Obama

[AncientMariner]

7.5 THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT

 

THE REPORT FROM IRON MOUNTAIN, 1966

 

The purpose of the study was to analyze methods by which a government can perpetuate itself in power. The authors concluded that, in the past, war has been the only reliable means to achieve that goal. Under world government, however, war would be impossible so the challenge was to find other methods for controlling populations and keeping them loyal to their leaders. It concluded that a suitable substitute for war would require a new enemy which posed a frightful threat to survival. Neither the threat nor the enemy had to be real, they merely had to be believable. Several surrogates for war were considered, including a staged space-alien invasion, but the only one holding real promise was the environmental pollution model. This was viewed as the most likely to succeed because firstly, it could be related to observable conditions such as smog and water pollution - in other words, it would be based partly on fact and, therefore, believable. Secondly, predictions could be made showing end-of-earth scenarios just as horrible as atomic warfare. Accuracy in these predictions would not be important. Their purpose would be to frighten, not to inform. Not only does the environmental pollution model justify expansive and authoritarian government, it also requires citizens to impoverish themselves thereby widening the gap between leaders and followers.

Matching the Iron Mountain brief, part of the environmental movement aims to reduce living standards in the West, especially in the U.S.. The questionable intellectual credibility for this plan was provided in the benchmark publication from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Limits To Growth, commissioned by The Club of Rome in 1972. The book introduced the concept that the environment would be irrevocably damaged if its "carrying capacity" was breached. On current trends it predicted total collapse of industrial civilization in the second half of the twenty-first century unless capital and population growth were severely limited. Whilst polices designed to reduce consumption under the rubric of 'sustainable development' are high on the political agenda, real environmental health and pollution issues are either being swept under the carpet or being created by the petrochemical- pharmaceutical cartel. The last chapter of this book proves that, actually, the elite regard human beings as Earth's primary contaminant.

 

FINANCING ENVIRONMENTALISM

 

A few years after the Report from Iron Mountain was published in 1966, the environmental movement was hijacked by the banking cartel. Instead of staying focused on scientific study of conservation, it became a catch-all for a radical political agenda, now spearheaded by ex-KGB chief Mikhail Gorbachev and his Western banker colleague Stephen Rockefeller.(58)

Dr Michael Coffman's fascinating article Why Property Rights Matter, details the high-level funding of environmentalism:

 

In a dazzling display of raw power, foundations with interlocking directorates funded the Nature Conservancy in 1996 to the tune of $203,886,056, or 60 percent of its annual revenue. Initially the foundations banded together under the name Environmental Grantmakers Affinity Group of the Council on Foundations. Under the umbrella of Rockefeller Family Fund 136 foundations formed the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) in 1987 which has grown to over 200 by the end of the twentieth century. Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA) claimed in 1999 that there are "3,400 full time employees, including leaders who often make $150,000 or more, as well as a small army of outside contractors such as scientists, lobbyists, lawyers, and public affairs specialists" in Washington DC. Citing a 1999 Boston Globe article, Congressman Pombo said: …"foundations invest at least $400 million a year in environmental advocacy and research. The largest environmental grant-maker, Pew Charitable Trusts, gives more than $35 million annually to environmental groups ".....When the additional 2,300 foundations that donate to environmental activism are considered, plus the billion dollars or so contracted to environmental organizations by various agencies of the federal government, the Boston Globe [ newspaper] estimates the total funding for environmental activism to be around four billion dollars annually!".(59)

 

Substantial financing and leadership of the United Nations came directly from the corporate elite as well as from national governments. In 1946 John D. Rockefeller Jr. brought the U.N. to America by gifting $8 million for the purchase of the land for the U.N. building in New York. Canadian multi-billionaire and Rockefeller associate, Maurice Strong, was the first Director of the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) created after The Stockholm Conference, ('Earth Summit 1') in 1972. Mr Strong was secretary general of all three Earth Summits 1972, 1992, and 1997. He initiated The Earth Charter Project in 1994, the 'Ten Commandments' of sustainable development. Gorbachev was co-chair of The Earth Charter Commission and Stephen Rockefeller was Chair of the drafting committee. The ceremony to launch the Earth Charter initiative in May 2000, involved the presentation of the document to regular Bilderberg attendee, Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands. This illustrates how top-down the environmental movement is, despite its significant grass-roots support.(60)

