BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Pressure on Europe’s bird species
Yet another study showing that nature is having a tough time putting up with the current level of “economic activity”. It is always at the margins that the strain shows first, but this study shows that many birds we think of as common are in trouble. Given that the root meaning of economics is the art of keeping house, can we really say our activity is “economic” if all the other creatures that share our house, this world, are struggling? If we do not watch these things, and through our awareness make changes to our behaviour such that we cause less damage, we will suffer more in the future than we can now imagine.
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BBC NEWS | Business | Dollar decline gathers momentum
The American Economy has long borrowed against the future but when President Bush claimed during his election campaign that he would continue his good economic management few economists believed anything he said. Firstly the debts of the state and individuals have been going ever skyward, secondly the trade deficit was also increasing alarmingly. The “good economic management” of the Bush administration is now coming home to roost. Now the money men have got their arch-backer back in power they will tighten the noose on the US economy until it seriously falters. Given that the situation in Iraq looks likely to have continually mounting costs and make the international economy ever more delicate, many Americans are going to have to seriously downsize their economic hopes over the coming three to four years. It is unlikely that the US will escape without a serious faltering of economic activity and the decline to unprecedented levels of the dollar in international currency markets is the foretaste. There really is no such thing as a free lunch, Mr Bush, nor a free war. And no - God won’t come and save you either - because he really does not care for you or your wars or lies.
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More, and more recent work, from Katherine van Wormer
“In 2004 alone, major commercial publishers have published or will publish at least 25 books attacking the character and policies of George W. Bush.”
“Missing in all these studies is the answer to that question-why. Why was Bush obsessed with Iraq? My theory is this: We must seek the answer in an ambivalent father-son relationship coupled with the son’s almost ferocious drive to prove himself to his father and to outdo him at the same time.”
“If you study or even skim George W.’s biography, you will quickly see the patterns-the kid who lived in the shadow of his father, the mediocre performance in the same schools where his father’s reputation as a sports hero and scholar still survived, the gaining of a reputation as a prankster. George Jr.’s drinking bouts caused trouble in the military as well. His father was hardly pleased.”
“This is why Iraq, not Afghanistan, was the source of Bush’s mission, why he surrounded himself with advisers who also saw the world in terms of good and evil and who had their own motives-oil business or whatever-for heading an invasion of this particular country. Bush was driven toward Iraq because his father had fought Iraq, a battle that was not quite finished.”
“In short, there is a madness in Bush’s method. To understand that is to understand the why of Iraq.”
Katherine van Wormer is Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa and the co-author of Addiction Treatment: A Strengths Perspective, 2003, Wadsworth.
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From: “Dry Drunk” Syndrome and
George W. Bush
by KATHERINE van WORMER
This is old but it makes such sense, and helps us to realise that Bush is deluded, not evil.
“To summarize, George W. Bush manifests all the classic patterns of what alcoholics in recovery call “the dry drunk.” His behavior is consistent with barely noticeable but meaningful brain damage brought on by years of heavy drinking and possible cocaine use. All the classic patterns of addictive thinking that are spelled out in my book are here:
the tendency to go to extremes (leading America into a massive 100 billion dollar strike-first war);
a “kill or be killed mentality;” the tunnel vision;
“I” as opposed to “we” thinking;
the black and white polarized thought processes (good versus evil, all or nothing thinking).
His drive to finish his father’s battles is of no small significance, psychologically.
If the public (and politicians) could only see what Fulbright noted as the pathology in the politics. One day, sadly, they will.
Katherine van Wormer is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Northern Iowa Co-author of Addiction Treatment: A Strengths Perspective (2002).”
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It’s the fifth of November, “Guy Fawkes Night”, “Bonfire Night” or “Fireworks Night” - a night when here in the United Kingdom we celebrate a terrorist failure, the conspiracy that nearly blew up Parliament on 5 November 1605.
