re-2/ climate, thrive, and propaganda

[Richard Moore]

Bcc: FYI

rkm website: http://cyberjournal.org

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re/ climate, thrive, and propaganda

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberjournal/message/537

Tasha Polak wrote:

rkm> I don't think a film about abstractions and ideas would be very useful.

check out TOM SHADYAC'S DOCUMENTARY, I AM

Thanks Tasha! I couldn't find the whole doc online, but I found a preview and a very good interview:

   preview:

http://iamthedoc.com/

   interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS9KrXHV3HY&feature=related

His theme is about how everything is connected, and empathy is the natural human condition. I'd love to talk with him about a follow-up, where the theme would be about how empathy and connectedness can be manifested as self-governance.

rkm

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Thomas Greco wrote:

Richard,

Regarding THRIVE, I wholeheartedly agree with you that the "solution" priorities are backwards. That occurred to me as well when i first read them. 

The political machinery has been so thoroughly captured by the elite superclass (the 0.01%) that any reform is impossible. We The People must recognize the power we have and exercise it, not in isolation, but cooperatively by building communities.  

At the same time, I'm not inclined to question the sincerity of the Gambles. I don't know them, but I realize that we are all products of our backgrounds and circumstances, and that colors our perspective on things.

There is no question that government has become massively intrusive and needs to be reigned in. Of course, the corporate/capitalist interests use that fact to arrogate even more power to themselves while the people suffer ever greater oppression.

Georgia Kelly and some others have also been critical of THRIVE. They have produced a document titled, Deconstructing the Political Agenda Behind Thrive

Ms. Kelly presumes to speak for progressives when she says,

"Certainly, progressives can find common ground with some of the problems Gamble identifies in the film. We do not want GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in our food supply. We want to stop bank bailouts. We oppose wiretapping and the indefinite detention of American citizens. However, our solutions are very different from the ones posed by libertarians and promoted in Thrive."

She seems to equate the word libertarian and libertarian philosophy with the right-wing deregulation that has turned American democracy into a corrupt kleptocracy.

In its pure form, libertarianism means freedom for people to direct their own lives and to achieve the fullest realization of their potential. It is at the heart of the American spirit and is the aspiration of people around the world.  We should not be misled by the extreme individualistic and materialistic views that may characterize the current Libertarian Party and the Corporatists.  

Corporatists want less power for the government and more power for corporations. Populists want less power for government and more power for the people. Many left-leaning progressive still see government as the primary instrument for solving civil problem.

Alvin Toffler recognized more than 30 years ago that the power of government is being attacked BOTH from above and below.

We are now in the process of developing entirely new ways of ordering society.

Sergio Lub has proposed a debate between the THRIVE producers and its critics. I think that would be very productive.  

It should be recorded and widely disseminated. 

Tom

I alway find it useful to identify the yin and the yang of any given situation. As regards the relationship between an individual and society, the yang is individual self-realization, and the yin is being part of a community. In all things, harmony is the key: the right balance of yin and yang.

This ties in with with Tom Shadyac's experience, while he was making  I AM. His eyes were opened during the filming to how he was over-emphasizing yang in his life, and he was transformed by that realization. 

Libertarianism is basically an expression of the yang, with yin absent. Self-realization is a good thing, but if that is not balanced by a sense of belonging to community, then the community suffers to that degree a lack of coherence, and the individual suffers to that degree from psychological isolation / sterility.

A certain breed of wannabe libertarians emerged in the 1980s, as part of the Reagan me-generation energy wave, and the breed expanded when Internet newsgroups came along and anyone could become an overnight pundit. This breed exhibits an actual hostility to community. Anything with a cooperative flavor to it is spurned: automobiles good; public transit bad. I suppose it ties in with the Ayn Rand cult. 

You say about libertarianism:

It is at the heart of the American spirit and it is the aspiration of people around the world.

How true, and how sad. The American Dream has always been about yang on steroids, Horatio Alger 'doing it his way', individualism über alles. And Hollywood spreads the yang yearning-for-more around the world, destabilizing cultures wherever there's a silver screen. 

And as with the me-generation libertarians, the American Dream is hostile to community, and to the kind of culture that nurtures community. There is for example the 'melting pot' paradigm: Abandon your culture all ye who enter here – you are vanilla Americans now. And then there's mobility: family without roots, shifting locations to get better jobs – the job and its salary: the definitions of self-identity and self-worth. 

What the world needs right now is one huge injection of yin, and Thrive is trying to sell us on the virtues of yang. You say:

I'm not inclined to question the sincerity of the Gambles. I don't know them

With Thrive, the Gambles have become public figures with a public message, just like Gore with his carbon-scare vid. With public figures, particularly with those who take great care in crafting their message, it becomes acceptable to speculate about their motives, based on the consequences of their message. It is not unreasonable to entertain the possibility that the consequences are intentional. 

rkm

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jeff wefferson wrote:

rkm...it's funny how if you don't buy 'global warming' or 'climate change' as being our GREATEST DANGER or even real, then you automatically WORK FOR THE 'CARBON INDUSTRY' which is itself a ridiculous belief.  Just like if you criticize anything Israeli or Zionist or Jewish, then you are automatically 'anti-'semitc' which is ALSO stupid, as ALL ARAB PEOPLE are 'Semitic."  NO one can comprehend the complexity necessary to understand anything.

I just realized this:  that ALL the 'global warming' and 'climate change' stuff in recent years has occurred PRECISELY with the advent of 'owning the weather" proclamations by the AF and "weather war' scenarios AND the bringing on line of HAARP and the whole system of technetronic weapons.

"Global warming"...where it might actually be happening...which means it isn't global right?...and 'climate change'...which can't happen in a few years because by definition climate per se occurs over long periods of time...ANYWAY...all these things are REALLY the result of WAR ON THE ATMOSPHERE.  'Global warming' and 'climate change' are COVERS for these military operations AND hoaxes with hidden agendas to further globalization and control.

Also, did you know that the U.S. Navy owns and operates more nuclear reactors than the rest of the world put together, over 500 belong to them and where do you reckon they dispose of all that radioactive waste? jeff

Actually climate does change very rapidly, and on a regular basis, at the beginning and end of ice ages. And we are now on the verge of a descent into the next ice age. That's yet another irony of the global warming scam.

rkm

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Milton Block wrote:

rkm> The thing that really gets me is this issue about funding. It is global warming alarmism that gets all the funding. Not just for research, but for all the propaganda messages in documentaries, news broadcasts, editorial pages, and so on. It's a major, global, propaganda-campaign / psy-op. Articles like the one in the Guardian are a central part of that psy-op, aimed at discrediting those who try to expose the fraud.  

 

BRAVO Rkm!

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