The Earth Charter developed an earlier Rockefeller initiative, the 1972 Rockefeller Brothers Fund report entitled Use of Land: A Citizen's Policy Guide to Urban Growth. This was a bench-mark publication on subjecting property rights to government censure.(61) Ted Turner is another multi-billionaire environmentalist. In September 1997 he set up The United Nations Foundation to distribute funds to U.N programmes with a gift of (U.S.) $1 billion.(62) Former Nazi SS officer and I.G. Farben employee, Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands was one of the founders of The World Wildlife Fund in 1961.(63) Britain's Prince Philip was the first President of the World Wildlife Fund UK (WWF) from its formation in 1961 to 1982, and International President of WWF (later the World Wide Fund for Nature) from 1981 to 1996. Since 1985, World Wildlife Fund has invested over 1.5 billion dollars in 11,000 projects in 130 countries.(64) Prince Philip also founded the Alliance of Religions and Conservation in 1995.(65) Prince Charles set up The Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum in 1990 to promote environmental issues in the business world and it now has support from 65 major multinational corporations.(66)

 

RURAL CLEANSING

 

Less than 5 percent of the U.S. is urban, but urban areas comprise 77.2 percent of the population. The population density in the U.S. is only 77.7 people per square mile, compared to the U.K. which is 629.4. The reason the environmental lobby has been so successful in the U.S. since the 1970's is that the courts have generally ruled in favour of the primacy of public use when judging property rights. In the spirit of Rousseau, the thrust of the 1972 Use of Land report supported the premise that development rights of private property owners should be censured by the government. Environmental protection areas would be protected "not by purchase but through the police power of the federal government." The Endangered Species Act was passed the following year, a key weapon for restricting property rights.

The plundering of rural America has gotten so bad that a Wall Street Journal editorial on 26 July 2001, called it "rural cleansing". The WSJ cites the case in which the federal court forced the Bureau of Reclamation to cut off irrigation water in April 2001 that undeniably belonged to 1400 farmers in the Klamath Basin Irrigation Project, a watershed straddling the California and Oregon border. The action turned their once lush green farmland to swirling dust reminiscent of the Oklahoma dust bowl days of the 1930s Great Depression. The suit began in 1988 when two sucker fish were listed as "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The coho salmon was later added as a threatened species. Citing the U.S. Endangered Species Act, Oregon District Judge Ann Aiken ruled in Federal Court on April 6, 2001, to give all the water to the endangered species. The decision was the result of a lawsuit brought by the Oregon Natural Resources Council (ONRC).(67)

The WSJ claimed , "The goal of many environmental groups - from the Sierra Club to the…ONRC - is no longer to protect nature. It is to expunge humans from the countryside." Just as in the Klamath basin example, the WSJ determined that,

 

The strategy of these environmental groups is almost always the same: to sue or lobby the government into declaring rural areas off-limits to people who live and work there. The tools for doing this are the Endangered Species Act and local preservation laws, most of which are so loosely crafted as to allow a wide leeway in their implementation. In some cases the owners loose their property outright. More often the environmentalists' goal is to have restrictions placed on the land that either render it unusable or persuade owners to leave of their own accord.

 

Congressman Richard Pombo laments this attack on America's natural resource-based industries:

 

Federal policies implemented as a result of environmental advocacy financed by private foundations are trampling on property rights. They are shutting down the timber industry, the mining industry and the oil and gas industry. These policies are creating misery in rural areas dependent on resource production. Small communities and families in rural areas are reeling, while environmental groups are collecting rewards of six figure grants from rich, private foundations. Why is this sort of activity subsidized by the taxpayer?

