“It is the mark of an intelligent educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Of an even higher intelligence is the mind that is able to entertain conflicting thoughts without prejudice and preference until such time that the merits of each are fully manifest and thus allow for the correct choice”

-Aristotle

Our post on desertification has been an eye opener for many around the world and yet I must admit, we have only scratched the surface – if even that – because the problems facing us are extremely difficult to address through the ways we’ve used in the past to cope with mega issues affecting humanity — Yet we remain optimistic:  http://wp.me/pcacD-1SH

 

But that was just the beginning.

Because now you have to brace yourself…

You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the Earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced.

Two nightmare scenarios—a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate change—are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition and conflict. Just what this tsunami of disaster will look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate refugees (with resulting anti-migrant violence), and the breakdown of social order or the collapse of states. At first, such mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia and other areas of the underdeveloped South, but in time all regions of the planet will be affected.

To appreciate the power of this encroaching catastrophe, it’s necessary to examine each of the forces that are combining to produce this future cataclysm.

Start with one simple given: the prospect of future scarcities of vital natural resources, including energy, water, land, food and critical minerals. This in itself would guarantee social unrest, geopolitical friction and war.

It is important to note that absolute scarcity doesn’t have to be on the horizon in any given resource category for this scenario to kick in. A lack of adequate supplies to meet the needs of a growing, ever more urbanized and industrialized global population is enough.

We are now in the midst of a Great Extinction period that is wholly man made. It is called the Anthropocene period and as such it will be remembered for it’s colossal loss of millions of species of Life. Untold millions of species up on the evolutionary ladder are shuttered because us humans have no patience with other life forms. Given the wave of extinctions that scientists are recording, some resources—particular species of fish, animals and trees, for example—will become less abundant in the decades to come, and may even disappear altogether. But key materials for modern civilization like oil, uranium and copper will simply prove harder and more costly to acquire, leading to supply bottlenecks and periodic shortages.

Oil—the single most important commodity in the international economy—provides an apt example. Although global oil supplies may actually grow in the coming decades, many experts doubt that they can be expanded sufficiently to meet the needs of a rising global middle class that is, for instance, expected to buy millions of new cars in the near future. In its 2011 World Energy Outlook, the International Energy Agency claimed that an anticipated global oil demand of 104 million barrels per day in 2035 will be satisfied. This, the report suggested, would be thanks in large part to additional supplies of “unconventional oil.”  Canadian tar sands, shale oil, frackin oil, and so on, as well as 55 million barrels of new oil from fields “yet to be found” and “yet to be developed” are the post peak oil outlook.

However, many analysts scoff at this optimistic assessment, arguing that rising production costs for energy that will be ever more difficult and costly to extract, environmental opposition, warfare, corruption and other impediments will make it extremely difficult to achieve increases of this magnitude. In other words, even if production manages for a time to top the 2010 level of 87 million barrels per day, the goal of 104 million barrels will never be reached and the world’s major consumers will face virtual, if not absolute, scarcity.

Water provides another potent example. On an annual basis, the supply of drinking water provided by natural precipitation remains more or less constant: about 40,000 cubic kilometers. But much of this precipitation lands on Greenland, Antarctica, Siberia and inner Amazonia where there are very few people, so the supply available to major concentrations of humanity is often surprisingly limited. In many regions with high population levels, water supplies are already relatively sparse. This is especially true of North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East, where the demand for water continues to grow as a result of rising populations, urbanization and the emergence of new water-intensive industries. The result, even when the supply remains constant, is an environment of increasing scarcity.

Wherever you look, the picture is roughly the same: supplies of critical resources may be rising or falling, but rarely do they appear to be outpacing demand, producing a sense of widespread and systemic scarcity. However generated, a perception of scarcity—or imminent scarcity—regularly leads to anxiety, resentment, hostility and contentiousness. This pattern is very well understood, and has been evident throughout human history.

In his book Constant Battles, for example, Steven LeBlanc, director of collections for Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, notes that many ancient civilizations experienced higher levels of warfare when faced with resource shortages brought about by population growth, crop failures or persistent drought. Jared Diamond, author of the bestselling book,  Collapse, has detected a similar pattern in Mayan civilization and the Anasazi culture of New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon. More recently, concern over adequate food for the home population was a significant factor in Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and Germany’s invasions of Poland in 1939 and the Soviet Union in 1941, according to Lizzie Collingham, author of The Taste of War.

Although the global supply of most basic commodities has grown enormously since the end of World War II, analysts see the persistence of resource-related conflict in areas where materials remain scarce or there is anxiety about the future reliability of supplies. Many experts believe, for example, that the fighting in Darfur and other war-ravaged areas of North Africa has been driven, by competition among desert tribes for access to scarce water supplies, exacerbated in some cases by rising population levels.

“In Darfur,” says a 2009 report from the U.N. Environment Programme on the role of natural resources in the conflict, “recurrent drought, increasing demographic pressures, and political marginalization are among the forces that have pushed the region into a spiral of lawlessness and violence that has led to 300,000 deaths and the displacement of more than two million people since 2003.”

Anxiety over future supplies is often also a factor in conflicts that break out over access to oil or control of contested undersea reserves of oil and natural gas. In 1979, for instance, when the Islamic revolution in Iran overthrew the Shah and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Washington began to fear that someday it might be denied access to Persian Gulf oil. At that point, President Jimmy Carter promptly announced what came to be called the Carter Doctrine. In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter affirmed that any move to impede the flow of oil from the Gulf would be viewed as a threat to America’s “vital interests” and would be repelled by “any means necessary, including military force.”

In 1990, this principle was invoked by President George H.W. Bush to justify intervention in the first Persian Gulf War, just as his son would use it, in part, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Today, it remains the basis for U.S. plans to employ force to stop the Iranians from closing the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which about 35 percent of the world’s seaborne oil commerce  passes.

The Economist Intelligence Unit published their list of short term threats and Risk analysis:  ”Rising political risks are combining with fading economic performance in key countries to dampen the global business and financial outlook. A sharp increase in tensions on the Korean peninsula has emerged as the greatest geo-political risk: a military conflict between the two Koreas, which inevitably would involve the US, would shred economic and investor confidence in the region and push key parts of the world economy back into recession. Although we expect Korean tensions to stop well short of war, they come at a time of mounting pressures on other fronts. Virtually no progress has been made between Western powers and Iran over its nuclear programme; China and Japan remain at odds over ownership of a small group of islands, and the civil war in Syria continues to pose a spill-over risk within the region. Tensions within the euro zone over bail-outs and fiscal austerity leave the region vulnerable to political miscalculations. Cyprus is the latest example and the seemingly endless budget showdowns in the US between the two political parties threaten to hold back what otherwise appears to be an improving economic outlook.

Risk scenarios: The main risks are represented by the following scenarios.

Very high risk = greater than 40% probability that the scenario will occur over the next two years; high = 31-40%; moderate = 21-30%; low = 11-20%; very low = 0-10%.

Very high impact = change to global annual GDP compared with the baseline forecast of 2% or more (increase in GDP for positive scenarios, decrease for negative scenarios); high = 1-1.9%; moderate = 0.5-0.9%; low = 0.2-0.5%; very low = 0-0.1%.

Risk intensity is a product of probability and impact, on a 25-point scale.

Negative scenario: One or more countries leave the euro zone

High risk; Very high impact; Risk intensity = 20

Although the general sense of crisis surrounding the euro zone has lessened markedly in recent months, the recent inconclusive Italian election and the botched bail-out of Cyprus are reminders of the continued precariousness of the situation…

Negative scenario: Tensions over currency manipulation lead to a rise in protectionism

High risk; High impact; Risk intensity = 16

Tensions surrounding real and alleged currency manipulation have risen markedly, with the Bank of Japan’s adoption of an ultra-loose monetary policy (following considerable pressure from the country’s new government) prompting a dramatic weakening of the yen. In response, the People’s Bank of China has carefully managed a weakening of the renminbi, prompting protectionist measures elsewhere. Currency manipulations and Large-scale protectionism would seriously slow economic growth.

Negative scenario: The global economy falls into recession

Moderate risk; Very high impact; Risk intensity = 15

With the debt crisis in the euro zone continuing to fester, the US economy underperforming and growth in several major emerging markets (including India) remaining weak, the risk of another global recession cannot be discounted. Indeed, a combination of policymaking paralysis and geopolitical uncertainty could depress sentiment once again, weakening hiring and spending and pushing the euro zone deeper into recession. The US is also at risk: the president and Congress have repeatedly failed to address comprehensively the country’s substantial fiscal problems.

Positive scenario: A sustained decline in oil prices provides a global economic fillip

Moderate risk; High impact; Risk intensity = 12

We are expecting oil prices to soften somewhat this year, before gently rising to around US$115/barrel in 2017. There is, however, a significant chance that oil prices could fall well below our present projections, reflecting structural shifts on both the demand and supply side. In the latter case, the impact on the market of steadily falling Iranian oil exports has been mostly offset by a ramping-up of Saudi output, which, although declining in recent months, remains some 1m barrels/day (b/d) above its level in 2010. The combined economic stimulus would more than offset any revenue losses for the large oil producers in the Middle East and elsewhere (which generally save most of their excess oil earnings).

Negative scenario: Social and political disorder undermine stability in China

Low risk; Very high impact; Risk intensity = 10

The power transfer at the top of the Politburo Standing Committee is now largely complete, with Xi Jinping installed as the new Communist party leader and the country’s president. However, the transition was preceded by considerable intra-party manoeuvring, including the purging of Bo Xilai, the high-profile Communist Party chief in Chongqing province, which shed light on the shifting power struggles within the country’s opaque leadership. With this in mind, there remains a risk that the arrival of a new set of leaders will prompt a renewed purging, potentially under the guise of the recently stepped-up anti-corruption campaign. Moreover, should the Communist Party become distracted as the new leaders seek to establish themselves, opponents of the present order ranging from aggrieved minorities (including Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs) to online democracy campaigners and Chinese activists dormant since Tiennamen Square, may take the opportunity to step up their activism. This may be further encouraged by the unwillingness of the Chinese Politburo to ease its grip over the affairs of state: although Mr Xi has sought to portray himself as a moderniser, he has continued to stress the pre-eminent importance of stability over reform. Given that China has been the largest contributor to world economic growth in recent years, any signs of instability would damage global economic confidence, precipitate a sell-off in stockmarkets and severely depress prospects for major commodity exporters.

