted specialized expertise has been central to their achievement.

The interplay between the political and technical in achieving this state is complicated. But RBO viability, often demanded through the populations served, has eventually depended in excellent component on such trusted technical agents. Learning a lot more about the wisdom and viability of conventional water administration methods are essential payoffs of surveying drinking water and civilization.

These range from old technologies, such as discovered within the Negev or other areas in North Africa, to various procedures for irrigation release administration and hierarchy of rights revealed in court data in medieval Spain along with other locations.

The history of social organization close to river basins and watersheds is humanity's richest data of our dialogue with nature. It's among the most fertile areas for learning about how political and technical realms interact. There is a large and growing literature warning of future "water wars" - these authors point to water not only as a cause of historic armed conflict but additionally since the source that will bring combatants to the battlefield within the twenty-first century.

The historic reality may be very different. In the modern times, only minor skirmishes have been waged more than international waters - invariably other interrelated problems also factor in. Conversely, a lot more than three,600 treaties happen to be signed historically over various aspects of global waters (400 in this century on drinking water qua drinking water), numerous showing tremendous elegance and creativity for dealing with this critical resource.

In Defense of Free Trade and Globalization

Suppose there are two countries: The United States and France. The people of both countries desire computers and wine, so businesses in both countries produce those products. Due to economic conditions, the United States produces computers that are fast and cheap, while its wine is bitter and expensive. Due to different conditions, France produces wine that is sweet and inexpensive, while its computers are slow and overpriced. As long as trade barriers exist between the two countries, two separate markets for each category of products will exist. As a result, consumers in the United States spend more money to purchase bad wine, and those in France waste money while buying slow computers.

What should both countries do? The logical answer is that the two countries should drop their trade barriers and become a single market: The United States should make more computers, and France should produce more wine. The United States should then sell its computers to France, and France should sell its wine to the United States. As a result of this trade policy, the people of both countries receive quality products in each category at low prices. Everyone wins. This, in a simplistic nutshell, is the economic justification for globalization and free trade. When countries trade, people generally win.

The central problem in economics is the issue of scarcity - in other words, how can societies can use their limited supplies of resources most efficiently? In the hypothetical example I provided earlier, is it better for the United States to produce wine or computers? Is it better for France to produce computers or wine?

The justification for the answer - that each country should produce that which it can make most efficiently - lies partly in the idea of economies of scale: "a production process in which an increase in the scale of the firm causes a decrease in the long-run, average cost of each unit." (This is why Wal-Mart is so successful - they purchase goods in such high quantities that they can resell them at the lowest prices.) In other words, increasing the size of the market increases the ability of companies and societies to produce better products at cheaper costs. When there is increased competition and access to more resources and labor, only the best and cheapest products will survive. The end beneficiary is the consumer.

Now, take the example I provided earlier, and extend it to the entire world. Every country would be competing with every other country for primacy in thousands of business sectors and over millions of products. When this process occurs uninhibited, the quality of products increases, and their prices fall. In the end, consumers throughout the world benefit because a single global market creates an immense economy of scale. This is why general worldwide inflation (not counting food and energy), is at historic lows at a level of roughly 2 percent. Globalization makes poor countries richer, and it keeps prices low in rich countries.

I have not written anything that should surprise anyone. Nearly all mainstream economists have made similar points because the theory is commonly known. But if the effects of free trade and globalization are obviously positive in the long run, then why are economists, U.S. presidential candidates before the 2008 election, and the American public becoming increasingly skeptical? The answers lie in psychology and journalism.

First, we need to return to my hypothetical example of the United States and France, and their computers and wine. If the United States and France were to stop producing wine and computers respectively because it became inefficient, then workers in those industries would lose their jobs. Those employees would reason that globalization cost them their jobs, and they would be correct. However, their understandable emotions do not recognize the larger, rational context. The effect of losing their jobs would understandably loom larger in their minds than the fact that they have generally paid less for many consumer goods - or, more accurately, that prices have increased at lower rates than in the past - over the past several years. They probably do not even realize that they have been paying less because the change has been incremental over time. However, they certainly know that they do not have jobs. So, to those workers, globalization is a negative trend. It is understandable that they cannot see the big picture because they are worried about the security of their families.

