The cult of the individual is destroying the United States

From a discussion on a FB thread came this question:

(anarcho-capitalism) is a political philosophy which advocates the elimination of the state in favour of individual sovereignty. It is theorized that in the absence of a central coercive monopoly on the use of force (a government), society would reorganize itself in terms of a free market (a fully voluntary society).[4][5] In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors rather than centrally through compulsory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. Therefore, personal and economic activities under anarcho-capitalism would be regulated by victim-based dispute resolution organizations under tort and contract law, rather than by statute through punishment and torture under political monopolies."

Does that, in any way, sound like the United States?

Compared to other developed nations, democracies, and perhaps it makes more of a difference than many might think that the US is a constitutional republic, yes, it does sound like the US.

As a German professor who spent some years in the States said:

The US is the only developed nation where people both hate and fear their government.

So you have within the society a mistrust, fear and hatred of government which makes government influence, let alone control very difficult on many counts.

You also have so many States, over 50, which operate like little countries and which dilute where they can any Federal power in ways not seen in other developed nations.

You have a level of corporate power and corruption at the political level - free market capitalism and corporate individual sovereignty, which you just do not see in other developed nations.

The concept of individual sovereignty has been taken to extreme levels in the US across the spectrum. The irony is that it is the ordinary people who have lost out and lost their power, their individuality and their sovereignty.

The inability of the US Federal Government to introduce regulation - reduce sovereignty - at corporate and governmental levels, plays a part in the disenfranchising of ordinary Americans and the inequality at work in the US.

You can see the 'individual sovereignty' at work in some of the following things:

. an education system which at core is dependent upon the wealth of parents and the suburb in which the school is placed. (Other developed nations over-ride this and ensure across-the-board standards).

. a medical system controlled by individual corporations which works in their interests and not that of the people or patients. (Other developed nations use Government regulation to ensure there is an across-the board- universal healthcare system). NB: and the move to introduce some sort of universal healthcare, now called Obamacare, has resulted in the insurance companies writing the plan and creating the system and in people having to pay for it. In other words, there is still no universal healthcare in the US. It is individualised to suit corporate and political interests.

. a court system which at the highest levels consists of partisan political appointments. Individualised to suit politicians not people.

. a legal system which allows manipulating and lobbying to achieve ends in ways not tolerated in other developed nations which have greater government regulation and influence.

. a labour system which allows illegal workers to remain to suit the interests of individuals and individual corporations and which serves to keep wages low. (Not tolerated in other developed nations.)

. a labour system where corporations and politicians collude to limit if not destroy union activity, to meet the needs of individuals and individual corporations. (Not tolerated in other developed nations).

. a law enforcement system which is not independent and is answerable and in the control of individuals and individual political and corporate power structures. (In ways not tolerated in other developed nations.)

. a banking system which has been generally unregulated and allowed to write its own rules and meet its own individualised needs to a degree not seen in other developed nations although the level of government regulation varies from country to country. NB: the country which best rode out the economic meltdown was Australia and that was and is the country with the heaviest banking regulations. Other developed nations have since followed suit, to varying degrees.

. and with capital punishment retained and iniquitous treatment of prisoners, the US is probably top of the list on the punishment and torture stakes. We know the US sanctions and uses torture overseas so there is a good chance it does so at home.

. the individual needs of universities to make profits is met in the US in ways not seen elsewhere. A system which sees students graduate with debts which may cripple them for life.

It is the cult of the individual expressed in the United States, perhaps not exactly in the form you articulate above, but more so than any other developed nation, which has made it the least just, the most dysfunctional and unequal and the most socially challenged of any developed nation.

Justice will triumph but Israelis have also been sabotaged by their frenemies....

I rarely bother with the issue  of Israel/Palestine on discussion threads anymore, for two reasons, the first being that world opinion has changed substantially since I first took an interest many years ago and is now on the side of justice for the Palestinians, and secondly, because the level of delusion and propaganda from Israel defenders has risen dramatically and intelligent, reasoned, rational debate is almost impossible.