Negative scenario: The US economy stumbles following a wave of fiscal tightening

Low risk; Very high impact; Risk intensity = 10

Concerns about political gridlock in the US, which have prevented the passage of a credible, long-term budget consolidation programme, rose last year as Republicans and Democrats grappled over the so-called fiscal cliff a wave of fiscal tightening that included the expiry of Bush-era tax cuts, the ending of various tax breaks and a phased series of automatic spending cuts at end-2012. Although a deal to avert most of the tax increases was reached on January 1st, a decision on revising planned spending cuts was delayed until March a deadline that has now been missed. As a result, some US$85bn in cuts is now being rolled out this year, focused on the defence budget and domestic (non-welfare) spending. Adding to the economic uncertainty, although Congress has voted to extend the government’s debt ceiling until mid-May (it was initially scheduled to be breached in February), any further extension is likely to involve an intense level of haggling over future federal spending. This issue last came to a head in mid-2011, when Republicans sought to extract spending cuts from the president. Although they eventually backed down, the uncertainty generated by the squabble, and the partisan nature of the row, contributed markedly to the decision by Standard & Poor’s, a ratings agency, to downgrade the US’s credit rating. Given the continued softness of the economy, elevated levels of unemployment and the fragility of consumer confidence, a failure to roll back the sequester (in addition to the fiscal tightening already agreed) could push the economy back into recession. Although the US Federal Reserve (the central bank) would no doubt seek to lessen the economic impact, its minimal room for monetary manoeuvre would limit its effectiveness. A recession in the US, the largest economy in the world, would only compound the drag on global growth being exerted by the ongoing crisis in the euro zone, bringing the emerging-market economies down with it.

Negative scenario: Economic upheaval leads to widespread social and political unrest

Moderate risk; Moderate impact; Risk intensity = 9

The global economic downturn had a severe social impact, which has been compounded periodically by high food and fuel prices, as well as, in some cases, aggressive fiscal austerity. The Middle East has experienced unprecedented upheaval, and small-scale protest camps (“Occupy Wall Street”, for example) have been set up across a host of Western cities. Instability overall has been limited but, given higher unemployment and poverty, weak growth (or renewed recession), prolonged fiscal austerity and high commodity prices, protests could increase in frequency and intensity (a trend already in evidence in some of Europe’s more economically stricken southern states). In some cases, this could bring the survival of governments and even nation states into question. Indeed, even if the global economy recovered meaningfully, resentment over high and rising income inequality in developed and many emerging economies is unlikely to dissipate in the foreseeable future. The risk is that instability becomes systemic, with political crises in certain countries affecting others through contagion or through the actions of populist new regimes seeking to assert themselves. Widespread social and political unrest would carry a considerable economic and financial cost.

Negative scenario: An attack on Iran results in an oil price shock

Low risk; High impact; Risk intensity = 8

The risk of an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities either by the US or, more probably, Israel persists, despite continuing, albeit inconclusive, talks over the nuclear issue between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany), and intense divisions within Israel over the issue. The imposition of EU sanctions on Iranian oil exports (and US measures on Iran’s central bank) came into force on July 1st, prompting more than 120 Iranian members of parliament to sign a petition calling on the country’s leaders to make good on their threat to close the Strait of Hormuz (through which 20% of all the world’s oil passes). Although such a move by Iran would cause a great degree of economic self-harm, the country could be prompted to act if Israel, which has maintained a more aggressive posture than the US, launched unilateral air strikes. Alternatively, there is a growing risk that the two sides could become embroiled in the civil war in Syria, with Iran warning Israel that it would regret its recent bombing of a military target in Syria. Even if Iran sought to confine its retribution to asymmetric measures (for example, by calling on proxies in the region, most notably in Lebanon), any military confrontation between Iran and Israel would add markedly to the political risk premium already in the oil price. Indeed, if the US were involved in strikes on Iran, and Iran responded by firing missiles at US military bases on the Gulf peninsula, the oil price could conceivably head towards US$200/barrel. Even in the more benign asymmetric case, the resulting surge in oil prices would weigh on consumer demand in many countries, and would also have a knock-on impact on other commodities, including food prices.

Positive scenario: Co-ordinated monetary stimulus kick-starts a global economic recovery

Low risk; High impact; Risk intensity = 8

With many Western governments weighed down by wide fiscal deficits and growing public-sector debt, the task of stimulating economic recovery is increasingly being shouldered by central banks. In September the Fed announced a third round of QE, pledging to purchase at least US$40bn of mortgage-backed securities each month. It raised its planned purchases to US$85bn a month in December to offset the expiration of another liquidity programme. The ECB, for its part, has announced its intention to buy the short-term bonds of struggling euro zone economies, in theory in unlimited quantities, to hold down interest rates and improve the workings of monetary policy. More recently, the Bank of Japan has committed itself to doubling the monetary base after the government raised its inflation target from 1% to 2%. The prospect of increased central bank activism helped to drive a global equity rally towards the end of 2012, which has continued into 2013. Significantly, most of these monetary programmes have yet to feed through fully into the global economy; when they do, they will amount to a potentially massive surge of liquidity that could boost asset prices, potentially including housing, and in turn lift confidence in the global economy. Although the impact would probably be short term and the risk of asset bubbles would no doubt increase the positive wealth effect from rising asset prices could result in a virtuous circle whereby consumers’ perception of increased spending power lifts private consumption, in turn boosting employment and thus the economy as a whole.

Negative scenario: War breaks out on the Korean peninsula

Very low risk; Very high impact; Risk intensity = 5

Even by North Korean standards, the country’s latest wave of threats is exceptional. Among other things, the country’s leaders have repeatedly warned of thermo-nuclear war, threatened to fire missiles at the US and, more visibly, promised to restart the Yongbyon nuclear plant responsible for producing the country’s plutonium. The North Korean government has also suspended operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex the last functioning inter-Korean joint business venture. Concerns over North Korea’s intentions are heightened by the seeming lack of a clear motive for its current behaviour. The North’s young and inexperienced leader, Kim Jong-un, might still feel the need to prove himself by flexing his muscles. However, there are signs that he may be overreaching, and his threats have reached such a level that backing down will be difficult. The risk of an incident, on the scale of North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010 or its bombardment of Yeonpyeong island the same year, is high, and there are realistic fears of something far worse. Although a nuclear war is highly improbable, given North Korea’s inability at this stage to fit its nuclear weapons onto a rocket, a conventional war would still be catastrophic. The South Korean capital, Seoul, is just 50 km from the border, and is thus within easy range of the North’s rockets and much of its artillery. In addition, Japan is comfortably within the scope of North Korea’s longer-range rockets, although the US mainland is out of range. Should a conventional war occur, North Korea’s hopelessly antiquated military would be quickly defeated. However, as well as providing a severe shock to global well-being, it would also no doubt result in considerable economic disruption in South Korea and probably Japan, with serious consequences for global supply chains. Indeed, even with the defeat of North Korea, a host of new problems would arise: West Germany spent an estimated US$2trn modernising East Germany a sum that would be dwarfed by the cost of rebuilding North Korea’s hermit economy.” — Economist Intelligence Unit

And although these above are all Economist’s short term risk scenarios the overwhelming majority is all negative. Seems the Bears are eating up the Bulls in droves… and so are your earnings eaten up too.

Yet in my eyes the medium to long term risks are far more complex and devastatingly negative:

Recently, a set of resource conflicts have been rising toward the boiling point between China and its neighbors in Southeast Asia when it comes to control of offshore oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea. Although the resulting naval clashes have yet to result in a loss of life, a strong possibility of military escalation exists. A similar situation has also arisen in the East China Sea, where China and Japan are jousting for control over similarly valuable undersea reserves. Meanwhile, in the South Atlantic Ocean, Argentina and Britain are once again squabbling over the Falkland Islands (called Las Malvinas by the Argentinians) because oil has been discovered in surrounding waters.

By all accounts, resource-driven potential conflicts like these will only multiply in the years ahead as demand rises, supplies dwindle, and more of what remains will be found in disputed areas. In a 2012 study titled Resources Futures, the respected British think-tank Chatham House expressed particular concern about possible resource wars over water, especially in areas like the Nile and Jordan River basins where several groups or countries must share the same river for the majority of their water supplies and few possess the wherewithal to develop alternatives. “Against this backdrop of tight supplies and competition, issues related to water rights, prices, and pollution are becoming contentious,” the report noted. “In areas with limited capacity to govern shared resources, balance competing demands, and mobilize new investments, tensions over water may erupt into more open confrontations.”

Tensions like these would be destined to grow by themselves because in so many areas supplies of key resources will not be able to keep up with demand. As it happens, though, they are not “by themselves.” On this planet, a second major force has entered the equation in a significant way. With the growing reality of climate change, everything becomes a lot more terrifying.

Normally, when we consider the impact of climate change, we think primarily about the environment—the melting Arctic ice cap or Greenland ice shield, rising global sea levels, intensifying storms, expanding deserts and endangered or disappearing species like the polar bear. But a growing number of experts are coming to realize that the most potent effects of climate change will be experienced by humans directly through the impairment or wholesale destruction of habitats upon which we rely for food production, industrial activities or simply to live. Essentially, climate change will wreak its havoc on us by constraining our access to the basics of life: vital resources that include food, water, land and energy. This will be devastating to human life, even as it significantly increases the danger of resource conflicts of all sorts erupting.

We already know enough about the future effects of climate change to predict the following with reasonable confidence:

• Rising sea levels will in the next half-century erase many coastal areas, destroying large cities, critical infrastructure (including roads, railroads, ports, airports, pipelines, refineries and power plants) and prime agricultural land.
• Diminished rainfall and prolonged droughts will turn once-verdant croplands into dust bowls, reducing food output and turning millions into “climate refugees.”
• More severe storms and intense heat waves will kill crops, trigger forest fires, cause floods and destroy critical infrastructure.

No one can predict how much food, land, water, and energy will be lost as a result of this onslaught (and other climate-change effects that are harder to predict or even possibly imagine), but the cumulative effect will undoubtedly be staggering. In Resources Futures, Chatham House offers a particularly dire warning when it comes to the threat of diminished precipitation to rain-fed agriculture. “By 2020,” the report says, “yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 percent” in some areas. The highest rates of loss are expected to be in Africa, where reliance on rain-fed farming is greatest, but agriculture in China, India, Pakistan and Central Asia is also likely to be severely affected. In reality all areas of this Earth will be affected…

Heat waves, droughts, and other effects of climate change will also reduce the flow of many vital rivers, diminishing water supplies for irrigation, hydro-electricity power facilities and nuclear reactors (which need massive amounts of water for cooling purposes). The melting of glaciers, especially in the Andes in Latin America and the Himalayas in South Asia, will also rob communities and cities of crucial water supplies. An expected increase in the frequency of hurricanes and typhoons will pose a growing threat to offshore oil rigs, coastal refineries, transmission lines and other components of the global energy system.

The melting of the Arctic ice cap will open that region to oil and gas exploration, but an increase in iceberg activity will make all efforts to exploit that region’s energy supplies perilous and exceedingly costly. Longer growing seasons in the north, especially Siberia and Canada’s northern provinces, might compensate to some degree for the desiccation of croplands in more southerly latitudes. However, moving the global agricultural system (and the world’s farmers) northward from abandoned farmlands in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, India, China, Argentina and Australia would be a daunting prospect.

It is safe to assume that climate change, especially when combined with growing supply shortages, will result in a significant reduction in the planet’s vital resources, augmenting the kinds of pressures that have historically led to conflict, even under better circumstances. In this way, according to the Chatham House report, climate change is best understood as a “threat multiplier … a key factor exacerbating existing resource vulnerability” in states already prone to such disorders.