The mainstream media does little to help. The losers in globalization receive much more attention than the winners because those stories are exciting to tell - and sexy stories translate into more television viewers and newspaper subscribers. It is easier to tell a story about layoffs in a thirty-second soundbite on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" than to discuss a complex economic theory. Commentators who support globalization and free-trade, like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, need to explain the benefits of globalization as often as possible. But it is difficult in this media climate.

So, what should pundits and op-ed columnists tell the American public? Firstly, and most importantly, they should say that the people cannot stick their heads in the sand and hope to return to a world before globalization. That is not going to happen. The United States needs to adapt.

In my hypothetical example, the former wine manufacturers in the United States cannot simply complain about their lost jobs - they need to learn to make computers because that is where future economic growth will be. Likewise, former computer manufacturers in France need to improve their wine-harvesting skills. These two countries needed to revamp their societies in order to become successful in a world where only one market exists. In business terms, every country has its core competencies - the products it creates or the services it provides that are better than every other country. In a one-market, globalized world, only these industries in a given country will thrive.

The country that can produce and market the best coffee will corner that market around the world. The country that can produce consumer goods in mass quantities and at the cheapest price will be the world's leader in manufacturing. The country that can provide the best outsourcing to English-speaking countries will lead in customer service and basic administrative services in that area. Competition in all sectors is now worldwide.

But where does the United States fall in such a world? I do not have a set answer, but I do know where America's future does not lie. America's future is not in manufacturing - that belongs to China. America's future does not lie in low-level administrative and computer services - that belongs to India. America's future may not lie primarily in high-finance - London is slowly overtaking Wall Street. America's future cannot lie merely in consumer spending because an economy that is based only on people buying stuff cannot last. The United States needs to ask itself: What does it do better than every other country? What can it do that no other country can?

I know that I sound like a pessimist. But I'm not. It is important to state that globalization is neither inherently positive or negative; it is an amoral process. What matters is how individuals and countries react to globalization. If a country adapts to these fundamental changes in the world economy, then it will benefit greatly. (In my example, the Americans who formerly made wine would be learning how to produce computers, and the French who formerly made computers would be learning how to make wine.) If a country sticks its head in the global sand, then it will decline economically. Every country must make a choice. If every country does what it does best, then the entire world will benefit through access to the best goods at the lowest prices.

The United States will need to make some difficult choices if it is to benefit from the new global order. However, there is little hope if the country's educational system and national infrastructure are in shambles. American high schools leave a lot to be desired. Although American universities are currently the best in the world, their American students are not learning the skills - business, science, technology and engineering - that will be crucial in a globalized world. At a time when high schools should be inspiring more students to study science, many of them are still teaching that creationism is a valid scientific theory. (India must be laughing.) In addition, the skyrocketing cost of higher education is not helping to prepare students. Most importantly, the United States needs to start teaching different languages to the next generation and educating them about various cultures and countries. Americans need to travel internationally more often. You cannot engage the world if you do not know it.

The International System

Beginning in the mid-19 th century, as world trade was expanding rapidly, a global economic system began to develop. With the advent of the railroad and the opening of the trans-Atlantic telegraph wire in 1866, the first round of globalization had begun. This first round, however, came to a pause in 1914 with World War I. It revived slightly in the 1920s, and then came to a halt in 1939 with the start of World War II. As Thomas L. Friedman states in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, "The first era of globalization and global finance capitalism was broken apart by the successive hammer blows of World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Great Depression, which combined to fracture the world physically and ideologically."

After World War II, a new structure was set up that completely changed how the international commerce and political systems operated. This structure was based on the Bretton Woods System, developed in 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), established in 1947. The agreement reached at Bretton Woods established two multinational organizations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The IMF would maintain the order of the international monetary system while the World Bank would lend money to the European Nations to help them rebuild and later lend to developing nations. The agreement set forth a fixed exchange rate scheme, in which all nations would set an exchange rate based on the dollar.

The fixed-exchange rate system continued until 1973, when it broke down amid pressure of a dollar devaluation and increasing inflation in the United States.1 Replacing the fixed system was the floating exchange rate system that continues to this day. The value of currencies would fluctuate based on the supply and demand in the market and currencies would no longer be convertible to gold. While the floating system offered many advantages, it also created new possibilities for problems. These problems became apparent with the Mexican Peso devaluation of 1994, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 and 1998, and the Argentinean Collapse of 2001 and 2002.

