Just Blame Fred

Many years ago, a large prominent figure wrote an essay by the name, “The World as I see It.” In no way do I presume to even approach the stature of the man who wrote that — Albert Einstein.

However, we do live in a different world than Einstein’s in many respects. For starters, the geopolitical landscape is far different today than it was then. Today’s world affairs are borne on the back of what took place since Einstein’s time.

And yet, in many respects, not much have changed. We still have silly “tribal” conflicts and squabblings, and big “tribes” love to beat up on the smaller “tribes”, and the smaller “tribes” will fight back by any means possible against the bigger “tribes”.

But what about the major differences? In today’s world, we have a level of hyper-connectivity that has never existed before in the history of mankind — the Internet. We also have diversification of wealth at levels that have never existed before. We have mass travel, where anyone can travel great distances to any part of the world in just a few hours and some bucks. We also have far more people alive today than then. We also have diversified levels of education and knowledge that would’ve been the stuff of Science Fiction back in Einstein’s era. And many other wonders.

We also have the specter of ultra-powerful hyper-stable governments that are firmly entrenched and very controlling. We have military machines, weapons, and other technology that would’ve been beyond the imagination of many back then.

And for the first time in human history, humans have the power to wipe itself clean off the map at just the “push of a button”. Those, that “button” currently resides in the hands of the most powerful governments, but the danger increases as that power becomes more distributed among the lesser nations.

Alas, nuclear weapons are not the only threat to our existence. Biological threats exists as well, and as biotechnology progresses, the more possible it will become for anyone to engineer a biological threat that can wipe out large numbers of people.

On the other hand, big powerful governments and corporations are controlled by the hands of a few whose agendas and goals may not be in the best interests of the individual. Pharmaceutical companies may push governments to institute mandates for vaccines that may not be necessary or safe. Military contractors may influence governments to choose military options over diplomatic ones to keep themselves on the gravy train. Big Finance may convince governments to allow them to cowboy the economy. And so on.

Meanwhile, the “little guys” — you and I — are caught in the middle of all of this. Activities of the “Big Boys” may wipe us out individually without the Boys even knowing it, like kids horsing around in a playground trampling ants. Military conflicts sacrifice the lives of innocent men, women, and children to serve some geopolitical — or geo-corproate interest. Entire villages of the “little people” may be bombed out of existence in the efforts to “war against terrorism.”

If you are one of those villiagers, who is the true terrorist in your eyes as you watch your hut go up in flames or one of your kids fragged by an exploding bomb?

Or here in the US, you may be someone who have worked hard all of your life to have a “nest-egg” to rely on in your retirement — except the IRAs and the 401K investments were wiped out in value by downturns in the equities markets.

And it gets even better. Developing nations are creating greater and greater demands for resources that are finite both in absolute size and in the ability to exploit them for use. China and India are probably the two fastest growing in this regard, but there are others as well. Utilization of those resources also creates concomitant impacts on the environment, which is also limited in scope and its ability to adapt to human activities.

Where is all of this headed? What will be the end result?

My concerns are as follows:

1. The Forever Resource Wars — in some form or fashion, resource wars will not only continue, but grow in aggression amidst the deceptions, the propagandas, and the outright lies to “justify” the wars back at home. The allocation of intellectual and financial resources to fight the resource wars put a net drain on the global economy as a hole, not to mention destruction of wealth of the victim nations, deaths to millions of innocent lives, and a dimunition of what it means to be human.
2. Financial and Social Instabilities brought on by Dwindling Resources — as resources become increasingly scarce, prices will rise, destabilizing the financial and social picture on a global scale. More propaganda will be promulgated by the Big Governments to divert people away from the true problems to blame each other, only creating more unrest, socially and geo-politically, feeding the push for The Forever Resource Wars, and other nasties.
3. Ecological Impacts that may be Irreversible — Human activities on a global scale that results in the release of even more carbon and various pollutants into the atmosphere and the biosphere in general, which will have nonlinear and unpredictable impacts on the environment, which most likely will feed into Financial and Social Instabilities, among other things.
4. A Negative Synergism — an emergence of a global set of problems emerging from the interplay of the first 3, which in and of itself might take on an irreversible mode leading to a downward spiral of the overall well-being of humans on this planet.

Note that my above 4 concerns cannot be taken in isolation, but must all be considered. We may project  best-case scenarios and worst-case scenarios from the above, across time into the future.  Some may argue that there is no cause for concern, but it is hard to see how we should not be at least a little concerned given the issues at hand.