Whether they are poor students employed by the Israeli government or so-called 'friends' of Israel who have no real understanding of Israel, Palestine or the situation, all I know is that before too long, they resort to abuse, name-calling and insults. Which is tedious and childish.


I care about this issue because I care about injustice of any kind as a principle. The Israeli/Palestinian situation is just one of many. There is more focus on Israel because it stands as one of the most deluded and hypocritical nations in history - calling itself a democracy, an enlightened society, a 'light' to the world and particularly the Middle East, when it is quite the opposite.

On a personal level, I have Israeli and Jewish friends who are deeply disappointed in what Israel has become and what it does in their name, both of the State and the religion. Although Israel does not represent Judaism, despite, more often than not, giving Jews a bad name. Many Jews and Israelis are deeply ashamed of what Israel is and does.

And in my best of worlds, if there were a magic wand, and I could wave it, I would have waved it to create two fully independent and viable, that means completely equal in terms of their independence and control over air, land and sea borders and a capacity to protect themselves, with contiguous borders.

But I don't have a wand and Israeli paranoia has made it impossible for such a situation to be created and Israeli greed, wanting all of Palestine has made it impossible for such a situation to be created and so we stand, at this point in history, after just over half a century, where world opinion is now firmly on the side of justice for the Palestinians and utterly opposed to the Israeli state as occupier, coloniser and apartheid, and the regional bully. And that means there can be no other outcome but a one-state solution.

The other reality which is clear to anyone who spends time in Israel, is that religious racism is so entrenched and so potent, that the only reason Israel has not done what every other coloniser has ultimately done - create one state with equal rights for all - is because the Zionists have inflated the inherent Judaic belief in the superiority of its followers, into an outright religious racism which sees non-Jews in general as inferior and the Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general, as even more inferior.

Israel has rejected the logical (and ultimate outcome) because Israelis believe it is untenable that they, as Jews, whether practising or not, should be a minority in a democracy. The white South Africans took a similar view, sourced in racial differences. But whether religious or racial, racism is racism.

Israel's folly was the same as South Africa - the indigenous people outnumber the colonists and when you have decades of abuse, cruelty, subjugation and atrocities committed against those indigenous people, it makes it very, very hard for the colonial minority to feel at home in the new democracy where everyone is equal.

So Israel's tragedy is that it has not had friends who would tell it the truth and help it deal with the reality of its situation and its endemic bigotry; whether nations or individuals. Israel has been sabotaged by its frenemies who have allowed, and at times encouraged it on a course which can only lead to the end of any Jewish State and perhaps, with a Palestinian majority, the end of any State called Israel.

It did not have to be this way. No-one would have much cared if, in a two-state solution there was a Palestinian democracy or theocracy and an Israeli theocracy - a religious state which gave superior rights to Jews. After all, the Saudis do the same and the world puts up with that. Such states are backward and ultimately have no place in a modern world, but as long as the only ones they harm are themselves, no-one really cares.

But Israelis wanted it all and their so-called friends have allowed them to erroneously believe they could have it all, when in truth, they will end up with probably nothing much. Unless they are flexible enough to become Palestinians in the one-state solution. And that is sad, given the hopes and dreams that Israelis and many Jews had about their colonial enterprise.

Keeping up the questions on vaccination is crucial for our children.

I think with an industry as profitable as vaccines and as controversial it will be a long time before results are definitive in any real sense. Questions will continue to be asked, as they should.

None of the evidence presented for or against makes for a cut and dried case.

And it would be very foolish to take the view that a clear link between vaccination and autism has not been established and so vaccines are safe. The autism/vaccination link may not be clear at this point, although one must question the integrity of the research given how much prestige and profit are involved, but autism is just one worrying aspect potentially linked to vaccination - massive increases in chronic and serious disease in children and dramatic rise in behavioural and learning difficulties. Why?

In some ways the autism issue is a distraction from the big picture, something which science/medicine is never good at anyway. And with numerous books and articles written in recent years on the unrealiability if not outright bias and corruption in science, questioning the system has become even more important.