The GATT, on the other hand, was an agreement intended to increase trade by reducing tariffs and usage of quotas. If a member country felt that another country had unfair trade barriers in place, it would make a report to the Geneva, Switzerland based GATT administration, which would investigate and act to pressure the offending country into removing the barrier. Data show that the GATT was quite successful. It continued until December, 15, 1993 when President Bill Clinton signed into U.S. law the Uruguay Round of GATT, which created the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is the actions of this organization, the WTO, that lead to much of the controversy that erupted onto the streets of Seattle in 1999 and Cancun in 2003. Many questions still remain for the organization such as what will be done about agricultural subsidies, currency volatility, worker exploitation, genetically modified food, and political corruption.

Invisible Slavery System

Invisible puzzles are mechanisms hidden inside products and services you use, and the social/political systems you interact with. They are invisible due to the use of manufactured perception and deniability-tactics. These puzzles are designed to harness everyone's efforts to silently maintain and operate an Invisible Slavery System...

What would happen to the world economy if global problems like terrorism, global warming, pollution, drugs, cancer and AIDS were suddenly solved? These problems harness trillions of dollars per year, both directly and indirectly from the poor, the middle class, and the rich. This money fuels a large portion of our economy and it eventually makes its way to a very few select people, the "very few very powerful".

These "very few very powerful" did not use principles found in your everyday how-to business books. They and their families engineered special techniques that led to their success, and they kept these techniques a family secret for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The funny thing is these techniques can be looked up quite readily, but they still remain secret to the vast majority because of the combination of a deniability cloak and a perception cloak.

I will now begin to explain my own theory about these secrets, and how they relate to what is really happening in the world today.

First of all, an "invisible puzzle" is just that, a puzzle that is invisible without some special way to view it. As it pertains to my theory, "invisible puzzle" more specifically refers to the deniable lines of function that are hidden inside the products and systems that we interact with. These invisible puzzles are there to control us in very direct tangible ways while shedding off proof of the real purposes behind them.

For example, when the bank processes several checks in one day for a specific customer they now wait to the end of the day and sort them by size, biggest first, smallest last. Many people wait to the last minute to deposit their money, so an unsuspecting customer walks in during the day and deposits the amount to cover the checks, asks for his balance, and breathes a sigh of relief to see that he was in time. The balance according to the deposit slip is in the black. He goes home with the feeling that everything is in order.

However, the checks that were held to the end of the day can be back-posted to a time before the deposit, since that is when they really came in. So the customer's account is then returned to the red prior to his deposit, as the checks that were not reflected before are back-posted. Then these checks get posted in size order instead of chronological order, causing the most possible overdrafts to be generated.

Then as the overdraft fees stack up, the customer's account goes further negative than it would have otherwise, making the deposit ineffective at stopping subsequent overdrafts from the following day's checks. The customer's account spins out of control by potentially hundreds of dollars without his immediate knowledge so that he won't know in time to fix it before the full damage takes place.

The combination of these things cause overdraft income to increase three to four times on average. And that's if he deposited cash. If he deposited a check then the deposit may post three days later (an arbitrary decision on the part of the bank) - and it doesn't matter if it's from a bank across the street. You could have just walked the cash across the street but that makes no difference to the bank. Sure, the bank can make any rule it wants, and the customer is legally at fault for letting his/her account go negative. But then the bank purposely manipulates their paperwork to triple their income from it. And they do it legally.

How? All they had to do to triple their overdraft income was to issue a notice to their customers stating something to the effect: "From this point forward, in an effort to better serve our customers, whenever there are multiple checks to process in the same day we will process the biggest one first, the second biggest one second, and so on, processing the smallest one last. In this way if there are insufficient funds you are more likely to get your most important check through, such as your mortgage or car payment."

This notice makes it impossible for the customer to accuse the bank of manipulating the paperwork for profit. The deniable alternate purpose (manipulation of paperwork to triple overdraft profits) is hidden behind a perception cloak (the statement that the change in calculations is to get your most important check through). As a result, this situation becomes an invisible puzzle.

Invisible puzzles can be used to manipulate, but you can't prove this intent because the stated purpose makes the potentially manipulative purpose deniable.

The interesting thing is, these invisible puzzles can be created through remote control. Every now and again a major world event hits the news, like the "9/11 terrorist attacks". Then millions of people everywhere are glued to the TV full of emotion over the event, waiting to see who is responsible and waiting to see what solution will be presented. Each time this happens no proof will be given for what really happened. That is one of the keys to their technique. This is because of the principle that when the truth is hidden people will then look to some other source for answers, like authority or stereotypes.