Millions of people could become destitute in Africa and Asia as staple foods more than double in price by 2050 as a result of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts that will transform the way the world farms.

As food experts gather at two major conferences to discuss how to feed the nine billion people expected to be alive in 2050, leading scientists have told the Observer that food insecurity risks turning parts of Africa into permanent disaster areas. Rising temperatures will also have a drastic effect on access to basic foodstuffs, with potentially dire consequences for the poor.

Frank Rijsberman, head of the world’s international CGIAR crop research centres, which study food insecurity, said: “Food production will have to rise 60% by 2050 just to keep pace with expected global population increase and changing demand. Climate change comes on top of that. The annual production gains we have come to expect … will be taken away by climate change. We are not so worried about the total amount of food produced so much as the vulnerability of the one to two billion people who are without food already or on a precarious existence, who will be hit hardest by climate change. They have no capacity to adapt.”

America’s agricultural economy is set to undergo dramatic changes over the next three decades, as warmer temperatures devastate crops, according to a US government report. The draft US National Climate Assessment report predicts that a gradually warming climate and unpredictable severe weather, such as the drought that last year spread across two-thirds of the continental United States, will have serious consequences for farmers.

The research by 60 scientists predicts that all crops will be affected by the temperature shift as well as livestock and fruit harvests. The changing climate, it says, is likely to lead to more pests and less effective herbicides. The $50bn Californian wine industry could shrink as much as 70% by 2050.

The report lays bare the stark consequences for the $300bn US farm industry, stating: “Many agricultural regions will experience declines in crop and livestock production. The rising incidence of weather extremes will have increasingly negative impacts on crop and livestock production. Climate disruptions have increased in the recent past and are projected to increase further over the next 25 years.

“Critical thresholds are already being exceeded. Many regions will experience declines in crop and livestock production from increased stress due to weeds, diseases, insect pests and other climate change-induced stresses. Climate disruptions to agricultural production have increased in the recent past and are projected to increase further”.

Lead author Jerry Hatfield, director of the US government’s national laboratory for agriculture and the environment, said that climate change was already causing weather extremes to worsen. Very hot nights, fewer cool days and more heatwaves, storms and floods have already devastated crops and will have “increasingly negative” impacts, he said.

The report follows recent disastrous harvests in Russia, Ukraine, Australia and the US. In 2010, climate-driven factors led to a 33% drop in wheat production in Russia and a 19% drop in Ukraine. Separate climate events in each case led to a 14% drop in Canada’s wheat output, and a 9% drop in Australia.

A separate US government-funded study of the fertile Lower Mekong basin, which includes Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, states that temperatures there could rise twice as much as previously expected, devastating food supplies for the 100 million people expected to live there by 2050.

“We’ve found that this region is going to experience climate extremes in temperature and rainfall beyond anything that we expected”, says Jeremy Carew-Reid, author of the Climate Change Adaptation and Impact Study for the Lower Mekong…

Wars in the Mekong region, are certainly expected to be severe.

Internecine conflict already has arisen…

Yours,

Pano

PS:

We are entering an uncertain and risky period.

Climate change is the game changer that increases exposure to high and volatile food prices, and increases the vulnerability of the hungry poor, and soon enough of everyone else as well.

We live in an interconnected world and what our neighbour suffers, we are soon certain to experience.

Be mindful of your actions especially as a Political, national, religious of business leader and especially those of you living in the bubble of finance and banking where wealth in-extremis is easy to get used to, and enjoy as your birthright.

Because there are all others of us living and working in conflict zones or areas of marginal agricultural productivity and we see the future.

Therefore we must get our act together, make up our mind swiftly,  and act decisively in order to protect the world’s people.

 

“Your work is to discover your world and then

with all your heart give yourself to it.

When you realize how perfect everything is,

you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. 

Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one.

Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe,

deserve your love and affection.”
–Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha

 

 

 

” Wisdom tells me I am nothing .
Love tells me I am everything
Between the two my life flows..”                                                                                                – Rumi

Kalam, in Arabic, as well as Persian, but mostly in Islamic tradition, means philosophy that involves discourse and debate…
Even the very Speech and Word of Allah at one point was called Kalam. Yet in Light of traditional religious discussions Kalam is also a noun in Islam, meaning: 1. A school of philosophical theology originating in the 9th century a.d., asserting the existence of God as a prime mover and the freedom of the will. 2. The word of Allah.

And although this form of Kalam, word-discussion was really ever-present at the birth phase of Islam, during the years of the Prophet — today it is Haram. Kalam is Haram. This means, that Kalam is strictly forbidden and fully rejected by the world’s fundamentalist Islamic creed.

This according to the puritanical theology of fundamentalist Islam, of the various forms of religious extremism, as well as those views espoused by Salafi, Wahhabi, and all other major Sunni and Shiite orthodox forms of religion.  They all revisit Kalam and consider this process a foreign import – from Greek philosophy – alien to the original practice of Islam — regardless that it was the basis of Islam’s early days with the Prophet.

Today strict Islamic Dogma has prevailed and thus obscured  all innovation, temperance, and imagination from the interpretation of Islam keeping it locked up in a distant and often violent past. Therefore, the vast serenity that Islam teaches and it’s resultant peacefulness are rather elusive from it’s followers.

In turn this lack of internal peace leads to violent conflict.  Manifesting outwardly and internal conflict due to this doctrine that often times leads to terror unleashed upon innocent others. How is it that you can resolve deep seated differences and divisions without dialogue?

And it is because of this lack of peace and serenity in the souls of the young men who heed No Reason — and go on unleashing terror as manifested by Imam Al-Dhahabi who clearly said this in relation to Philosophy – Kalam:  ”Kalam is authentically forbidden from ad-Daaraqutnee when he said: There is nothing more despised by me than kalam. I say: He never entered into kalam nor argumentation”

Islamists believe that the Qur’an, the Hadith and the consensus (ijma) of approved scholarship (ulama) along with the understanding of the Salaf us-salih as being sufficient guidance for the Muslim. As the islamic da’wa is a methodology and not a madh’hab in fiqh as commonly misunderstood, fundamental islamic guidance can come from the Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali or the Hanafi schools of Sunni jurisprudence and accept teaching of all four if supported by clear and authenticated evidence from the Sunnah. They support qualified scholars to engage in ijtihad in the face of a clear evidence be it from Qur’an of Hadith. Total blind imitation (taqlid) is expected of an adept, if he is qualified. Their views in theology are based on the Athari creed as opposed to engaging in Kalam, dialectics or any form of speculative philosophy.

And that all above, clearly condemns any possibility for Innovation or Interpretation that fits modern circumstances and the altered conditions that face humanity.  Because in an interconnected world where all the Arab kids, same like most educated Muslim people have internet access, a Facebook account, and daily interaction with others around the world — in a freely practiced debate format — is inevitable that discourse-kalam gets involved.

The worst part of it is that it also condemns the followers of this strict dogma to be always on the defensive and reactive to the world. Because if you only have one unalterable prism, from which you see the ever changing light conditions of our world — your vision will be inevitably tainted and you’ll end up blind. The flexibility needed to practice tolerance often means to overlook others’ difficult attributes and that is but a product of dialogue and dialectic philosophical thinking. Our capacity to co-exist gets minimized and our brain software gets rigid.

Reason, tolerance, compassion, and forgiveness were all attributed to the prophet. Yet above all else He was Karam incarncate. A dialectic philosopher of the first order… and a reasonable man. Because he was a natural leader, fully aware of the reasoning capacities of human beings when engaged in a dialectic fashion. Something evident today in all secular Arab gatherings where the dialectic is strong. And the dialectic is usually followed by a logical outcome and agreement. Proof of a logical discussion is a common sense agreement. That is what reasonable people do. Agree or Disagree – discuss and walk on until you find the reasonable merit of ideas and thus solve your differences. Reason is a faculty of the logical mind… and as such it trumps all other brain software — no matter how strongly this might be enforced by social and religious mores…

Keen Islamists and most all other religious fundamentalists, believe that Islam declined after the early generations because of religious innovations and an abandoning of what they consider to be pure Islamic teachings; and that an Islamic revival will only result through emulation of early generations of Muslims and purging of foreign influences. We see the same in Christian fundamentalism as well as the unreasonable views of religious dogma. All old brain software resists change and adaptation because it has become arteriosklerotic and it was not built to handle that in the first place.

Islamic fundamentalists place great emphasis on following acts in accordance with the known sunnah, not only in prayer but in every activity in daily life. Many are careful to exhibit this also with outwardly signs. Such as always using  three fingers when eating, drinking water in three pauses, only with the right hand while sitting, and making sure their jellabiya or other garment worn by them does not extend below the ankle so as to follow the example of the prophet Muhammad and his companions…

Today’s islamic scholars are in staunch opposition to the use of kalam, dialectics or philosophy of any kind involved in their closed ended theology. This is because Kalam is seen as a heretical innovation in Islam which opposes the primordial aspiration to follow the original methodology with regards to Aqidah. In a revisionist attempt at history, the current fundamentalist imams refashion statements of the early Imams of the early Muslims claiming that they are in corroboration with this. Words, from later religious scholars such as Imam Abu Hanifa who prohibited his students from engaging in Kalam, stating that those who practice it are of the “retarded ones.”  And of Imam Malik ibn Anas who referred to kalam in the Islamic religion as being “detested”,  and that whoever “seeks the religion through kalam will deviate”. In addition Imam Shafi’i said that no knowledge of Islam can be gained from books of kalam, as kalam “is not from knowledge” and that “It is better for a man to spend his whole life doing whatever Allah has prohibited – besides shirk with Allah – rather than spending his whole life involved in kalam.” Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal also spoke strongly against kalam, stating his view that no one looks into kalam unless there is “corruption in his heart” and even went so far as to prohibit sitting with people practicing kalam even if they were defending the Sunnah, and instructing his students to warn against any person they saw practicing kalam.

And yet here is the evidence of the opposite:
The words ‘Kalam’ and ‘Qur’an’ are very closely related terms. In their original legal applications they are distinct in meaning. But in another way they are synonymous.

In other words, the word ‘Kalam’ is usually applied to the beginningless attribute of Allah present with His being referred to as His ‘Speech.’ But sometimes when it is used, it means the ‘Qur’an,’ which is the revelation sent to Muhammad who proclaimed it to humanity.

On the other hand, the word ‘Qur’an’ is usually applied to refer to the Holy Book revealed by Allah to Muhammad. But it is sometimes used to refer to the beginningless attribute of the Creator known as His ‘Speech.’

This is all supported by the comments of Shaykh Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Bayjuri. He says:

“And know that the phrase ‘Kalam Allah’ (Allah’s Word or Speech) is applied to the beginningless unuttered speech (kalam nafsi qadim), which happens to be a quality (sifah) present with His being (dhat) – High is He; just as it is a phrase applied to the uttered speech (kalam lafzi), which happens to be a reference to His creation (i.e. the physical book) while no one has played a part in the origin of its composition. And according to this (second) application, the statement of Our Lady ‘Aisha is understood when she said:

“All between the two covers of the book (mushaf) is Allah’s word (kalam Allah) – High is He.”