It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the scientific method cannot be relied upon, particularly where profit and prestige are involved.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong

If I had to bet I would still put my money on parent's intuition before so-called scientific evidence - paid for by vested interests in the main - and doctors still largely agree, if there is a bottom line, you can bet the parents are most likely to be right.

As this article touches upon:

Excerpt:  Sue Swedo, MD, chief of the pediatric and developmental neuropsychiatry branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, says federal researchers have not closed the door to looking at whether vaccination might, in rare cases, be linked to autism.

The strongest case for a link comes from children with regressive autism -- children who seem to be developing normally, but who then lose the social and language skills they had developed and slide into autism. To parents, such children seem to have been the victims of some environmental toxin. As this regression occurs at the same time children receive multiple vaccines, many wonder whether vaccines might carry such a toxin.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/searching-for-answers/vaccines-autism?page=3

THE TRUTH BEHIND THE VACCINE COVER-UP

By Russell Blaylock, M.D.
(c) 2004
Web Site: http://www.russellblaylockmd.com

Posted: 04 Spetember 2004

I was asked to write a paper on some of the newer mechanisms of vaccine damage to the nervous system, but in the interim I came across an incredible document that should blow the lid off the cover-up being engineered by the pharmaceutical companies in conjunction with powerful governmental agencies.

It all started when a friend of mind sent me a copy of a letter from Congressman David Weldon, M.D. to the director of the CDC, Dr Julie L. Gerberding, in which he alludes to a study by a Doctor Thomas Verstraeten, then representing the CDC, on the connection between infant exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines and neurodevelopmental injury. In this shocking letter Congressman Weldon referrers to Dr. Verstraeten's study which looked at the data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink and found a significant correlation between thimerosal exposure via vaccines and several neurodevelopmental disorders including tics, speech and language delays, and possibly to ADD.

Congressman Weldon questions the CDC director as to why, following this meeting, Dr. Verstraeten published his results, almost four years later, in the journal Pediatrics to show just the opposite, that is, that there was no correlation to any neurodevelopmental problems related to thimerosal exposure in infants. In this letter, Congressman Weldon refers to a report of the minutes of this meeting held in Georgia, which exposes some incredible statements by the "experts" making up this study group. The group's purpose was to evaluate and discuss Dr. Verstraeten's results and data and make recommendation that would eventually lead to possible alterations in the existing vaccine policy.


Dr. Blaylock is a board certified neurosurgeon, author and lecturer. He attended the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans and completed his general surgical internship and neurosurgical residency at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina. During his residency he ran the neurology program for one year and did a fellowship in neurosurgery after his residency. For the past 25 years he has practiced neurosurgery in addition to having a nutritional practice. He recently retired from both practices to devote full time to nutritional studies and research.


http://www.endalldisease.com/50-reasons-to-not-vaccinate-your-children/

On Australia Day some perspective on our history with the Aborigines.

Perspective is important when looking at the situation of Aborigines in particular and indigenous peoples in general.

If you look at the US, Canada, NZ and Australia the circumstances of indigenous peoples are very similar, regardless of whether they received their rights sooner or later. Something is wrong and the something wrong is probably the political correctness which, in all nations, had the delusional idea that somehow indigenous people could be held - pinned like metaphorical moths to a board - in some sort of fantasy of their original lives.

Guilt can be a useful reminder but it can also be destructive. When the Aboriginal issue is studied in the perspective of the times it allows perspective in these times and provides the capacity to more rationally assess what was done. The stolen generation is a classic example of this although the reality of the circumstances is often denied or repressed in this politically correct age.

Those Aboriginal children taken away were taken away because they were at risk. At the same time, non-Aboriginal children were taken away for the same reason and continued to be taken away by social services well into the fifties. I know the reality of this because with an ill and absent mother, as a child, I and my siblings faced the constant risk of 'being taken away.'

