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Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets
France paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battlefield. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment figure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New figures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/...
Why aren't Americans more upset?? Why are we so passive?? Every day there is unspeakable crimes being put upon the American people and all we do is complain about it on a blog. It seems the sheeple don't even care or don't want to know. What's it going to take before it's too late (or is it?).
Bailout: Taking a trillion dollars from the people giving it to the banks to loan back to the people at interest.
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France has a great tradition of peaceful mass demonstrations. The government is quite scared of the populace in that reguard.
Watch the great BBC documentary series [4x1hr] 'the century of the self' for a great exploration of how the mass conscientiousness has been manipulated by the corporations starting with the talented mr. bernaise [sp?] [no NOT the sauce guy] the cousin of one Sigmond Freud [sp?]. The words 'public relations' were coined by Bernaise. His ideas worked, and they were used to great effect by Thather and Reagan. This series of videos are almost required watching for anyone that wants to understand why people act as they do in groups and how first corperations then governments have used the knowledge of modern psychology to control you and I! Facinating and bloody scary.
Denial is perhaps the other human trait which has got us were we are, and will keep us there until we feel ourselves in freefall over the cliff.... son of a gun, im acting like a lemming and im falling to my death... damn.... ouch!
The smartest author i have read in the past decade [and i place him ahead of Illich, Monbiot, Martenson ;0), Aristotle, Plato [big call... perhaps ive had too much whisky], and Chomsky] is an Australian scientist and philosopher Jeremy Griffith. http://www.humancondition.info/ASpeciesInDenial.html A quick visit to this page will show an outline of this reasoning. there are links to the entire book 'a species in denial' there, as well as short summaries.
If you want to understand how denial was breed into us and how to get around it, then Griffith is your man. Reading Griffith is like reading another language... you know its English, you can understand the words, but the concepts are so basic and so different that they are almost incomprehensible.... its a paradigm shift of a read. awesome.
As for getting people off their asses... that will happen... when its too late... indeed its all to late anyway.... we are all SOOOO fucked we cant comprehend. CM has shown us, Monbiot, Heizenberg et al have given up on averting the disaster and are now talking about 'resiliance'. Mate, we are screwed, build a life boat, plug in the broad band, bend over and try to enjoy the ride.
"What did I do on the Great ship the Titanic as it sank into the abyss? I chatted on forums!"
Gordon Gekko; "The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." Mahatma Gandhi; "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”
Castlewep,
Unfortunately, too many in the American populace are just plain uninformed, and don't understand the big picture. The American media is also doing a superb job of keeping people uninformed. Why has there not been any coverage of the riots that are breaking out in several countries. The Icelandic government collapsed last week due to rioting citizens putting great pressures on its leaders, and not one word was mentioned on the large media networks. Unfortunately, I hear alot people in my circle just saying the same meaningless words, "I hope things will get better." I've yet to hear anyone, outside of the blogosphere" fathom the possibility that things will not get better for a long time, if ever.
Whenever, I try to explain the concepts of limited resources, the fate of earlier civilisations that encountered similar problems, or the dire situation that the US finds itself in I get the glazed eye look. I think things will have to get much worse before people, including the government, start to react and demand drastic change. I just hope it won't be too little too late.
I think we are all used to the "do I have two heads" look from others. The media will express it's impartiality in all of this. The only article on the IEA annual report I saw was in the UK's Gaurdian newspaper. If that one graph of the IEA's powerpoint presentation showing the likely demand and makeup from different sources would really hit home. I showed it to my wife and she was stunned, previously, I had always struggled to get my point across to her, but not since I showed that slide.
More governments will tumble/change and little mention will be made of it. In the UK/Europe, the Iceland issue has been put down to their stupidity in their attempts to emulate the Swiss banking system. Hungery, doesn't make any of the papers from what I read in the UK, German, Dutch, French or Belgian press.
Han-Christian Anderson was ahead of his time with his tale of the King's New Clothes;little did he realise that he was writing a management/government fable!