At this point perceptions are being engineered for a purpose. The purpose is to mobilize large groups of people into specific actions that create and enforce new invisible puzzles. In the case of the 9/11 terrorist event our security spending was tripled, dozens of new track & identify laws were launched overnight that wouldn't fly previously because of privacy activists, several major legislative acts and antiterrorist treaties were mysteriously completed in a matter of days (hmmm, I would have thought they would need more time than that), and our president declares to the world "any country that is suspected of harboring terrorists will be attacked". Was this a declaration to the world that we intend to deal with terrorists everywhere? Or was this a bully tactic to get other countries to sign our antiterrorist treaties to avoid suspicion of harboring terrorists so that we won't attack them? Another invisible puzzle?

The "terrorist event" was a perception-engineering tactic. It is easy to see that it was rigged, so long as you don't fall for the mind control. Then the antiterrorist treaty was pushed on other countries through a deniable bully tactic ("will attack if suspected of harboring terrorists", therefore better sign that treaty to avoid suspicion). Then the antiterrorist treaties were used as the Trojan Horse to carry a slew of new invisible puzzles into other countries.

This method accomplishes two things. First, it delegates the effort so the controlling entity has less work to do. Second, it cloaks what is really happening. Once this step is successful then honest people in key positions who are just doing their job will generate dozens of new invisible puzzles.

Of course they are doing their jobs while under the influence of the perception game at hand. So without knowing it they will create these new invisible puzzles, which control us through two or more levels of deniability. For example, when Canada signed on with our president's anti-terrorist treaties, they rerouted a major portion of their legal system to make room for the demands of those treaties. Through this process a slew of new invisible puzzles for Canada went into place, with little or no additional effort by those who actually designed them. In other words, the "very few very powerful" can efficiently delegate their work while simultaneously creating multiple levels of deniability - pretty slick if you ask me.

Proof of intent behind these invisible puzzles cannot be found individually (unless they somehow slip up - and in these very rare cases they execute "black ops" to immediately eliminate the evidence). Despite this lack of proof, if you look at how hundreds of these invisible puzzles fit together you will see how we are thoroughly enslaved by them, while channeling power and wealth to the "very few very powerful". Invisible puzzles hide inside just about every system you interact with (laws, computers, commerce, traffic, finance, school, etc.) and they hide inside just about every product and service you buy. Whether by intent or by society's own clumsiness, my website shows how a network of these invisible puzzles form the infrastructure to an Invisible Slavery System. I show how the ISS is responsible for robbing 95% of what we do, through a myriad of seemingly unrelated issues that we are forced to contend with every day. Most people see it differently, because within this delusional perception-engineered-realm, the thought that they are actually slaves just does not make sense to them.

The net effect to living inside an invisible human slave colony is:

· Unending tangible issues that take away your hard earned money

· Severe reduction of your life span through manipulation of key cellular functions, plus the suppression and disabling of the human regenerating cell

· Severe reduction of your health through the consumption of garbage foods that we are taught to need and to like, and through the use of Trojan Horse consumables that carry aneuploidogenic substances

· Severe reduction of your intelligence through programmed psychological walls and triggers, shortened attention spans, altered brain chemistry, and keeping us too busy to ponder and question

· Stagnation of civilization as a whole as a result of the heavy burden and limitations imposed by the ISS

· Unending global issues that are never solved, due to all the lies that distort the truth about them

Why? To amplify and maintain control and profits.

People rarely question themselves, especially their convictions and their emotions, yet that is what's necessary to see the ISS. Our perspectives and emotions have been steered to support it rather than resist it. Our thoughts have been molded to work hard to maintain and operate the ISS, without any knowledge that it even exits. How can something so powerful take so much without our knowing it?

We interact within an environment that sets up the rationale and visualizations that make sense relative to each other, one thing explains the next thing, and so on, resulting in a complete circle of logical reasoning all based on itself, and all in support of a manufactured/manipulated world-view that they planned for our minds. I will show how these perspectives were engineered to get us to support and operate the ISS, and its diabolical web of deniable alternate purpose behind each of our actions. This oppressor is so good at strategy and mind control that he gets us to do his dirty work.