So first of all, the treatment of Aborigines was not particular to Aborigines. Secondly, those Aboriginal children taken away were half-caste and as with many societies and cultures, it is and was the half-castes who were often not accepted by the community. In other words, a lot of these kids were neglected. Instead of watching propagandised movies, read the reports of the times.

Those responsible for the care of the children had a choice - leave them in their mother's world where they were at risk, or remove them and bring them up in their father's culture. Of course this traumatised the children, removal always does, whether Aboriginal or not, but many of those removed were not traumatised and went on to assimilate and live fulfilling and functional lives in the non-Aboriginal world.

It is not about diminishing the wrongs done to indigenous people anywhere but about applying reason, common sense and fair perspective to what was done, when and by whom. Many of the actions taken from the time of English settlement, again, read the reports easily found by reading books (non-propaganda) and reports and articles published at the time (Trove, National Library) had a clear focus of doing what could be done to help the indigenous people and to draw them into the colonial culture.

Of course things went wrong and it is just as delusional to claim that the settlers and later colonists were sweetness and light toward the Aborigines as it is to claim that they were bent on genocide.

Racism and abuse, if you read the original reports was not institutionalised as the current propaganda would have it. Government programmes may have been ineffective but that was not because of a lack of motive, money or intent.

If the billions of dollars poured into trying to improve life for Australia's indigenous people has achieved virtually nothing, it is because most of it has gone into programmes which aim to resist assimilation and to seek to 'preserve' the Aborigines in some sort of politically correct aspic.

Those Aborigines who survived and prospered after colonisation were the ones who assimilated and call themselves Australian. Those who suffer are those who did not and who were not allowed to, either by their own culture or by the wider culture with its legions of deluded do-gooders.

The fantasy of Aborigines retaining their culture was always deluded simply because it was impossible. Nomadic people who want what we have - Toyotas, guns ... to use for hunting, spears and boomerangs being old hat, houses, which they will not live in if someone dies in the house, and the Flying Doctor whizzing in to pick them up if they are sick; access to hospitals and medical centres and schools (even if not used) are not living a traditional life. They are living some soap-opera sitcom which is a version of what the political correct brigade believes is a 'traditional life.'

No wonder they are seriously fucked up. The enormous levels of social dysfunction, abuse, violence, alcoholism, drug addiction etc., in Aboriginal societies in particular and indigenous societies everywhere in the developed world, is sourced not in colonisation but from the historically recent lunacy of rejecting assimilation.

Every country on this planet exists because of occupation, colonisation and assimilation. Study English history as a good, clear record. Where we have failed Aborigines in particular and indigenous in general is refusing to draw them into the wider community - casting them instead like shadows on the edge not just of our life but of their lives.

It is heartening to see finally, even Aborigines recognise this reality and asking for their children to be 'taken away' to boarding school so that they may get an education and an opportunity to be a part of Australian society and culture.

And yes, it is a long post because the actions of the do-gooders and the political correcters have demonstrated yet again how much evil can be done in the name of so-called good. They have turned Aborigines into victims, denying them the same qualities of all human beings - capacity for both good and evil - and dismissing the reality that Aborigines, (look at Aboriginal tribal culture) as just as capable of being racist, discriminatory, intolerant and colonists and occupiers.

The war science/medicine wages against bacteria is killing us!

This is so important. If people understood how their bodies really work they would never touch an antibiotic or feed it to their children unless it was a life or death situation and they would never allow anything anti-bacterial into their homes.

They would also never elect to have a C-section - emergencies are a different thing entirely. It is the bacteria which live in our bodies and which must live in our bodies which keep us well and strong and which science/medicine has been working to kill for decades.

The ignorance of science/medicine is demonstrated yet again, along with materialistic/mechanistic arrogance.

Why Are You Killing Your Best Friends?

culturedfoodlife.com

A brilliant book on health, medicine and healing

 I would just say as a writer, journalist, editor (compared to much today only a couple of typos ) and reader who has read hundreds of books on health/medicine/science - probably thousands over 40 years, this book is one of the best, most balanced, comprehensive and useful I have seen. Malerba has put together something in eminently readable, but informed terms, laced with common sense, wisdom and insight and presented it in balanced form.