 

The land grab is also being directed by the federal government. President Clinton used the 1906 Antiquities Act to set aside tens of millions of acres of federal land as national monuments preventing any commercial use. In 1998 he initiated the Clean Water Action Plan which withdraws thousands of miles of federal roads and also imposes buffer zones of natural habitat on private land along millions of miles of streams and rivers.(68) Following the 1968 U.N. Conference on Man and the Biosphere, the U.S. government instituted their own program called The United States Man and the Biosphere Program-U.S. MAB. There are currently 47 biosphere reserves and 20 World Heritage Sites in America, as designated by the U.N.. The counties surrounding the biosphere reserves/World Heritage Sites are "buffer zones." At some point there will be no human activity in the biospheres and the buffer zones are to protect the biospheres where there will be limited human activity.(69) This plan first appeared as part of The Wildlands Project, a grandiose design to transform 50% of the U.S. into a biosphere cleansed of modern industry and private property and the rest into buffer zones. The U.S. Senate came close to endorsing this plan in 1994 when considering ratifying the U.N. Biodiversity Treaty. At the eleventh hour it was pointed out that the study on which the Treaty was based, the 1994 Global Biodiversity Assessment, endorsed the Wildlands Project strategy.(70) The Biodiversity Treaty also proposes an unaccountable U.N. Trusteeship Council to regulate any human activity that presents potential harm to biological diversity.

With 1.8 million acres Ted Turner, billionaire and radical environmentalist, is now the largest land owner in America. According to Forbes Magazine,

 

Despite his reputation as a die-hard conservationist, the cable pioneer makes plenty of money off his land. He sells bison meat to restaurants (including his own). He opened some of his New Mexico holdings to gas and coal exploration. Timber is harvested and sold. Hunting and fishing fees generate $5 million a year. "I'm doing things as natural as I can and trying to make some money at the same time" (71)

 

URBAN SPRAWL?

 

The key principles of The Use of Land were adopted at the 1976 U.N. Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I) held in Vancouver:

 

Land... cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice... Public control of land use is therefore indispensable.

 

"Smart growth" advocates seek to preserve land in a natural or agricultural state by encouraging individuals to live in denser communities that take up smaller tracts of land per housing unit. Such communities also encourage residents to rely more on walking or public transit than on cars for mobility, and they more closely mix retail and other commercial facilities with residential units to foster easy access to jobs and shopping. The density of the average U.S. suburban area is 1-3 housing units per acre. The Sierra Club's definition of urban efficiency is 100 units per acre. Reaching that goal, however, would require living arrangements that are 2.4 times as dense as all Manhattan, twice as dense as central Paris, and ten times that of San Francisco. At least nineteen states have state growth-management laws or task forces to protect farmland and open space. Dozens of cities and counties have adopted urban growth boundaries to contain development and prevent the spread of urbanization to outlying and rural areas. Portland Oregon is a model for smart growth and since the 1970s it has had the most stringent planning laws in the U.S..(72) The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) partially funded a 2002 report called Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook: Model Statutes for Planning and the Management of Change by the American Planning Association (APA). This report not only applies the smart growth principle to future land use, but also to current land use by introducing the idea of "amortization of non-conforming uses. " This will require the local government to seize property without just compensation where property owners fail to adjust the use of their property to fit revised zoning ordinances or new plans for a particular geographical area in the community.(73)

 

REGULATING CONSUMPTION

 

One of the key concepts of the sustainable development agenda is "Factor 10". This theory proposes exponential decrease in resource use especially in OECD countries which are required to reduce material consumption by 90%. (74) The 1994 statement of the Factor Ten Club demands and end to private property:

 

The process of dematerialization must involve a shift in thinking toward the 'life-cycle' approach, meaning that improvements are in no way limited to products, but can and will have to incorporate changes in the way products are produced, packaged, transported, sold, used, reused, cascaded, recycled and disposed of... Use-sharing, renting, leasing and borrowing are just a few examples of concepts which result in reduced material flows.

