America was not a religion. It WAS once a secular common where the ideal of religious freedom was enshrined in the Constitution and then business went to work destroying that as did the religions who considered themselves the only Universe in existence. America was an apostasy to those groups. One such group has six judges on the current Supreme Court. Is it a pun to have a "Fox" news channel? Or do they all want their day in the "gaslight?"
And now there is this: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27357/?nlid=nldly <http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27357/?nlid=nldly&nld=2011-11-23 > &nld=2011-11-23 The Chinese are nothing if not highly organized and sophisticated about groups. Meanwhile in Canada and the Western U.S. there are these credit corporations....and the various internet scams that are taking down small disconnected churches, synagogues etc. scamming them on investments with outrageous fees that eat up their money from their belief in the neo-classical description of the market as the ultimate good. These corporations are like the banks have become. With the banks, instead of their making their money on secure savings and secure loans it's about the generations of high fees from credit like the Mafia except the enforcer is Congress. How did we get here? How far do we have to go back before we see the turn in the road that created it and the perpetrator? Cause and Effect are still laws of behavior. Responsibility is still the basis of justice. Will there be a scapegoat again as in the past? Will the individually successful, but ultimately powerless group, be scapegoated and treated poorly by the majority? As much as they like to call themselves culture, the wealthy are not a culture. They are a class. They are FROM cultures. When a culture, say like the Sunnis in Iraq, begin to take advantage of a larger group then....? Hutus and Tutsis.....? South Africa today..? How much power do those Tchingu Indians have in Brazil to stop that dam from destroying the remnant of their thousands of years old culture as Gardeners of the Rain Forest? Is the story of the Garden of Eden not a history but an archetype of Western human processes? It seems that groups have to have power or they are impotent to stop their ultimate demise. That's what Martin Luther King realized about African Americans and the need for a martyr. Jay Haley wrote a book about Christianity around the same issue called "The Power Politics of Jesus Christ." No one escapes and no one's bloodline has impunity. It carries down to the seventh generation and beyond. It's such an old story and the Etruscans may still be with us but they are even less visible than Cherokees. We know we are powerless and we walk very quietly thinking long ways ahead. "Leave the room as if you were never there!" Without that, we would be on the Eugenics heap again. It was only 1978 that Congress stopped the secret sterilizations of Indian women on reservations. I had already left the Army and come to New York to work in the opera world. That was the same year they legislated our right again to pray in public. We do have things to be thankful for :>)) REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Arthur Cordell Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 8:22 AM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; 'Keith Hudson' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Why a United Europe can never be Interesting to wish a UK resident Thanksgiving wishes. America is a religion. Its main holiday seems to be Thanksgiving. Now given over entirely to consumerism which seems to underlie much of the ethos of the US. I know there is more, much more but there must be many Americans who are disgusted at the outpouring of sales, deals, Black Friday etc., all overt or covert entreaties to buy, buy, buy. arthur From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ray Harrell Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 12:56 AM To: 'Keith Hudson'; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Why a United Europe can never be Happy Thanksgiving Keith, REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 11:12 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, , EDUCATION Subject: [Futurework] Why a United Europe can never be It's ominous indeed for the Eurozone (and the European Union behind it) that German-originated bonds failed to be fully taken up yesterday. Slightly more than a third of a modest auction ($8 billion) of the economically strongest nation in the Eurozone failed to find buyers. On Tuesday, this would have been so unimaginable that a bookie could have offered 100:1 against this happening and, probably, no-one would have taken the bet. This surely is the most significant event yet in the history of this grand Napoleonic reprise (because, initiated by the French, this is what the European Union and the Eurozone was meant to be). It is nothing to do with lack of confidence in Germany per se; it is a realistic assessment by objective investors that even Germany can't keep on sustaining the Eurozone as it has been doing. The attempt at a United Europe was, in truth, a French-led attempt at a new nation-state which, with a consumer base of 400 million, could serve as a powerful economic counterweight to America. This, however, can never be because it would contradict one of the plainest facts of human history. This is that any successful nation-state needs to have a predominant, and widely similar, culture within it. At the very least, it has to impose a common language as soon as possible. It's a sine qua non. As to language, examples abound. Two obvious ones are the United Kingdom where Scottish, Welsh and Irish Gaelic were ruthlessly persecuted, and the United States of America, where many Native Indian languages and French and Spanish were expunged. The apparent anomaly of China, in which 20 or 30 different languages are still spoken, has, nevertheless, been held together for 2,200 years with one written language imposed by Emperor Qin. Hilariously (if it weren't so tragic), the very bureaucratic centre of a putative United Europe, Brussels, lies in a country which has two cultures so different (each with its own language), that it hasn't had a government in over a year, and there's precious little chance of one anytime soon from what one reads. (Curiously, Belgium shares this distinction with Iraq. Now that the Kurds have removed themselves from the country, the Sunni and Shia Muslims are even more at each other's throats than they were before America invaded.) Well, I've written all that I intended to say this morning. However, there's another curiosity which might be added as a postscript. Business-wise, scientifically, artistically -- culturally, if you like -- the world is becoming a vast spider's web of many different specializations where territorial boundaries are gradually becoming increasingly exiguous. And all these lateral networks are increasingly speaking one common language -- the accidental cause being the birthplace of the industrial revolution. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/11/
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