I found it fascinating from beginning to end and he holds his topic in light but cohesive hands. Even those who quiver at the concept of anything other than an Allopathic approach and who turn pale at the suggestion that other medical methodologies are equally sound and often better, will be soothed by Malerba's reasoned and grounded approach.

It should be read by anyone with the slightest interest in health.

It should be required reading for every doctor, nurse and medical professional on the planet although the time for such enlightenment is probably some years away. But books like this lay the groundwork for a time when medicine is something which actually cures and heals and not simply treats, monitors or maintains and where every medical methodology utilised as part of a process of establishing and maintaining optimum health.

As a homeopathic physician, also medically trained in the Allopathic sense,  he touches on Homeopathy, naturally, and rightly so because it is likely to pave the way as the medicine of the future which will lead Allopathy out of its limited paradigm of the materialistic and mechanistic, but the focus of the book is medicine in general and it is left to the individual to pursue selectively as he or she may wish.

The research behind this and the pragmatism, insight, wisdom and intelligence, not to mention excellent writing skills, make this book something of a 'bible' - a foundation work - for anyone wishing to understand, appraise or process the conventional allopathic medical approach and the approach of other medical methodologies, including Homeopathy.

It is one of the most important books on health, healing and medicine to be published. And as a serious cynic, critic and natural sceptic (in the true sense of the word), I do not say that lightly.

http://www.amazon.com/Green-Medicine-Challenging-Assumptions-Conventional/dp/1556439024/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Science needs to recognise its limitations

Sometimes science is just not advanced enough to understand methodologies which have been used since ancient times or before the development of modern medicine as we know it.

Excerpt: During the period when Harold Burr,Professor at Yale School of Medicine in 1924, was researching energy fields, most biologists and physicians were certain that all notions of energy therapy and 'life force' were complete nonsense.

The experiences of practitioners and patients of energy therapies were dismissed, either by ignoring them, or by stating that the patients were victims of deception, illusion, trickery, fakery, quackery, hallucination or the placebo effect.

Scientists could say with certainty that any energy field around an organism would be far too weak to be detected. If such a field existed, it surely had no biological significance. Healing with energy fields was fantasy, and any notion that light could be emitted by the body was certainly quite foolish.

As a student of the history of medicine, Burr was well aware that work being published ahead of its time remains in the libraries and is available to the future generations when its moment arrives.

In retrospect, Burr's discoveries anticipated many of the breakthroughs that are being made around the world at the present time.

Energy Medicine, The Scientific Basis, James L. Oschman, Ph.D. Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, 1965; B.S. Biophysics, University of Pittsburgh, 1961

Time to do something sensible about the bushfire threat.....

Pondering the summer certainty of bushfires and while some people have turned the 'bush' into something sacred to ridiculous degrees, particularly given the fact that we have fire-dependent, fire-loving eucalypts as the dominant species across the continent because Aboriginal fire-farming practices led to the destruction of the native rainforest and grasses which previously covered the continent....

surely it is time to be practical and to look to replace a lot of the bush in and around cities with non-eucalypts - that means plantings of non-incendiary trees, like those the early settlers so sensibly planted from the time they arrived, in order to lessen the bushfire threat???

Oaks, elms, ash, anything which does not represent an oil-filled fire threat waiting to explode in the right conditions. Beyond the fact that gums are also incredibly dangerous around humans, given their propensity to drop huge branches without warning, particularly in summer, surely it is time to create safe areas for humans and safe areas for bush where, if there are fires it is not going to possibly destroy livelihoods or lives?

Yep, really nice living in a bush setting but keep it for holidays and not for home. And for all those who get absolutely hysterical about such a concept and believe that retaining the 'natural environment' matters most - just remember that the Australian bush with its eucalypts was not the natural environment in ancient times anymore than the 'green fields' and tidy lanes of England are the 'natural environment.'