 

It also demands increasing the cost of capital (natural resources) in relation to labour using taxation.(75)

Whereas the first U.N. Habitat Conference in 1974 dealt with land use issues, Habitat II in June 1996 dealt with consumption issues. The underlying theme was that people of the world would have to pay a tax for the usage or depletion of a resource in addition to the service provided. Therefore, if you pay $1.00 per thousand cubic feet for water consumed, they are then saying that they want you to pay another $1.00 for the depletion of the water used. What the World Bank and IMF are working on is to find a formula to measure how much a person produces at their job and at home. From that amount they would then subtract out how much of the Earth's resources they use such as water, energy, food, material, heat, etc.. If the net figure is a plus, the person is adding back to the Earth's resources. If it is a negative, he is taking away from the earth's resources and is therefore a bad global citizen.(76)

The conference identified Public-Private Partnership as instrumental to this task. The Public-Private Partnerships for the Urban Environment initiated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) became operational in 1996, the year of the Habitat II conference. (77) This is the key socio-economic component of the global feudal state. Whilst property is transferred into the hands of a private ruling elite, the use of that property by the masses will be regulated by a large body of laws restricting consumption and consumer choice.

As described in chapter 6, Prince Charles' Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum (PWBLF) was set up in 1990 to promote Public-Private Partnership. The official website of PWBLF makes specific reference to key role of PPP market regulation in the New World Order:

 

The International Business Leaders Forum is an international educational charity set up in 1990 to promote responsible business practices internationally that benefit business and society, and which help to achieve social, economic and environmentally sustainable development, particularly in new and emerging market economies. From the outset, the Forum has pursued three pathways:

· in making the case that in the new world order,[emphasis added] well-led and competitive businesses have a positive role to play in development challenges, through responsible core business practices and engagement with society

· in showing that - while partnership and collective action is difficult - in the networked society it is essential to combine business skills and resources with community support and public accountability

· in demonstrating that scale can only be achieved and economic exclusion addressed through `enabling environments' in which governments, international institutions and the media play a part.(78)

 

This is preparation for the strait jacket of U.N. environmental and social legislation being fastened onto to the global economy. its main purpose is to reducing living standards, restrict consumer choice, and limit property rights in order to empower the ruling elite.

 

THE GLOBAL WARMING SCAM

Relevant articles >> 1, 2, 3

 

 

 

Whilst there are many real and serious environmental problems, man-made global warming is a contrived political issue. The end of earth scenarios linked to global warming have been successful in mobilizing public opinion in favour of reducing industrial activity in order to cut CO2 emissions. However, an independent petition organized by the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine signed by 17,000 independent scientists states that increased CO2 levels do not cause deleterious changes in climate or weather; indeed they lead to increased plant growth.(79)

Iron Mountain style propaganda has resulted in a raft of anti-car measures being introduced across the developed world. Private motoring has to rank as one of the highest achievements in personal freedom of the twentieth century. Now the elite are doing everything possible to curtail that freedom. A tax on carbon is now one of the major proposals of advocates of global taxation(80) and the U.K. government has already announced plans to impose satellite vehicle tracking and road tolls (see chapter 12).

 

7.6 WAR AS A MEANS OF PLANNED WASTE

 

The blueprint for the economic destruction of the U.S through war is the policy paper entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses written by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century in year 2000. (81) It recognizes the need to pursue an indeterminate series of wars in order to protect American interests. The U.S. Government has also stated that the War on Terror may never end.

In 1984 George Orwell outlined the real Machiavellian purpose of war:

 

The primary aim of modem warfare... is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living... The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable...

 

The Report From Iron Mountain repeats Orwell's conclusion:

 

The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with economic "waste." The term is pejorative, since it implies a failure of function. But no human activity can properly be considered wasteful if it achieves its contextual objective... In the case of military "waste," there is indeed a larger social utility. In advanced modern democratic societies, the war system... has served as the last great safeguard against the elimination of necessary social classes... The continuance of the war system must be assured, if for no other reason, among others, than to preserve whatever quality and degree of poverty a society requires as an incentive, as well as to maintain the stability of its internal organization of power.