So as you can see the immense contradictions within strong doses of religious dogma will certainly not give anyone the necessary peace of mind to live a serene existence in partnership with all other human beings and creation…

And this primary reason that allows us to meet each other half way in an argument and in dividing our special interests and resolving disputes in a reasonable manner — are all Haram [forbidden] because they involve Kalam [philosophical discourse]…

How perverted is that? When was it appropriate for today’s religious scholars to tarnish the prophet’s words and deeds by removing Kalam [philosophical discourse leading to Reason] from the Quran? And why do they claim authority when they themselves have deviated so much from their origins?

Maybe because they are afraid of losing the flock to REASON?

And yet reason was at the heart of Islam the way the Prophet himself visualized the coming of the new religion. He was a reasonable man and all he said and did were reasonable deeds and words. Because he understood reason well, and taught the world that without reason we are all rather lost.

Strip away reason from Islam and what have you got left?A militant blind dogma? Fit for whom? And for what purpose?

And thus I say, that religious dogma today, needs to temper itself with reasonable views and a contemporary outlook.

Perhaps religion should be enjoyed in moderate doses lest the medicine applied is far too strong and becomes toxic for the receiver…

And maybe deadly for those innocent bystanders around him.

Yours,

Pano

PS:

A great Muslim authority once wrote of the sheer pointlessness of any and all measures of violence — especially terrorism — to compel political change or to force anyone to hold the level of rationally inspired discussion about faith as required by the religion of Islam same as all modern religions.

“It is not possible to spank a child into solving an arithmetical problem,” thus proclaimed an enlightened Ayatollah. “His mind and thought must be left free in order that he may solve it. The Islamic faith is something of this kind.”

Muslims have to ask themselves: Is the God they worship so weak and needy that he requires them to force fellow humans to respect him under threat of death and recurring violence?

Is their religion so frail and insecure that it cannot tolerate any others, any adversity, any rejection whatsoever?

And why are they silent as an innocent Christian is killed in the streets. Can these yahoos put to death people randonly chosen in the name of Islam?

The best evidence we have from serious Mohammedan theologicians is this: To kill a man for Islam is caterogically wrong. It is theologically and morally unjustifiable. It is an abhorent action. It is not just inhuman — it is also unIslamic. And to not address this issue publicly is definitely anti-Islamic…

Methinks the Arab Spring will clean their clocks eventually. And as it follows through it will help in rejuvenating their religious institutions and not just the secular ones…

After all — God knows — it’s time.

“The only true wisdom
is in knowing
you know nothing….”
– Socrates

The United Nations Scientific Conference on the theme:  ”Economic assessment of desertification and unsustainable land management practices”  focuses on the impact indicators to be used to assess the direction of change in land’s agricultural productivity, food security, and human lives. Experts and leaders from around the world gather in Bonn to assess how best to formulate policies that encourage governments and regional leaders to conserve water, arrest desertification, and protect their agriculture by strengthening the farmlands and rebuilding the Green Commons such as forests, oases and green belts. Naturally am also here in this meeting in Bonn – Germany, because am keenly aware and willing to contribute in the formulation of the serious and mindful Public Policies we need to enact at the local, the national and international levels, in order to remove the root causes of land desertification — hoping to arrest it’s runaway growth.

Because deserts grow like viruses do…

Exponentially.

Fast.

Eventually…

Killing the host.

You know that today most capital cite around the globe suffer the problem of desertification in one way or another. These monstrously engorged concrete jungles are depleted of green and therefore are very much deprived of oxygen and thus are full of CO2 poisoned angry people… Oxygen depletion causes anger and stupidity at the first instance and thus our big cities are full of people that are ready to pounce on each other — like so many crazed lab rats turning on each other for sport.

That is the effect of land degradation and desertification taken to the extreme of un-sustainability that a large concrete modern city represents.

Since land degradation’s variants are many — yet all of them attributed directly to drought, anthropogenic climate change, intensive farming practices, and poor water management — we have a chance of understanding and nudging behaviour towards optimal better practice via wise Public Policy. Desertification is low on many countries’ radar, as illustrated by Canada’s recent withdrawal from the UNCCD, but its links to human health, failing agriculture, and food security, are starting to resonate with governments, industry, and businesses, particularly given the constant fears over the world’s ability to feed it’s current number of people and prepare for a soaring population to come…

With more than 2 billion people already going hungry today and almost a Billion of them in famine conditions, we are certainly doing a poor job at addressing this most basic of needs — let alone in establishing food security for our common tomorrows…

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) predicts demand for food will increase by 60% by 2050. Experts say the world will need at a minimum, an additional 120 million hectares of agricultural land to support the required food production if the Climate doesn’t scorch even more land than is being forecast as becoming unusable for agriculture. And that optimistic scenario entails finding new farmlands so big that the aggregate total is more than the sum of all the lands of South Africa and Zimbabwe combined. Meanwhile recent studies by the UK Met Office and USAID have linked the severe drought facing the US, Russia, Canada, and the one that has hit East Africa since 2011 and the subsequent falling wheat, maize, corn and rice yields across the world and in South East Asia in particular for rice — along with the trembling of the prices of all main staple food supplies — because of the CO2 greenhouse warming planet effect, due to man-made climate change. Since 2000, the prices of other staples such as meat, dairy, cereals and sugar have also tripled, reflecting a lack of elasticity in the food market’s supply chain.

This represents a Vicious cycle of multiple failures because all of our efforts to boost agricultural production often lead to deforestation, a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. This has a knock on effect in terms of reducing the planet’s store of natural carbon sinks and destroying the ‘ecosystem services’ trees provide such as water storage, exacerbating the problem. The UNCCD hopes to adopt a ‘Zero Net Land Degradation by 2030′ resolution at its 2013 Conference of the Parties in Namibia later this year, and there are signs sustainable land management could form one of the Sustainable Development Goals set to be announced in 2015. Last week, former President of Finland Tarja Halonen, acting Chairman of the UN Global Sustainability Panel, indicated that the links between rural poverty, famine and land management should “guide the work” on those new sets of targets. ”Sustainable land management, prevention of land degradation and rehabilitation of land is the most cost effective and cost beneficial way to arrest desertification, protect human life, and also help rural poverty,” she added.

In Africa alone a UNCCD expert panel estimates that upwards of 12% – 15% of agricultural GDP is lost due to global warming, deteriorating environmental conditions, and climate refugees leaving their communities — all contributing to the high levels of famines, chronic hunger, and conflict on the continent. This situation is rather acute all across the Sahel, as well as, in South Sudan, Darfur, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, and the Horn of Africa, all territories where the combination of weak governments, increased temperatures, and a lack of annual rains — linked to climate change — are driving desertification levels way up and out of control turning huge swath of previously fertile agricultural land into scorched earth dust bowls and hot deserts.

In China over 500 million people – a third of the country’s population - are affected adversely, by soil erosion, desertification, and impossible agriculture due to climatic effects, that are causing an annual economic losses of US$ 300 billion, while the UNCCD says Indian reports of land’s degradation have increased “by a factor of six”.

For the national Leaders out there:

Care to consider how SAFE  and SECURE your food supply really i?

In the UK we are three day’s meals away from anarchy.

What is your food security horizon?

Consider this rather carefully because Severe land degradation is now affecting 169 countries across the world.

This is according to meticulous and purely scientific new research released by the UN Desertification Convention (UNCCD). The figures are based on submissions from the world’s countries to the UN, and represent a marked increase from the last analysis performed in the mid-1990s, which estimated that only about 100 states were at risk.

In an economic analysis published last week, the Convention also warns land degradation is now costing US$490 billion per year in China alone and upward of several Trillion US $ dollars worldwide.

Deforestation and the resultant desertification is wiping out an area greater than three times the size of Switzerland on an annual basis worldwide. “Land degradation and drought are impeding the development of all nations in the world,” UNCCD Executive Secretary Luc Gnacadja summarised.

“This is a challenge that is causing governments to take this issue seriously, but how do you get them to take it seriously? By showing them the rate of return on restoring degraded land is one of the smartest investments of our time. He added: “Desertification, land degradation and drought is an issue of market failure. The lack of economic market valuation has led to land being perceived as a cheap resource.”

Methinks: That maybe it’s time to start reforesting and consider multiple blends of forest lands, along with food forests and agricultural forests, created locally, because within the shade of the large trees we can plant the best crops and allow them to grow organically where they are protected from too much heat and too much sun…

Case in Point. After All… The best coffee in the world is organic and grown in the shade…

It will also give work to many people because this type of shade tree agriculture is best done un-mechanized.

The land is not tilled nor burned and the humus – top soil – is left undisturbed and in no need of fertilizers, weed killers or petrochemicals. The resultant organic food staples are far higher in nutritional value and a lot less labour intensive to produce.

Masanubo Fukuoka – friend and fellow One Straw revolutionary – perfected this method of organic growth over seven decades of naturally sustainable agricultural farming. And he did this producing superior yields by a factor or six —  to all other intensive mechanical agriculture and his method of green revolution only required an hour of work per day for the farmer. It is so amazing that this form of agriculture allows NATURE to be the real farmer.

A fantastic win win…

What’s not to like.

So here it goes:

Job Number One:

Let’s start recovering the living skin of our planet with Green Forests and Green Belts in order to arrest desertification worldwide.

Yours,

Pano

PS:

After working with China to stem the desertification at the Loess plateau, and then attending the super interesting, high level and confidential ISGP conference on Contagious Diseases and Food Security — am here in Bonn  having some major impact on this United Nation Conference focused on the most pivotal issue for humanity…

By the way the science based approach for consensus building Public Policy at the ISGP — the Institute for Science on Global Policy – founded and run by my friend George Atkinson ex-undersecretary of the United States for Science and Technology is a great American success story worthy of admiration, and support. Trust their judgement to help us find solutions for global food safety and security and create public policy to protect us from fast spreading viral contagious diseases. Now up to you LEADERS to deliver it…

Because as with the brand new avian influenza deadly virus just discovered in China, that ha no genetic make up similarity to anything we’ve seen before  – we are in for some nasty surprises. And with the recurring and newly resistant Tuberculosis virus attacking Europe’s  doors via the viral fertile ground of a weakened Greek population — our future is rather uncertain. This TB virus kills fully every other person when it reaches the lungs. Because as a pneumonic TB it kills fifty percent of the hosts…

That rate of killing infection is worse than HIV and Cholera’s combined death rates.

Any Leadership out there?

Yet this post is about the lands… so we’ll get bak there.

DESERTIFICATION

Because from what I saw back in China there are two thousand Capitals and Metropolitan Cities buried deep in the sands of the Taklamakan dessert with nary a sign of life stirring there today.

That used to be the fertile crescent many eons ago and overexploitation and the destruction of forests turned it into a hot and inhospitable desert.

Sadly we are going down the same path. By cutting down and burning up all of our forests, we turn all of our countries into deserts. We do this far faster than the capacity of the human species to adapt to the changing environment. And at the end if we were able to adapt, we would still have to adapt towards becoming desert rats. Because desert rat are the only mammalian animal species able to survive in the desert environments well.