All very well you think, but the fact is that this night is possibly the most defining celebration of Britishness in our calendar. Enough pyrotechnics will go off tonight in Britain to fight a small war with. It seems to me completely incongruous that here we are, in the middle of an Orwellian “war on terror” and the whole of Britain gives up thinking for a night to celebrate a guy who tried to blow up the mother of all parliaments. But then, are we really celebrating him and his plan? No - we celebrate his failure of course, even though in our heart of hearts we all know that we do not wish nor need for governance, but freedom. The kind of freedom Guy et al wished to deliver to us. Of course, Osama Bin Laden et al want to deliver a different kind of freedom to us: the freedom to see the world how they think we should see it and do things as they think they should be done. And Mr Bush et al?
Let’s face it, the American population voted in Mr Bush out of fear of doing anything different. And when you do things from fear you are being swayed by terrorism. That is the point of it. And let us go the whole hog and ask the question, who has induced and who has most to gain from this fear? The answer: Mr Bush, Mr Cheney, their families and cronies, the American Arms and Oil industries and let’s not forget, the Saudi Royal Family - including the Bin Laden clan.
The War on Terror Mr Bush? It’s time to turn yourself in. War Criminal Number One.
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Oh dear. Looks like Bush has won and my analysis was pretty accurate. Its a shame really, to be right when you want to be wrong, but then better to be aware and awake than to be in dreamland.
Unless there is a big turnaround in Ohio over the next few hours, Mr Bush will be President for the coming five years (OK, OK, four and a bit). His narrow understanding of himself, human life, and the universe we all live in will cost us all. His poor decisions, narcisistic self-importance (I believe God wants me in the Whitehouse - scary) and the right wing fundamentalism of his team will strengthen and support all the trends in the world which are about the 20th century and weaken those related to the 21st. See The Turning Point by Fritjof Capra if you don’t know what I am getting at. At least now we know his tenure is time-limited. Although, come to think of it, his buddy Osama might arrange an increase in terror on US soil so severe that before the next election that he tries, and succeeds, in changing the constitution so he can play his games a little longer. Hmmn, I think I should stay away from predictions.
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The waiting is over and we will learn by tomorrow who will be President of America for the next five years. A last look at the Blogpulse trend analysis graphs I have been studying shows convincingly that Bush will win in a landslide or something close to it. If this proves to be true i’ll frankly be amazed at my own success in prediction and horrified at the result.
It should not matter to me in a world where things made good sense and a world where justice prevailed. In this 21st century nightmare world, the real world we inhabit, that is not true. Political and military power mean that the person in this job will make decisions that change my world and life. I do not want George Walker Bush to have that power any longer. How can America think he is up to the job? Don’t they watch TV? Ha ha.
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John Kerry has today been elected President of the World in a landlslide victory giving the big thumbs up to peace, truth and justice. The worldwide electorate voted online via www.us-election.org and gave Kerry a massive landslide with 69% of the vote. Unfortunately voter turnout was remarkably low at just 25,000, although it has to be said this may be a larger number of persons than will swing the real thing.
What a nice idea. Shame more people didn’t hear of it and vote.
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Whether the political sphere you are involved in be the heady hieghts of Washington or your local nieghbourhood, or even just within your family this piece is relevant. For don’t be fooled, politics is not just what we see white men in suits doing on the television. Politics is everywhere because politics is the power relationships that exist throughout society.
Jack Kornfield writes on Dharma and Politics
“But how, as dharma practitioners, do we find our own place in a complex political world, and find a way towards peace? Our first task is to make our own heart a zone of peace. Instead of becoming entangled in an embattled bitterness, or cynicism that exists externally, we need to begin to heal those qualities within ourselves. We have to face our own suffering, our own fear, and transform them into compassion. Only then can we become ready to offer genuine help to the outside world. Albert Camus writes, “We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves.”
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As some of you know I have been having a lot of fun with Blogpulse.com’s Trend anlysis tool
A meta-summary chart looking for blogs where Bush is mentioned winning or being good or Kerry as losing or being evil, plotted against the opposite propositions shows exactly why I have made the prediction that I have regarding this election.
I still hope I am wrong.
The chart: It’s all in the blogs
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