As Einstein once said, "The most important thing is to never stop questioning." And one thing I question is the base line that we tend to use to determine what is healthy, what is a normal life-span, what is the cost of living, what is a crook, what is justice, what is the correct way for a computer to operate, etc. These things have base lines, which stem from what we are used to. So if what we are used to is all messed up, then we simply can't see it - and we call it "normal" instead of "messed up".

When the truth is hidden from view what seems normal is accepted in its place. When we can't see it for ourselves, people in authority and others that we trust fill in the blanks for us. We get used to it, and it becomes "right" for us. And then we believe we did see it for ourselves, when we really didn't. Invisible puzzles are responsible for automatically organizing and triggering this process. It goes beyond manufactured world-views, as entire cultures and religions have been built from these manipulated perspectives. All to profit the "very few very powerful", or whomever it is that took control.

In the end we are handed a delusional realm to focus on while we work hard as slaves to meet the demands of a ruthless oppressor. An oppressor who steals 95% of your effort (through the combination of dozens of systems that you believe you have to interact with), feeds your body garbage that makes you sick (one of the systems for making the ISS profitable), feeds your mind lies (to keep the perception cloak in place), makes you too busy to ponder and question (so that you will continue to fall for the mind control), and having no regard for life kills us off at a young age (so we cannot wise up to the system). As long as we are kept busy and we cooperate fully we may be allowed to live a bit longer, but for the most part slaves are the most useful while they are young, healthy and gullible. After that they are generally slaughtered for profit. (The "slaughter" part is cloaked as something else, like cancer, heart failure or old age, courtesy of the ISS.)

The outdated social/political systems of today are unknowingly the legs and arms of the ISS. Through control, deception, and force, today's political/social systems unknowingly (for the most part) are used by the ISS to regulate, feed and monitor humanity like a herd of cattle, as they are put to work and ultimately slaughtered. In this mode real solutions to the world's problems will never be found.

The ISS controls your perspective, consequently channeling your emotions and perceptions, thereby prompting you to do precisely what the ISS wants you to do. Awareness is key. Real knowledge is key. And "free will thought" is key. However, perspective controls all of it.

Many people have been taught that what is legal is right, and what is not legal is wrong. As if this were an absolute base line for right and wrong. Some will even tie this into their religious convictions, so that it cannot be questioned at all. And some will come up with a "right and wrong" from a specific mix of the two. This is all a matter of brainwashing. As soon as you state something is right or wrong, without thinking it through for yourself from an unbiased perspective, then you are demonstrating how your mind is being controlled.

Many laws in the US had nothing to do with public opinion, and nothing to do with the congressman you voted into office. Many US laws are written in silently and quickly, with as little media coverage as possible. These laws are not "right" by anyone's definition except for those who want to control you. This does not mean all the other laws are ok. They were voted in by people whose perspectives were manufactured for them through mind control.

If you allow a bias of what makes something right or wrong cause you to feel that these laws are right without you yourself figuring out the details, then you are doing yourself and the rest of the world a big disservice. This is the center of the whole problem. Most of the support to the ISS comes from ordinary people who think with these preprogrammed (biased) perspectives. Democracy is designed so that these people - through taxes and voting - support the "system". That makes it very easy for a powerful entity to control the "system" through perception engineering tactics aimed at the normal person. A perception cloak hides the deniable lines of function behind the actions of these normal people, who are working hard on tasks which actually channel power and wealth to the ISS. And that in turn makes it virtually impossible for those who do see what's happening to do anything about it.

Unfortunately, this legal system that many people blindly support and equate to justice is in fact a cloaking device, used to hide the ISS tentacles through deniability mechanisms. The deniability cloak is based in law.

A law based society makes promises it will not keep. Solutions to the world's problems are worked on diligently but the problems are never solved. This is because the ISS uses problems like those to further its agendas.

Drugs, fraud, terrorism, global warming, human rights issues, cancer, AIDS, SARS, and other global issues are like chess pieces, played by the ISS as it maintains its control and its profits. The object is to deniably manufacture or twist a problem so there is no real solution to it in that form WHILE convincing us of the progress of current efforts to solve it AND WHILE convincing us of the continued threat this problem poses for humanity SO THAT we will continuously support the "cause" without actually finding a solution.