We are turning into the proverbial human desert rats. We are doing this ourselves…

No questions asked.

And yet we can avoid this fate.

We can choose to alter course…

And there are cities and benevolent leaders that have done this.

There are shining examples, like South Korea’s Seoul. The capital city, where a new City Forest was created under the leadership of Lee Myung-bak and is now the world renown oxygen rich Seoul Forest… This forest in turn has produced so much oxygen for the people of Seoul that in large part has made them happier, smarter, and healthier human beings. There are many doctors in Seoul who attribute the economic miracle of South Korea to this renewed oxygenation of the brains of the citizens and leaders alike. Because more oxygen in the brain contributes to better and clearer decision making and this is how a peaceful hard working and clearly thinking society thrives.

Oxygen is the number one necessity for the human being brains to function properly…

This brand new forest of Seoul has also completely changed the microclimate of the concrete jungle that Seoul city is. Along with the restoration of the river, the dream forest, the huge Seoul forest and the grass lands park, that were built during his term as Mayor of Seoul — Lee also restored the flows of the Cheonggyecheon stream. This was covered up and treated as a sewer and it has now been uncovered and restored so that it flows uninhibided through the heart of Seoul and functions as a modern public recreation space and a green belt — enough beauty and oxygen for the citizens of Seoul to consider their city the most livable city on earth…

In May 2006, Asian Times reported that “Seoul, once synonymous with ‘concrete jungle,’ has achieved successful transformation of its face into a green oasis and now is considered the best among other Asian cities with the most productive environment…. in terms of oxygen regeneration.

I was reminded of this little story when I run across the most deserving bit of words the other day.

 

A couple of years ago…

It was a balmy Spring evening back in New York…

And after an honest day’s work and a good meal at the Amarynth, me and my date — we went walking…

It was a good date with a super girl and we enjoyed our erudite conversation, mind melt, and body chemistry.

We went walking to see ourselves in a better light – so to speak – and try our face sucking skills.

As we were walking onto the Chelsea pier to see the water, the city lights, and enjoy the peaceful views of the river and then ease ourselves towards the inevitable conclusion of all our New York dates: Sex and the City … a strange thing happened.

Truth be told this is New York, and getting laid in a New York minute is what’s all about with the fast crowd of models, actresses, and nubile debutantes.

Yet this was not what this evening promised to be…

Because this girl was serious and while we liked each other load and were already involved in kissing and making out, she asked me a serious curve-ball kinda question — straight out of the blue:

“What  would you ask if God was willing to give you anything You asked for ? “

She is a good woman – pretty girl and all – so I thought she deserves an honest answer.

Just told her my Truth not fearing that she will bolt in her insecurities and ruin a sexy evening, if she didn’t like the answer or the answer didn’t revolve around her. 

So – seriously – I had an about face from latin lover “Pepe la Pieu” cartoon kisser extraordinaire, to stoic Philosopher and King of wisdom and said: “I want to be kind. I want to have a bit more capacity for kindness in my heart. Or maybe a lot more…. That’s it.”

At that point I didn’t care what you can fit in a New York minute, and how to bed the broad, but felt strangely liberated from desire, and righteous, and all that stuff…

So I started staring off into the night … certain of the lonely outcome.

And what she did next surprised me.

Because she looked at me straight with deep felt eyes and asked me to go on… To explain things further…

Right then and there I knew this date was ruined.

And somehow I didn’t care.

I answered her. Yet at the same time I sincerely asked. I prayed in not so many words and not in a prayer fashion…

I asked to be given a Bigger Heart.

I prayed inside of me right then and there on the wooden pier… during my date with an extraordinarily beautiful woman, in the fastest and most secular city on Earth, and I asked the host of all – the Spirit – for a bigger heart.

I remember actually asking for a more Understanding Heart…

Felt utterly amazing. All alone in the world…

Asking for this small thing was a blessing. Little thing You see, but that’s what I wanted.

Because in my mind…

we can all do with a bit more kindness.

And even though I was going to be sleeping alone that night – I wanted her to know this:

My religion is kindness…

Because kindness rules. Kindness everywhere helps. Kindness in thought in talk, in action. Kindness in words and spoken deeds, it creates confidence in the goodness of all mankind.

Kindness in thought creates profound effects all around.

Just exhibit kindness towards yourself and others in thought alone and you’ll see the Diamond Sutra emanating from inside out to your whole being. You’ll be a living breathing diamond…

And then kindness is giving and giving creates love… Right? 

So I reckoned — I got it handled — why not Love the Love?

And then she asked me again:

“So how do you get to be so kind?”

I said that I really don’t know — but Life teaches us how…

And instead of a more serious depth to the conversation, I quoted from the old book of Khalil Gibran my favourite bit I remember when I had to patch my soul crossing the stream of earthly sorrows that visit me every once in a while same as all human beings who feel the tide of humanity and the bonds of love stressed to breaking with Loss:

“The deeper the sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain…

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

And in an New York minute everything changed…

And then we kept on walking

…

holding hands

…

in silence

Yours,

Pano

PS:

And somehow that evening turned out to be OK too….

 

Austerity rocks…

Stimulus gives rocks…

Crisis presents an opportunity…

Go figure what’s a Man to do….

Vaclav Havel, an old friend of mine who has moved on to the Spirit world, once said this: “Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed – be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable… The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility.” He was not speaking out of turn… but really he had seen this coming of monumental changes.

And it appears that we are being pushed right along this path whether we like it or not.  We are moved along the conveyor belt of history kicking and screaming, fearing what’s on the other side of the baggage carousel.

Well — am here to report what’s what…

On the other side, there is nothing more – nothing less, than the arrivals terminal of understanding what continuous flex is all about. Because – same as the Universe – our own lives are in a state of constant flex. Yet we are only too certain of the opposite. We crave stability. We crave the security of sameness. We seek comfort in the opposite of change. In business we call it steady sameness.

I call it lameness.

Because in essence we tread in the unknown. Every day, every minute of our lives we don’t know what forces are gathered to darken our skies. And we are fearful. Who can blame us?  That fear is all too real and well founded when you look at our karmic record. Because the root of all of our evils visiting us — is our own thoughts & actions. We act in a certain way, and yet we expect a different reaction than the one our own actions warrant. We sow the seeds of destruction and yet we expect synthesis. We speak ill of others and yet we expect to be well thought of. Our thoughts and deeds simply don’t jive up. It’ an anomalous condition. No wonder it’s causing us panic attacks of stress, embedded with fear and steeped in anxiety…

And where the majority looks, the economy follows because we are all economic agents like nodes of a neural network and thus define our reality. Like the lemmings only with ban accounts and trading equities.

Ultimately — We do deserve what we get. Because the Universe and Life are just hosts. And in every turn we receive our just desserts. No more no less. Not in a vindictive God the Punisher kind of way – but in an educational fashion. Do this stupid thing right now – receive appropriate punishment – learn the lesson. Hoping that you’ll remember it and don’t need to repeat it. That’s how the Physics of energetics work, roughly. All of our actions are rooted in thought. And the reaction we receive from the world has started at the quantum level well before we lifted the finger to initialize the deed that will certainly cause us pain. It has started at the moment of Thought coherence.

Become conscious of this and you’ve mastered LIFE…

Become cognizant of this and you’ll rule the world…

Become adept at this and you might jut rule yourself….

This is a big lesson and one we need to constantly remember as we clumsily weave our own lives to last. Because today even our basic senses inform us of the diminishing steady-sameness of our environment. Yet we still fight against it. This in turn constantly erodes our belief in the governing structures of  our society, with the end result that we lose our mooring and flounder in the deep, mainly because the governing moorings fail to provide this increasingly elusive bargain with time that we all seek.

And still we hold on for dear life.

So we embark on a treacherous journey along the shores of a black river clutching at the reeds afraid of being wept away. And here we hold on perilously close to drowning, filling our bodies and minds with poisonous toxins, anxieties, stress, cancers or worse. Yet we hold on with the skin of our teeth – only to be carried headlong through the rapids – when we enter into the seeming benefits of this Faustian deal: We simply bargain our Life away. Because we easily trade our most precious jewels — our human rights. For example to get Stability – we give up our Freedom of Thought. To get Security – we give up our Freedom of Speech. And to get Strong government to protect us from Change – we give up our Freedom of Being.

Nice bargain if you can stand it. We give up all of our treasured human birthrights, far too easily. Because by giving up our own Self Determination we already lost the Energy of our own lives. We assigned it to someone else…

And in return what do we get? Really nothing to write home about. We get to be lame. Now lameness admittedly might not be what’s cracked up to be. But it surely ain’t a human achievement, unless you are a perpetual wanker.

I am frankly stunned by how many banker-wankers out there run the Economies of our world’s leading countries and how so many Wall Street and City fools feel that the transition is underway to a healthy economy — only if we do this, and that, or the other…

It is mind boggling how many of the top market decision makers, our richest Business people, and best of breed financial analysts, have got great faith that Ben Bernanke, or George Osborne  or Shinzo Abe and his new Bank Governor Kuroda, can pull the monetary tablecloth off the table without disturbing the dishes.

Those who hold this view fail to understand that the United States same as England and Japan are caught in a stimulus trap from which there is no easy exit. And whether we call it austerity, or stimulus or even monetization like Japan’s Abenomics applied starting today — we are all in the same banana boat and better know it.

Because first: How on earth can the Fed or the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan, wean their economies off from stimulus; when the stimulus IS the economy?

So this is how it will play out in a fear based scenario where it ends up being a nightmare with blood on the streets… because according to the banker-wankers, the trick Bernanke must actually perform is to pull the table out from beneath the cloth, leaving both the cloth and the dishes suspended in air. Something like Cloud computing… without the cloud. Not too difficult a feat if you are a yogi incarnate, but maybe asking a bit much from the Beard… They simplistically reason thus: What would happen to the Treasury market if the Federal Reserve, by far the biggest buyer and largest holder of Treasury bonds, became a net seller? Who will be there to keep the sell off from becoming an interest rate spiking rout?  It may sound absurd to those of us who remember the economy before the crash, but our new economy can’t tolerate “sky high” rates of four or five percent. What would happen to the housing market and the stock market if interest rates were to return to those traditional levels? The red ink would flow in rivers. With yields rising and asset prices falling, how long would it take before the Fed reverses course and serves up another round of stimulus? Not long at all. So basically any talk of an exit strategy is talk. Not only can the Fed not exit, but it will have to delve further into the stimulus abyss. While doing so, the Fed will continuously insist that the exit lies just behind an ever moving horizon. It will repeat this mantra until a currency crisis finally forces a painful exit. Unfortunately, the longer the Fed waits to exit, the more painful the exit will be. But trading long-term pain for short-term gain is the Fed’s specialty. In the meantime, Wall Street watches in uncomprehending stupor as the economy settles deeper and deeper into the stimulus trap. Can someone be so stupid and in such denial at the same time?