It is my estimation that the “Big Boys” will not appreciate the full impact of the above until it is too late — that is, until after its beyond the point of no return. And even if they did, what would they do? Would their major concern be what’s best for us individuals? Or what’s best for themselves? Would they seek to maintain status quo? Or do the right thing? What exactly would they do? That is the question of ages.

There are certain fallacies the “Big Boys” operate from. They are:

1. The Fallacy of Infinite Growth — this bedevils both the financial and resource markets. Both assume that they can continue to have “infinite growth” despite the very obvious and plain fact that resources and people are finite.
2. The Fallacy of “Might Makes Right” — just because loads of  “power” does not mean it’s a good thing to use that power against the individual. If it increases suffering somewhere, how is it ever “right”?
3. The Fallacy of the Assumption that the “Little Guy” can always be “controlled” — You can only fool individuals so many times before they catch on.

The immediate question that comes to mind is what can we do about it, as individuals? As individuals, we acquese power and control to the power elite, collectively, and those few that resist are put down by other individuals that have bought into the “power of authority”. Thus, you have police arresting people even if they’ve done no wrong, soliders kicking the doors in of innocent families even that family has done nothing wrong, etc. Ultimately, we are talking about the little guy being pitted against the little guy at the behest of the “Big Boys”.

But the Big Boys would not have any power or dominance unless there’s acquiescence. It’s just that plain and simple.

More on this later.

If I was angry before, you have no idea how much now.

Just looked at today’s issue of the Boston Herald (28-July-2009). This paper seems like a rag, but it did a good story on the Gates affair, including publishing the transcripts of the 911 call.

As the aid told Londo in Babylon 5 before Londo went on a rage and broke everything in his room after he found out he’d been “played like a fiddle”, The Details are Everything.

After reading the transcripts myself, it is clear that:

1. Crowley lied about being told that “it was 2 Black men with backpacks”. The 911 tapes revealed that he was told that there were 2 men, race unknown, maybe one was a “Hispanic”, and there were suitcases. Not backpacks, but suitcases!
2. Whalen, the woman who made the 911 call, was asked about the “race” of the 2 men, but said she did not know.
3. Crowley report back to HQ that he had the ID of “Henry Louis Gates”, which presumably would have his address on it!
4. Crowley claim that Gates screamed and became “belligerent”, but there was no evidence of this in the tapes. Just soft-spoken voices.
5. Whalen has come forward and openly contradicted Sgt. Crowley’s claim of “2 Black men”. She wants to clear her name in this highly charged affair.

What conclusions can we draw from this?

It is clear that Sgt. Crowley is a big fat liar, as are many police. As they were in my case similar to the Gates Incident 10 years ago. Whalen had no motivaion to lie. She was just accurately reporting what she saw, and not one whit more.

Crowley obviously knew that Gates lived at that home when he arrested him. Crowley obviously knew about the suitcases, as he was told that by the dispatcher. Crowley had every reason to believe and know that Gates just got back from a trip.

The facts, to a reasonable person, would lead that person to conclude that Gates was not a criminal, but simply got locked out of his house has he claimed. The reasonable person would see no need to put this distinguished professor in handcuffs.

But we are talking police here, so toss all reason and logic out of the window. Crowley obviously wanted to assert his “authority” over this professor who had done no wrong, and had already proven his identity and the fact that that was his house. Besides, a robber would not want to hang about for long and most likely would have been gone by the time the cops arrived.”I don’t care what “good record” Crowley had before this incident. He indeed did “act stupidly” as the President proclaimed, as did the Nashua Police Anthony Pivero and Eric Nordengren did in my P. Uno case 10 years ago.

Was Crowley’s “stupid actions” motived by race? Or just a general power trip cops typically like weilding on everyone? Who knows? Does it matter, really?

I therefore make a general call to all who have been wronged by rogue cops to take action. Do  NOT let these rogue cops get away with trampling our rights. Do not let these rogue cops get away with their power trips at our expense. Sue them. Go to the media. Video them and immediately upload the videos to youtube. TAKE EVERY LEGAL ACTION you can to put these rogue cops back in their place!

They like saying that “Freedom is Never Free”. Well, let’s get to the freedom first.

911 and Dispacher Audio can be heard here. But here’s the transcripts of the exerpts as published in The Boston Hearld.