The perception cloak manifests false world problems and false solution-paths to real world problems, while the deniability cloak hides the control mechanisms that move into your life as a result. These control mechanisms enslave you while your mind is focused on the perception-engineered purpose for each. A law-based society makes this inevitable because it creates an ideal medium for invisible puzzles to control us. If the "very few very powerful" didn't take advantage of it somebody else would have. Therefore it is also inevitable that a "very few very powerful" ruling class exists. I'm saying that with or without proof, a law-based society inevitably generates an ISS that enslaves us. And this consequently makes it impossible to solve the world's problems.

Therefore real solutions to real world problems must work independently of law.

Did these "very few, very powerful people" design the ISS? Or perhaps some other mastermind? Is there really someone or some group that has nothing better to do than to work out the strategies to manipulate society for their profit? Or is this ISS merely an inadvertent byproduct of normal human civilization during its current very clumsy stages? Which one is it? Is there proof? And is there a solution?

After years of thought about this I came to the realization that the right information technologies would both reveal proof of the ISS to the world, and put an end to it. The technology I'm thinking of would have the same effect on the ISS as turning lights on in a dark room - all the mysteries in that room, the boogie men, the burglars, your kid brother, etc, would become visible. With lights you no longer have to guess. And you can see exactly what causes what, and how.

I'm thinking of technology that would reveal everything of concern to the public, making it visible and comprehensible to the average person. It would automatically obsolete and replace the ISS, accommodating solutions to the real world's problems without the use of deception and force. I see these revolutionary information technologies taking human traits normally considered bad (like greed) and satisfying them through new lines of motivation that naturally favor environmental and humanitarian concerns, individual rights, honesty, accountability and quality.

The natural (unregulated) capabilities of this futuristic technology will interact with the full spectrum of human endeavor, causing all these independent efforts to collectively work towards the good of society, the individual and the environment. Products will be created that last virtually forever, non-polluting energy solutions will be found and implemented, the truth about your water and air will be revealed and comprehensive solutions provided, etc. It will accomplish this through a combination of several key technologies that obsolete and replace most social/political systems of today, while facilitating the real solutions to the real problems.

Our minds are accustomed to thinking in terms of forced control hierarchies in all that we do. In order to make something useful we believe it has to be controlled through force. I call this "poisoned thought". You'll see it in the operation of computer software, the legal system, the home, and virtually everywhere that human thought created something we interact with. I believe that in each of these scenarios a collective effort from unbound freethinking individuals is more suitable. A collective of free thinking individuals who interact as they choose, using these advanced information technologies only when they see an advantage in doing so. A human collective represented by and orchestrated through the information technology, not a collective of selfless minds attached to computers. The free individual is very powerful, and a collective is very powerful. Advanced information systems will make possible never before conceived of benefits, resulting from an interaction between the unbound free thinking individual and a collective intelligence.

Optimal information technology is the real solution to all the world's problems, and it will also help us to escape from the ISS. I envision a technology that automatically generates collective Utilitarian solutions for genuine global issues, while supporting a Libertarian way of life. A technology that facilitates the individual rather than controls the masses. A technology that defends the individual against corruption, oppression and tyranny. A technology that is fair to everyone, protecting both physical and intellectual property without the need for law, and making everything of value to the individual visible to the individual. This new technology promises a future where the average cost of living is below two work hours per day per person. A future where poverty and sickness is almost non-existent, where problems of pollution and global warming are solved, and where war is a thing of the past. Law hierarchies, war machines, politics and track & identify systems will no longer be needed to solve these problems.

The concept of a collective can apply to other types of systems, not just political/social systems. Since poisoned thought has been instilled in us for thousands of years everything we build and do reflects it. This means the products we buy are handicapped by it, and the systems we live by limit us as a result of it. Possibly the most significant effect it has on society is to limit what the human mind is capable of. In my opinion this is why our minds operate in a mostly delusional state, our computers are extremely inefficient and error prone, our society cheats us, we continuously poison our bodies, we serve as delusional slaves (slaves that don't know they're slaves), our leaders take us to war, and our doctors kill us.

Once we cure ourselves of this poisoned thought our minds will then become more aware and more intelligent. Our computers will run thousands of times faster and better, and without the need for a gigantic support industry to keep them running. We will no longer have the need to poison our bodies by eating decayed processed and drugged foods. We will no longer work for a society that robs 95% of what we do. The need for war will disappear. And the entire medical industry will work towards the good of the patient, not rob him blind and kill him (as a result of the invisible puzzles placed in the medical industry by the "very few very powerful" ruling class).