In a not fearful and not banker-wanker scenario – one based on the abundance of human ingenuity and long held positive embrace the change you get scenario, things look positively hopeful: Money is the lubricant of the economy and the more money runs through the system the better it s for all concerned. After all Economies are giant marketplaces that specialize in the transaction business – imagine a giant market place that connects buyers and sellers so they can more efficiently transact. And the glue keeping the whole thing together is trust and the lubricant of this marketplace is MONEY. So the more money the Fed prints and digitizes and throws in the economy same as the Bank of England and Japan the better. Get it? Inflation is not such a bad monster when you manage to avoid fear and embrace it. It actually disappears when embraced and you just look at your own shadow. That is a big lesson for the banker-wankers out there, but there you have it. The are minions steeped in fear and not to be allowed to operate heavy machinery because they tend to crash under the illusion of giant monsters chasing after them. We have to go beyond our comfort zone and move on to a place of discomfort and in some cases go all the way to the panic zone — just in order to effect this change and stimulate growth in our economies. Rain money from the sky. No problem. We need Growth. We need stimulation hoping that it will lead to euphoria and eventually an orgasm. That is the only way… to get out of our emotional and economic morass. More salubrious lubricant/money in the economy,  leads to more sex in the marketplace, and in turn clears the cobwebs and chase the spiders away… in a free for all.

That’s where I’ll throw my lot behind too. Screw ideology. Thought are meshed into actions and into behaviour. Because where you look is where you go. So look at these two opposing ideological approaches and Go figure what course your economy must be in. As a leader you have to make hard choices. As a Chancellor you have to make wise choices. And as a human being you must get laid to continue the species. So now you know your way. Go Ahead…

Don’t forget the lubricant…

Yet after this simile of fecund Spring time LIFE art large,must say that  I applaud the Fed’s stimulus actions and Bernanke’s acumen because they are the needed medicine. After all, he seems to have the magic skills to pull it off with Obama on the ready to help leverage Public Mandate and Government Policy into an Executive mandate.

Now Japan starts doing this same magic trick with gusto — as a newfangled policy. And if you are in Tokyo or Osaka these days, please don’t carry an umbrella, because they might start raining down money from the helicopters. But that’s still old fashioned  stimulus taken to a new extreme. Japanese are famous for that. Think bubble tea. It’s a free for all with plenty of lubrication. The results are positive short term yet slightly unpredictable long term — but they taste great, feel good, and make people happy. They also formulate hope for Japan because they have to get some growth soon — else they hit the same brick wall Greece and Cyprus have hit sooner rather than later…

And our favourite is Old Blightey. Here is the country where economic theory is surely suffering a crisis of consciousness. Having replaced Sir Mervyn King for an Abenomics supporter in the Bank of England while George Osborne preaches austerity, is some kind of schizophrenic record. Yet it appears unequivocally British. Will it work?

As I recall Quadrophenia worked great. Sold many records and went top of the charts. So why not this?

A bit of an identity crisis mind you but it smells like stimulus time to me… tainted though by ideological overtones and that makes it sinister.

Never waste a good crisis, is the lesson of the day.

Three views of the same side of the coin in different places of the world shared amongst the strongest three currencies out there. Three great countries doing best they can to address this systemic crisis. And with practice they become more creative and hopefully more successful.

And with the renminbi doing the same rounds too we are keen to watch the races.

Much like the proverbial submarine races, this is too early to call but it’ not a zero sum game. All Are Winners. Really all are winners and especially the spectators. And even their girls are winners as I discovered early on when as a young lad, I invited lovelies to watch said races in Hood canal…

Well Done.

That’s what’s gonna take to achieve lift off and get some growth.

And as my old friend Vaclav used to say the time is NOW:

“Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed – be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable… The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility.”

Me thinks we’ve entered that zone.

No need to be afraid anymore.

Inflation fears are for wimps and pussies.

We are better than that.

Yours,

Pano

PS:

I wanna close with these words from a savvy investor from a few hundred years back:

“Those who seek safety and stability at the expense of Freedom — deserve neither…”

-Ben Franklin

Every society has topics it does not discuss.

These are the issues which challenge its comfortable assumptions about itself…

They are the ones that remind us of our deep-seated weaknesses and wake up all of our hidden nascent fears.

The big issues that make us powerless and rob us of our vitality. The real threats to our well being. The root causes of malaise, cancers, and worse. The real causes of national failure.

The things that break down society and make you morose enough to speed yourself off to meet your maker.

The ill omens that speak of the reasons why so many children suffer acute asthma, auto-immune deficiencies systemic failures, and increased mortality.

The deadly pathogens for the weakest amongst us — the kids and the elderly.

The grand things that scare the living daylights of the medical professionals, because they are too big to grasp your head around it, speak of — let alone handle.

The issues that are so non sensical that cause people to believe in Alien abductions, UFOs, sex with tentacles in spaceships, little green leprechauns, conspiracy theories everywhere, monsters hiding behind every curtain and under each bed, and generally things that threaten people’s mental health and assault the general sanity of the population.

And it is also these same issues that are so oppressive that make the populace powerless to address and thus threatens the quality & continuity of LIFE itself.

The problems so vast that people choose to believe in smoke screens and ludicrous beliefs that are basically mass delusions — all in order to avoid facing the real Demons.

We choose to accept mass Delusions and then we anticipate them as new found realities and in turn this acceptance breeds a degree of comfort.

Sad yet True…

This is the case today with Greece, where most people in the city of Athens [5.5 Million] believe that the contrails of the flying airplanes taking off and landing from the Airport hub, are in reality chem-trails spraying the population. People in all honesty believe that the planes flying above are spraying some chemical agents of some unknown substances that make people plain stupid.

This is the only thing they’ve got so far, and it is the only way they can explain their tiredness, their incapacity to compute and solve problems, and the series of failures, corruption, and the wrong decisions consistently taken by their political class.

People blame their lack of true leadership, and the constant corrosive effects of corruption that the Greek people have to put up with in their daily life — on unknown chemical agents sprayed from up above.

They can thus explain a series of unfortunate incidents, acting like a thousand little cuts that rendered the old heroic country of Greece, a patient in the hands of the cruel German Doctor StrangeLove — Mr Schoible.   Seems that the Greeks today believe that the German policy is to bleed Greece dry, and no amount of resistance is visible. This is or is not the German method and yet the modern Greek feels that their lack of resistance to this onslaught and inexorable death is due to the spraying from up above.

A cruel joke when considering the fate that has resulted in this devastation that the country currently suffers through. Yet this mass delusion of believing that someone is spraying the Athenians from up above — to keep them in a vegetative state — is accepted as reality by 90% of the people of Athens and beyond.

Is this a mass Delusion phenomenon fueled by propaganda?

Or a mass hysteria?

Is this an iimpressive case of mass hysteria running amok, or something else even more sinister?

So these questions got us thinking.

Crowdsourcing the correct answers is an ancient means of divining the truth. And perhaps in the way that this belief is so prevalent in society there is some basis of truth to it’s basic premise: People do not feel well. Essentially all the people of Athens – living in the bowl that constitutes Athens – are susceptible to this extreme malaise.

They do not feel 100% functional. They feel sluggish, incompetent, and a little like the drunk boxer syndrome, unable to take correct decisions. Angry and aggressive, and unable to concentrate on proper thinking. The people of Athens are somewhat out of sorts. making mistakes all day long and not having a good decision making instinct. Losing their bearings and their compass so to speak. Not being able to find true North and failing. Failing in a big way. That much can easily be observed by evaluating the consistently poor decisions of the ruling political classes…

So they believe “Mas Psekazoune” [meaning = They are spraying us]. An amazing assumption of powerlessness from a whole proud people. And maybe it hides some truth in it. People are feeling ill. That much is clear. But the errant belief that the reason for the malaise is aerosol spraying from the skies, like the “Raid” we use for the cockroaches, is an assumption too far…

Because a mass delusion causes us to embrace anti-science positions based on hastily assembled conspiracy theories and the consistent belief that we are being sprayed from Up above — therefore rendering us mentally powerless and conveniently irresponsible for our actions. It is easy then to blame all failures, misery and all manner of exposure to bad decisions, despair and despondency, to those forces outside of us.  You see this as a salvation of sort when you give up your Free Will to forces beyond the pale or the known. Unknowable and unseen these forces operate in the disturbed mentality of mass illusion as a deus ex machina, responsible for all on this earth.  Conveniently allowing us to go on and continue our lives as if nothing can be done. Powerless and full of Cognitive Dissonance we embrace this popular propaganda as a panacea for all that ails us and thus also address all of our various beliefs as simply, irreconcilable. And we can go on taking wrong decisions at will – for ever – and keep smoking to death, or drinking ourselves to oblivion, and whoring our country away… Who cares — It’s not our fault.

Primary among these issues is the mass assumption that we are sprayed on with chemicals from the aeroplanes that are in fact, mood altering and brain numbing substances to make the population docile and obedient.

When in fact all the characteristics the people of Athens describe are consistent with the slow CO2 poisoning. And like the slowly cooking frog, that doesn’t jump out of the pot, the modern day docile Athenians fail to notice the lack of Oxygen because the process became endemic slowly by burning all their forests one by one.

And this burning of the forests was done by Greek entrepreneurial citizens who wanted to built a house in the previously forested lands and enjoy the wasteland…. All this errant behaviour is proof which sinks the cosy assertion, that there need not be a tension between the green Commons of benefit to all, and real estate economic growth.

Because proper scientific measurements tell us that the air of Athens is so oxygen depleted as to be at 20% less than the existing measurements from other well oxygenated cities of similar latitude around the globe. And the key difference is the existence or lack of forests.

You have forests, you have oxygen. No forests – No Oxygen. The morphology of the Attica bowl surrounding the city, further exacerbates the Athens slow CO2 poisoning of the population because it doesn’t allow frequent cleaning of the pungent angry air from the sea breezes unless having been preceded by a Northerly wind to stir the mass of Co2 rich air out toward the sea.

Thus it is truly something wrong with the Greek population’s mentality and brain functioning:  A distinct lack of adequate oxygen in their bloodstream. Oxygen being the primary food for the brain, the mental tiredness and stupidity follow… this lack of the vital gas in the Athenian air.

At a reception in London recently I met an extremely beautiful and wealthy woman, who lives, as most people with similar levels of wealth do, in an almost comically unsustainable fashion: jetting between various homes and resorts in one long turbo-charged holiday. She is the heir of a Greek shipping dynasty whose forebears were rough and tumble shippers. pirates is more like it but after many generations of careful breeding she is a real princess…

When I told her our findings about Athens and what my work is, she responded, “oh I agree, the environment is so important. I’m crazy about recycling.” But the real problem, she explained, was “people breeding too much in poor places like Athens and then all of them using motorcycles and cheap automobiles and thus polluting the air”.

When I told her that birth rates are dropping almost everywhere, and that Athens much like the rest of the world is undergoing a slow demographic transition, she disagreed violently: she has seen, on her endless travels, how many children “all those people have”.