[AncientMariner]

7.7 CRIMINALIZING SOCIETY

 

OVERALL ECONOMIC COSTS OF CRIME

 

U.S. expenditure on prisons is currently $ 46 billion a year. The overall cost of crime in terms of lost productivity is in excess of $1 trillion per year.(82) Put another way, total loss of productivity due to crime is 10% of GDP (10.4 trillion in 2002). Including stolen assets the figure is $1.7 trillion. This has not come about by chance. Increasing the crime rate has been deliberate policy of the U.S. government over the last two decades and drug crime has been central to it.

 

THE WAR ON DRUGS

 

The total economic cost of drug abuse and drug crime in the U.S between 1992 and 2000 is calculated at $1.1 trillion, increasing each year from $102 billion in 1992 to $160 billion in 2000.(83) Lost productivity accounted for 69% and health costs 9%. Imprisonment is the single largest cause of lost productivity, accounting for 30% of the total.

 

THE COCAINE IMPORT AGENCY (CIA)

 

In March 1998, the CIA Inspector General testified that there had existed a secret agreement between the CIA and the Justice Department, wherein "during the years 1982 to 1995, the CIA did not have to report the drug trafficking by its assets to the Justice Department."(84)(85) As Michael Levine commented, "..[to]a trained DEA agent this literally means that the CIA had been granted a license to obstruct justice in our so-called war on drugs; a license that lasted, so the CIA claims, from 1982 to 1995." That understanding remained in effect until August of 1995, when Attorney General Janet Reno rescinded the agreement. The CIA collusion with allied drug traffickers led to the formation of a protected narcotics pipeline, resulting an increase in supply and drop in price. Former DEA agents have repeatedly pointed out that 50%-70% of the cocaine entering the U.S. went via drug cartels that enjoyed CIA protection.(86)

Despite the exponential growth in spending on the alleged "drug war", illicit drugs are cheaper and purer than they were two decades ago, and continue to be readily available. Between 1981 and 1998, the price of heroin and cocaine dropped sharply while their levels of purity rose.

 

DRUG OFFENDERS ACCOUNT FOR THE EXPLODING PRISON POPULATION

 

In 2001 the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) estimated that there were 1,586,900 State and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the U.S. an increase of 200% from the half million in arrests 1982 when the War on Drugs began. This accounted for 11.5% of all arrests.(87) The War on Drugs has resulted in the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of tens of thousands of persons each year for crimes associated with the sale, possession and use of illegal drugs. 500,000 drug offenders are in prison, 25% of a two million prison population.(88)

In 1986 and 1988 Congress enacted mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which forced judges to deliver fixed sentences to individuals convicted of a crime, regardless of culpability or other mitigating factors. The most common mandatory sentences are for 5 and 10 years, and are based on the weight of the drug or the presence of a firearm. Simple possession of any quantity of powder cocaine by first-time offenders is considered a misdemeanor, punishable by no more than one year in prison but simple possession of crack cocaine results in a five-year mandatory sentence.(89) The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offender is longer than the average sentence for rape, child molestation, bank robbery or manslaughter.(90) While the intent was to punish high-level drug offenders, the laws have had the opposite effect-jailing low-level drug offenders for unusually long sentences. Enforcement agencies focus their efforts on those minor actors in the trade who are the most easily arrested, prosecuted, and penalized, rather than on the middle and high-level criminals who are drug dealing's true masterminds and profiteers who are able to trade information in return for significantly reduced prison sentences.

Before the sentencing guideline concept took root, however, state lawmakers began enacting mandatory minimum penalties for drugs. This began in 1973 with the passage of the notorious "Rockefeller drug laws" in New York (named after then Gov. Nelson Rockefeller) requiring mandatory 15-year prison sentences for sales of small amounts of narcotics.(91)

 

THE PRISON ECONOMY

 

By increasing rates of crime and incarceration, the U.S. Government has not only reduced living standards but has laid the foundations for the new coercion economy. The warning from past and present events is that private corporations can meet a substantial portion of their labour requirements through slave labour. There's nothing wrong with putting prisoners to work providing they are genuine criminals and basic human rights are upheld. However, in both Nazi Germany and modern day China, slave labourers were not criminals, they were enemies of the state or targets of genocide; they were ruthlessly abused, tortured and murdered. Private corporations were glad to use labour under these conditions. For this reason, the exponential growth of the U.S. prison population accompanied by a deterioration of civil liberties is cause for serious concern. Also, when prison labour starts to become significant, as it now is in China, that has a negative effect on wage and employment levels.