And as so many rich vacuous people in her position do, she was using population as a means of disavowing her own impacts. The issue allowed her to transfer responsibility to other people: people at the opposite end of the economic spectrum. It allowed her to pretend that her shopping and flying and endless refurbishment of multiple homes are not a problem. Recycling and population: these are the amulets people clasp in order not to see the clash between protecting the environment and rising consumption.

Her next question was what can she do about it to protect her home in Athens from the lack of oxygen? Obviously I told her about the oxygen pods where people sleep inside an oxygen rich curved coffin like enclosure where you can have a rich mixture of oxygenated air and thus sleep refreshed…

This seems to have solved her worries and she proceeded to note the name and manufacture of the oxygen sleeping pods so to acquire one for her home in Athens…

Somehow I felt deflated. Because we are always seeking private solutions that further degrade the commons. Because the lack of Oxygen in Athens is because all the forests have been burned down and there is no other way to generate oxygen in a city built inside a bowl surrounded by desertified walls where once forested mountains used to be.

In a similar way, we have managed, with the help of a misleading global accounting system, to overlook one of the gravest impacts of our consumption. This too has allowed us to blame foreigners – particularly poorer foreigners – for the problem.

Unsurprisingly, hardly anyone wants to talk about this, as the only meaningful response is to replant all the forests around Athens immediately as a National priority anda National Emergency response to this ultimate Tragedy of the Commons.

As the author of the book WOOL points out in his dystopian Brave New World, The industrial civilization that befouled the air became possible when there was no self-denial of any kind of luxury. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics is what destroyed our Atmosphere. And we keep on doing this by burning all the remaining forests and making all lands open for development, fearing that otherwise the wheels of our economy will stop turning — whereas in point of fact, the opposite is true.

The wheels of the current economic system – which depends on perpetual growth for its survival – certainly will improve if the people are healthier and take smart decisions and are turned on sharply to their biological benefit. T

Smart people understand the impossibility of sustaining this system of endless, pointless consumption and of destroying nature at every turn. Because our destroying the Commons is not possible to be understood without the general context of our continued erosion of the living planet and the diminished future prospects of humankind.

Now this is the conversation we will not have, and like my pretty little friend, she would much rather jump in bed for a sport of sex than have this depressing discussion after dinner…

But in my book, considering only our territorial emissions, we make the impacts of our escalating consumption disappear in a puff of black smoke – same like our forests.

Ancient Athens was woodsy and full of healthy trees all the way to Acropolis. And the decline started when the forests were burned down..

And today we have exterminated the very last forests that gave the city the requisite oxygen for the population to survive and perhaps have a chance to thrive at some point in the future…

However by burning up the last forests around Athens, we have offshored the problem, the solutions, and our perceptions of it. It’s always somebody else’s fault.. let alone that our children are dying from asthma.

And now the people of Athens are stupid enough — due to lack of oxygen and the CO2 poisoning — that they believe they are being sprayed from up above…

Seems to me that’s how some major religions get started.

Time to consult my friend Hugh Howey, who wrote the book WOOL and ask his impression of it all.

He thinks it is a sleigh of hand and a magic trick to make a whole population stupid enough to believe this much crap. But they have done it to themselves. Same like the book: They are being sprayed alright – like cockroaches. The Fools…

But at least in a couple of places the Mass Hysteria, Cognitive Dissonance conjuring trick is beginning to attract some attention and the fabric of the magician is tearing apart affording those wishing to see — a clear view of reality…

Yours,

Pano

PS:

As evolved humans we know how to claim responsibility and take leadership. To that end I founded an NGO named ELINIKO — http://www.ELINIKO.org — and we started solving the problem through a simple premise: Replace the lost OXYGEN by rebuilding the oxygen generating machines…

The only machine we know of that can produce oxygen for the Commons is the simple life giving tree. A clump of trees can produce oxygen sustainably and economically and it also has millions of other positive side effects leading to virtuous cycles. And how do we scale this up to the levels we need?

We can do this simply by building a forest…

And the NGO we set up is called ELINIKO and is now up and running in Athens Greece and the people are all Rockstars…

With my simple advise they can move mountains:

Think like a maverick, Fight like a gladiator, Love with a humble heart and Die for a cause worth dying for…

In short: Be a “game changer”.

On May 7th the ELINIKO team will hold an open house to share with the community their findings, and their solutions. Join them and hear the root causes of the things nobody wants to talk about in Athens and in the Greek society.

On May 12th, the ELINIKO site will launch a brilliant video animation, neatly sketching out the problem and the solutions. The hope is that by explaining the issue simply and engagingly, this video animation will reach a much bigger audience than articles like the one you are reading can achieve.

On May 24th, the same ELINIKO  organization and the Environmental Parliament – a body that advises governments – will publish a scientific report on how the destroyed forests, the burned out Green Commons, the agricultural grass seasonal burning, the Oxygen depletion within the morphology of the Athens bowl, and the devastating CO2 slow poisoning of the population – due to emissions – are all likely to rise, and how government policy should respond to the issue.

I hope this is the beginning of a conversation we have been avoiding for much too long.

Because after all, how many of us are prepared fully to consider the implications?

Yet am confident that once you understand the implications — You are bound to join up and act.

And here is the old man saying:

Look not to faults of others,
Nor to their omissions and commissions.
But rather look to your own acts,
To what you have done and left undone.

When one looks down on another’s faults,
And is always full of envy,
One’s defilements continually grow;
Far is one from their destruction.

If only you would do what you teach others,
Then, being yourself controlled,
You could control others well.
Truly, self-control is difficult.

You yourself must watch yourself.
You yourself must examine yourself,
And so, self-guarded and mindful,
you will live in happiness.

–Dhammapada

The Willard or otherwise known as the Lobbyist Hotel in Washington DC, has a long tradition of wielding influence…

Situated strategically right across from the White House, decked out  in colonial splendour, and being the best hotel in town – carries it’s own air of cognitive dissonance. Because here at the Willard – always under heavy security – reality seems to have been barred from intruding. And thus climate change is not ever to be discussed here as the threat to National Security it really is.

According to the legend du jour, in the Capital of the United States and specifically in the Government District — the term ‘lobbyist’ originated at the Willard Hotel when Ulysses S. Grant was the US President sometime between 1869-1877 during his two year term of duty.  Apparently President Grant would frequent the Willard Hotel to enjoy a snifter of brandy and a fat cigar in his boots – away from the cares of office and the demands of administration. And as this became somewhat of a pleasant habit of his evenings, word got out. When the news spread out that he was frequenting the lobby bar nightly — favour seekers started flocking. And while he was there, he’d be hounded by petitioners with petitions at hand, asking for legislative favours, land grants and government deals, federal jobs, and he was generally mobbed by businessmen seeking to sell him things. He was besieged so much that in order to escape long and dreaded conversations – he devised a system of “chits” to give as “promissory notes to buy” the various armaments, munitions, supplies and all the things the federal government needed to acquire in open commerce.  That way with a stroke of his pen in a small piece of paper, he was rid of the unwanted intruders, routing them to be dealt with through the official channels for their business – and thus observing the government’s fairness act for the procurement process. It is said that President Grant was quite annoyed by this and thus coined the term “Lobbyist” in referring to the business petitioners as “those damn lobbyists pestering me and not allowing me the peace of mind to enjoy my repass at the Willard’s comfy carpeted bar…”

Still almost a couple of centuries later – whenever, I stay at the Willard – I see all kinds of lobbyists maneuvering the floor and seeking favours in suit and tie – with petition/briefcase at hand.  It’s largely inescapable to dismiss them or their influence in today’s body politic of America because their incessant charade, now extends toward each and every office holder in Washington. Great or small. All publicly elected officials and bureaucrats receive daily visits from lobbyists for a very real reason. Treasure hunting. They all accept their campaign contributions, trinkets, silver or gold in as many forms as human treachery can colour. This is the nature of the beast called lobbying.

Yet in America lobbying has grown to an unprecedented extent today – not seen in Rome back in the day … to the peril of this great republic. As Caesar said: “When elections were bought, Democracy suffered. When the judges were bought, the populace suffered. When the army captains were bought, the security of the provinces suffered. But when the Senators were bought, Rome itself fell….”

Lobby doe just this. Buying and selling senators. And because of this, the very public affront to Democracy, has given pause to all efforts to halt Climate change in America — lest it disrupts their carbon intensive business model. And they have succeeded magnificently. Far more than what the President and Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant could have ever foreseen. Because today, the hated lobbyists, not only disturb our repass but they threaten our very lives. Your LIFE. My Life. Everyone’s Life….

And this is our fault — because we have allowed the lobbyists and their 30 silver coins, to go unfettered about their deleterious business of corrupting our Democracy.

They go on daily, unfairly dealing, in buying and selling the Public’s consciousness, their votes, and that of their elected officials and civil servants alike.

And the results of their influence peddling is devastating. Because for the first time in it’s history the US intelligent lawmakers deny honest science. And this is not only unprecedented but dangerous in the extreme since they know better. Yet they pretend to deny and question scientific consensus because it conflicts with the interests of their funders, the fossil fuel industry. There is no greater depth to the conspiracy to deny reality. No smoky room, no secret societies, no cabals of men wanting to destroy the world. The error of their ways is just greed. And their need to raise enough “juice” to fight the next election cycle. It’s ultimately our fault for allowing public office elections to become a gladiatorial sport and a people’s bloody spectacle. Simple as that…

 In that fight to the bottom, we tend to forget reality. Yet this early in the year and our drought is already considered a Thousand year odd climatic occurrence. For example, the crops and livestock in Texas are equally decimated – victims of the incessant drought. New Mexico has got no water for agriculture. Most Kansas corn is stillborn. Colorado forests have been burned and the wildfires continue to spread. These occurrences have caused billions of dollars in damages over a few short weeks. Add to this the whole past year’s costs and you quickly see what the 30 pieces of silver strategically distributed by lobbyists around Washington have done to the Republic. Extreme storms like Katrina are now regular. Super freak storm Sandy hit New york and Jersey like an Armageddon. Towns and cities from coast to coast have experienced an alternating cold spell and extreme snow and then massive heat waves.  Farmers can’t compete for the meagre water resources available when they have to bid up against the oil and gas well frackers. And this was the hottest year on record still after breaking all records in the previous one. Meanwhile, the record high temperatures have caused the kinds of droughts that make crop pollination near impossible. One crop biologist recently described the current conditions thus:  “It’s like farming in Hell out there.”

And it’s not even summer yet…

These weather extremes can be squarely blamed on the shift in the climate triggered by human energy generating activities that produce CO2. Our unscientific habit of burning everything on sight for our energy and economic needs i catching up with us. Ghosts of Victorian air pollution in large cities are now a worldwide phenomenon polluting all of our atmosphere from pollution accumulated over many years… Anthropogenic global warming is what the scientists call the Greenhouse effect induced by our infantile desire of burning fossil fuels to procure our energy. And with the Congress and Senate of the United States virtually ignoring the Climate Change issues today, you can only imagine how much more difficult life will get for your tomorrows.