The number of inmates in state and federal prisons has increased more than six-fold from less than 200,000 in 1970 to 1,440,655 by the end 2002. An additional 665,475 are held in local jails. As of 30 June 2002, the nation's prison and jail population exceeded 2 million for the first time in history. At the end of 2002, 1 of every 143 Americans was incarcerated, the highest incarceration rate in the world. The number of persons on probation and parole has been growing dramatically along with institutional populations. There are now 6.7 million Americans incarcerated or on probation or parole, an increase of more than 265 percent since 1980.(92)

In the U.K. the prison population was about 45,000 in 1990. By 2009 it could be as high as 107,000 according to home office predictions.(93)

The 1979 U.S. Federal Prison Industries Enhancement Certification Program gave private industry the green light to put state and federal prison inmates to work. Major companies such as Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Siemens, Microsoft and Boeing sub-contract some low-end assembly work to prisons. They can pay the same or lower wages as they would in Mexico but can use the 'made in USA' label.(94) (95) In July 2003 Dell Computer Corp. was admonished by an environmental group for running a primitive recycling operation that exposed prisoners to toxic chemicals.(96)

 

NAZI SLAVE LABOUR

 

The use of slave labour by two major German industrial giants was scrutinized at the Nuremberg Trials. I.G. Farben had an estimated 83,000 slaves at its Auschwitz factory and Krupp industries use around 75,000 slaves. However the full scale of slave labour was brought to light in 1999 when The American Jewish Committee presented the results of their investigations.(97) Aware of this investigation, major companies employed their own historians to look for skeletons in their closets. Deutsche Bank's company historian discovered that it helped finance the construction of Auschwitz from which tens of thousands of slaves were taken.(98)

In February 1999 thirteen major corporations who used slave labour came clean and agreed to set up a compensation fund for the victims to head off law suits: Allianz AG, BASF AG, Bayer AG, BMW AG, DaimlerChrysler AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Degussa-Hüls AG, Dresdner Bank AG, Friedr. Krupp AG, Hoesch-Krupp, Hoechst AG, Siemens AG and Volkswagen AG. In December 1999, The American Jewish Committee produced a list of 257 companies that used slave labour. More than 50 companies on AJC's initial list of 257 firms, including multi-nationals Shell & DEA Oil GmbH, and Ford Motor Co, joined the general compensation fund. Ten days after the list was issued, negotiators agreed on a fund totaling $5.2 billion dollars. Professor Ulrich Herbert of, University of Freiburg, an expert on Nazi slave labour points out that the firms identified on the AJC list account for just a fraction of all German companies that used slave or forced labour. Indeed, virtually every industrial company of any size in Germany used slave or forced labour. The total number of slaves is estimated at 12 million. German historians estimate that of the thousands of companies that used forced and slave labour, more than 500 are still in operation.(99)(100)

The compensation fund is now called The German Economy Foundation Initiative, whose stated purpose is,

 

...guaranteeing that all German companies, including foreign affiliates and parent companies, will be protected against lawsuits relating to the Nazi era and that they will be able to work on international markets under conditions of comprehensive and lasting legal security.(101)

 

CHINA

 

The Laogai Research Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to collecting information about China's vast system of forced-labour camps. The foundation was started by Hongda Harry Wu, who has written three books on his experiences as a Chinese prisoner for over 19 years. Currently, there are estimated eight million prisoners in China's slave labour camp system known as 'Laogai'. As a tool of political repression, the Laogai serves to silence all voices of political dissent throughout China. Once in the Laogai, inmates are forced to confess their "crimes," denounce any anti-Party beliefs and submit to a regime of reeducation and labour. Although Chinese law forbids torture and the use of torture to extract confessions, the practice remains widespread in the Laogai. Anyone in China can be held for up to three years in with no trial or sentencing procedure of any kind. All that is necessary is the directive of any official in China's Public Security Bureau. All prisoners in the Laogai are forced to labour. Labour conditions vary from region to region and camp to camp. There are many reports of prisoners working up to 16 to 18 hours a day to meet labour quotas that are enforced through withholding of food rations. Prisoners also often labour in highly unsafe conditions including work in mines and with toxic chemicals. Sometimes conditions are less arduous with more reasonable working hours and more humane treatment. Prisoners do not receive payment for their labour or any profit generated from the products they produce. According to documented evidence gathered by the Laogai Research Foundation and other human rights and media organizations, the practice of harvesting the organs of executed prisoners in China began sometime in the late 1970s. Organs harvested from prisoners are used in transplant operations for privileged Chinese and for foreigners. According to the statistics of Amnesty International, China executes more prisoners every year than the rest of the world combined.

The deliberate application of forced labour by the Chinese government has spawned an entirely new field in China's economy: the economics of slavery. One theorist clearly defined this policy in the following statement:

 

The fundamental task of our Laogai facilities is punishing and reforming criminals. To define their function concretely, they fulfill tasks in the following three ways: (1) Punishing criminals and putting them under surveillance; (2) Reforming criminals; (3) organizing criminals in labour and production, thus creating wealth for society. Our Laogai units are both facilities of dictatorship and special enterprises.

 

- Criminal Reform Handbook, PRC Ministry of Justice, Laogai Bureau,Shaanxi People's Publishers, 1988 (102)

 

Western companies are still using slave labour today on a huge scale by trading with China. The U.S. imports approximately $70 billion worth of Chinese goods.(103) The import of Chinese forced labour-made goods into the U.S. is illegal, according to section 1307 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which makes it is illegal to import any product that is produced in whole or in part by prison labour of any kind. In 1992, the need to directly confront the Chinese regarding this issue became apparent, leading to the signing of a document known as the "Memorandum of Understanding Between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China on Prohibiting Import and Export Trade in Prison Labor Products". In the most recent State Department Report on Human Rights from 1999, U.S. authorities admit that the MOU has been "nearly impossible" to enforce and that Chinese authorities have been "uncooperative. When a product is labeled "Made in China," it may hide the fact that it was made in the Laogai by Chinese prisoners. Until China reveals the extent of their Laogai production, and U.S. companies are willing to release the location of all of their manufacturing facilities in China, there is no way for the Western consumer to be certain that s/he is not financially contributing to the Laogai system.

Examples include Chrysler's joint venture in China to make Cherokees called Beijing Jeep Company and Volkswagen's joint venture in China to make the Santana model called Shanghai Volkswagen Automobile Company. The Laogai foundation investigation showed they were sourcing parts from prison labour.(104) The success of China's prison economy is evidenced by all the "made in China" toys in our shops. The China National Toy Association (CNTA) is actually a front for People's Armed Police (PAP) and the Chinese Army (PLA) Laogai system.(105)

 

7.8 DISEASE

 

Spending on health care in the U.S. is projected to rise from 14% of GDP (2000) ($1.42 trillion ), to 17% in 2011.(106) Total health care expenditure in the E.U. averages 8% of GDP. (107) The pharmaceutical companies are the major beneficiaries of disease as indicated by their market value. At the time of writing, Britain's GlaxoSmithKline was Britain's fourth largest company. Pfizer was America's fourth largest company and the fourth largest in the world. Novartis was Switzerland's largest company, 35% larger than second place Nestle. The world's top ten drug/healthcare companies had a total market value of $ 1.1 trillion (see chapter 2).

What we are witnessing is on the one hand is a form of indenture through illness, a pharmaceutical feudalism. As disease increases so does the tariff that society pays to the petrochemical sorcerers who provide symptomatic treatments and abuse their power over medical research to block any curative or preventative treatments. However the other Orwellian economic goal of public health policy is to make us poorer. Nothing illustrates this second point better than the emergence of extremely disabling new diseases during the 1980s which are described in the final chapter of this book. The economic consequences of Western public health policy are clear from the statistics of disability, unemployment and healthcare spending. The percentage of the population who are disabled is similar in Europe and the U.S.. In the E.U., disability is estimated to affect 10-20% of each country's population and the U.K. and U.S. both have 15% disabled.(108)(109) So much for the medical 'breakthroughs' of the twentieth century. In the U.K. 3.8 million disabled people of working age are out of work, 11% of the total 34 million of working age. In the U.S., 13 million disabled people of working age are out of work 8.5% of the total 159 million of working age. Incomes of households with at least one disabled person are 20-30% lower than the incomes of all households. For Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volcker and Co. who require a substantial decline in living standards in the West, these statistics represent success not failure of the healthcare system.

 

CONCLUSION

 

The dream of prosperity for all is dying out around the world. Developing countries which had an expanding middle class in the early 1980s have been ransacked. Almost 5 billion people on the planet do not have basic property rights enjoyed in the West. At the same time, Westerners are getting poorer year by year. In the U.K., the enormous increase in house prices has made home ownership an impossibility for most young people.

[Amlesh]

 

It doesn't matter if he just sits and makes no change whatsoever. He is still a government official who is officially running the government.

 

Another thing, anarchy is the lack of any sort of governmental order whatsoever. Even if we go with your interpretation - that the president elect might not do anything, making it some sort of unofficial anarchy - it still isn't an anarchy. America will still have Congress under Obama. It will still have a House of Representatives and a Senate. It will still have state governments and courts.

 

So, no matter how you feel about Obama, America, I'm almost certain, will not be an anarchy within four years time. That is, unless you think that Congress will be abolished, the Senate will be abolished, the House of Representatives will be abolished, all state governments will be abolished, and all courts in the United States will be shut down.

Don't get personal buddy, I don't have anything to do with Obama in the personal basis.. I'll gauge him as a president.

 

I would do the same even if Mr Pingolo would have sat there.

 

The Definition of Anarchy does not limit to the point you've evoked but also to "inefficiency of the supreme power" --- Wiki

 

I'll point to what the Gita says "One who sees action in action and inaction in action really sees."

Sometimes action is inaction and inaction is action.

Let's analyse:

It is said by Sri Hari Himself in the Gita, "Even though for ME there is no obligation, Still I act."

There might be an aparent contradiction with the statement of ""One who sees action in action and inaction in action really sees.""

But in reality it is not so.

The best example is the Non-Cooperation movement of Gandhiji. They refused to cooperate with British. They did not act, but still they acted.

The result was quite evident later on... THE Indian showed the whole, what is called freedom and liberty with the power of spirit as their sole weapon.

 

Now we might have Government like those of Hitler, that acted a lot in terms of activity.. but in reality even though action but in absolute Truth was inaction.. since such endeavors are not fruitful.

 

If Obama is really working out some plans for the Eternal benefit of our World with some meaningful Ends then it is action else even though Working, it is in fact Anarchy.

 

There is no use in beating around the bush or flipflopping in terms of usage of our resources.

Today if this world is in this chaotic situation, it is because our near ancestors started to limit their vision due to their greed and lust.

 

What we need is a statesmanship and not expert shows of Diplomacy.

 

Remember any action undertaken now definitely has a repercussion in the coming future.

So someone working in front of me with duplicity is infact a Kaam Chor.

[suchandra]

With the current focus on Akshaya Patra and its functioning, some news

to consider. President-elect Barack Obama's recently wrote a letter

appreciating Akshaya Patra.

[Amlesh]

 

With the current focus on Akshaya Patra and its functioning, some news

to consider. President-elect Barack Obama's recently wrote a letter

appreciating Akshaya Patra.

It's a nice beginning.

[Deathless]

It is, isn't it.

[theist]

Staff letter response most likely.

[Samia]

Nothing is more genuine than making " private " letters public.