Last real effort at addressing this mammoth issue took place at the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009. Energy Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, and Rep. Edward Markey, co-sponsored and brought a bill for Climate Change legislation to Capitol Hill in Washington, on Monday, May 18, 2009. This was based upon reasonable proposals made by the Environmental Parliament amongst others and it  was worded as a new bill proposal for legislation on global warming, climate and energy strategy. Details of the plan are unimportant but suffice to say that it was a small reasonable baby step in the right direction.

And that was this country’s best opportunity to mitigate climate change. A gigantic opportunity to start doing the right thing…

Yet it was all for nought. The marvellous momentum of the CHANGE election and the New President acting boldly on Climate Change, was singularly wasted. The chance to do the right thing, came and went four years ago. This was right after President Barack Obama took office, with a friendly Democratic Senate and House of Representatives — and yet we screwed it up…

Why?

Let’s look at the Post Mortem, as we always do at EP when we analyze our performance: The American Clean Energy and Security Act (otherwise known as Waxman-Markey, after its sponsors) was debated in Congress thoroughly and although the lobbyists took out the bags of gold and spread their largesses amongst Congressmen, this little bill thundered through and passed the House of representatives with a slim margin of majority. Yet it passed. The fact that it managed to get this far was a miracle in itself.

And then the bill went on to the senate for debate.

Here is where the lobbying effort kicked in at high gear. The knives were out for all to see. This was a serious knife fight.  And the lobbyists bought any and all shreds of consciousness from the old men tasked to guard our Republic from the Barbarians. Thus the lobby succeeded to shred our Democracy and the  global warming, climate and energy strategy bill failed and died an ignoble death in the Senate floor.

That was the end of that… Yeah, the proposal lingered, on the corridors of the House until it was eventually abandoned as a bastard child given to an out of country orphanage for adoption. This was in July 2010. Since then, our elected officials have largely ignored the global warming caused by CO2 pollution, and the atmospheric heat-trapping gases, causing enormous disruptions across the planet and potentially rendering all life at peril of extinction. Because something else the good men and women of the United States government failed to debate was the fact that we are currently undergoing the Mass Extinction phase of species of animals and plants called the Anthropocene geological period. And as the old adage going from the era of the Nazi people hunts and forced extinctions: ” When they came for my neighbours, I did not protest and then, when they came to take me away — nobody was there to protest for me.”

Am afraid the same holds true for us because if we do not protect the other species fast disappearing today — nobody will be there to protect us from this ignoble destiny. No big deal… After all the cemeteries of species are full of the ignoramus, the unfit, the inflexible and those unable to adjust and change.

And here is the accounting tally for the deadly defeat: The 2009 bill saw lobbying efforts unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Environmental groups pushing for the legislation, including the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, spent a record $24.6 million lobbying in 2009, employing nearly 500 lobbyists in their hefty effort.

But even that kind of cash was grossly outmatched by the oil and gas industry, which also had a record spending year in lobbying: $175 million and 807 lobbyists. No wonder the bill didn’t stand a chance.

No piece of legislation since Waxman-Markey has been anywhere near as comprehensive in lowering carbon emissions. And smaller efforts have been decimated by the oil and gas industry’s influence on Capitol Hill. Take a recent vote to end $24 billion in tax breaks for big oil companies. 43 Senate Republicans and four Democrats filibustered to block the bill. All told, the 51 senators in favor of ending subsidies had received a paltry $5.9 million in career contributions from oil and gas. The 47 who protected the subsidies got $23.5 million.

That kind of money could seduce even the sturdiest senator and turn them into lobbyist’s tarts or worse…

Whoring their vote has been an institution in DC since the lobbyists came around. Yes from the very beginning. Washington and Lincoln both protested the influence peddlers. But today it has really gotten horrid. For the US senators and Congressmen and women denying science to such an extent that dazzles the mind is not a sign of the times but rather indicative of the fact, the Barbarians are inside the gates. And their name is “Joey Lobby – money blowy.” The amount of wealth the Oil, Coal and Gas lobbyists lavish on the elected officials is such that even former republican representatives blush. And it’s difficult to get a politician to blush when faced with the true form of their errant ways…

And lobbying today has taken many new faces. Most all of them not registered officially as lobbying organizations as the law demands. As an example, of this unregistered and largely illegal lobbying masquerading as something else, we have Rep. Bob Inglis (R-Va.) announcing a new initiative “urging conservatives to stop denying that humans are contributing to global warming.” And a related timely post on the conservative Republican’s website revealed that the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has supposedly been “secretly” meeting with environmental activist groups to discuss a carbon tax to address climate change and deficit reduction. Conspiracy theorists – please start your engines now…

It appears like progress but such a conservative-progressive alignment would be excellent news, if it were for real and if not for the AEI’s historically excellent record of denying science, denying climate change, and consequently denying the current American people’s reality.

Yet the AEI  didn’t stop there, in their illegal lobby activities — because it is a very strong lobby organization unafraid of giving people money for erroneous and fake research. Same as their brethren plying the halls of Capitol Hill with dripping purses full of silver. AEI offered the $ 10K grant to any comers, one and all — according to the Washington Post newspaper of record — back in 2007 and continues unabated to day. So if you need some extra cash for a new bathroom, general home remodeling,a garage, or a new gas guzzling jalopy — do call on the AEI which still offers $10,000 per head no question asked. That’s $10 K  cash and many other perks and additional monies in grants, and expenses, to brazen scientists willing to lie, cheat, and teal in order to distort the scientific evidence of global warming. All this to derail the scientific consensus. Hurry up though … Go get yours, while the getting is good and the game is easy to discredit the new IPCC report coming up now.

According to the Guardian newspaper, the AEI had received $1.6 million from Exxon-Mobil, for the 29 members of its staff that had once worked for the Bush administration, and that periodically the Chair and vice-chairman of its board of trustees was a former Exxon-Mobil chief.  From 2007 when the IPCC fourth assessment on Climate Change came out, till today 2013 when the fifth assessment is expected at the end of the year – plenty of Quisling scientists have benefited from Exxon-Mobile’s largesse, via the AEI’s silver coin purse. And now the game is on high gear again, with the AEI spotting money on all the crazy pseudo-scientists claiming global warming is caused by Cosmic rays. Superman and all his posse of comic book heroes is not far behind either…

Talk about culture — Methinks it’s time to let the clowns in…

By the way, the fifth IPCC Climate Change assessment report (In draft form AR5)  - by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - which is not due to be published in full until September 2013, was uploaded onto a website called Stop Green Suicide by obscure climate sceptic Alec Rawls, and it has since been mirrored everywhere else on the internet. Easy to find – look for AR5 – to see for yourself where we stand precariously as a species…

This precarious existence and the resultant National Security Threats are further exacerbated by the unregistered lobbying machine of AEI, masquerading as a think-tank while wreaking havoc on real science. Because AEI, has been receiving huge capital infusions as donations from Big Oil companies and polluters in order to carry out it’s mission to disrupt the scientific consensus and misinform the American public by spreading the seeds of discord and doubt. Same as the big tobacco lobby was doing for fifty years — trashing available medical science about smoking harm — up until their practices were exposed and had to retreat under their rock along with their PR machine’s lobbyists.

And now they have resurfaced, because the same Public Relations firms are using their old playbook and are causing the same grave damage – now on behalf of Big Oil, Gas and Coal. Recycling their old tricks seem sustainable to them. Well played boys – well played…

So that’s the Willard lobby’s finest hour.

Now you know.

That’s where they are cooking the facts and the books for you with their 30 pieces of silver — ill gotten from selling you expensive petrol. Petrol financed by a couple of useless wars to get more access to easy & cheap oil. Oil, that you have already paid for twice… if not three times through taxes. subsidies, profiteering, and war costs.

And thus they have us all stitched up…

Yet it’s good to remember that some scores of years ago in another Republic – that of ancient Rome - Caesar at a young age had realized that money was the key to Roman politics and influence as the system had long been corrupted. And when he was firmly ensconced in power, he felt free to push for reforms and thus clearly stated that his practice of buying political favour has grave consequences for the Republic, and it will open the door to the end of it’s Democracy. Of course the Roman Republic was not a perfect Democracy — far from it — as Julius Caesar also observed. To explain things, he is often credited with the saying: “Fortune turned against us and brought confusion to all we did. Greed destroyed honour, honesty and every other virtue, and taught men to be arrogant and cruel, to neglect the gods. Ambition made men false. Rome changed. A government which had once surpassed all others in justice and excellence now became cruel and unbearable.”

And today it’s not the “paid for and bought” influence that’s deadliest to our politics and National Security. Today it’s the appearance of influence. This last week alone was revealed that more than $ 30 Million US dollars were given by lobbyists to Senators who voted to built the vastly damaging Canadian Tar Sand pipeline across America. Thirty million silver dollars for them to act like modern day Judas and betray the American public… If this is not corruption and  debauchery, then we all live in Paradise. Yet it’ a small investment when is compared with the $ 1,9 Trillion US Dollars that were given to the Big Oil ad the Fossil Fuel industry worldwide in subsidies, with the largest giver of this largesse being the US government. If this is not Tit for Tat politics, then it must be divine benevolence toward the Oil majors who have been showing record profits consistently over the last fifteen years. Why the need for additional subsidies to the tune of the size of GDP of France is beyond me…

This was reported by the Washington Post, that verified the figure of One point nine trillion Us dollars [ $1,9 Trillion US ] given as subsidies to the worldwide fossil fuel industry in 2011 and it continue unabated since. An industry dominated by the five major American and transnational Oil companies and their ilk that exhibit record profits in the midst of a worldwide recession, and still receive subsidies almost the size of the Gross Domestic Product of France — the world’s sixth largest economy — each and every year. It’s a bloody disgrace and a monopoly support scheme for perpetuating corruption and lack of competition.

Instead – f we were members of an intelligent species – we would follow the correct policy which would have been to allow all fuels regardless of origin to compete freely on a level Darwinian playing field. Only that way we would determine the best and thus allow the fittest fuel to flourish in the market place. In that landscape the renewable energy fuels would win hands down now that solar ha achieved Grid Parity worldwide.

Because with that amount of dough — almost Two Trillion US Dollars — there is enough juice to incentivize the scale up of renewable energies worldwide and liberate us all from Climate hurt…

So that’s what the Lobby money buys… at the Willard Hotel. A retrograde future.

And we can debate endlessly about the First Amendment interpretations and the real power of Lobbying and the super PACs, buying influence and flooding Congress and Senate races with oil-dollars, all we’d like. But Climate Change is a case where public opinion, on its own, should be the decisive factor of the course we should follow, because the public in true wisdom of crowds fashion, has already determined the best course to follow. And that course does not include Tar Sands Oil.

The new civil rights movement that was spawn on the back of this issue, highlights the dangers to our National Security from this dirtiest of fuels. People know these threats are all too real and are willing to lay their lives on the line in order to fight against the Tar Sands pipelines. Now that’s Leadership. No need for sugar-coating this TRUTH.

And coming in the heels of so many disasters hitting America all at once, the costs are mounting for the tax payer and for the Republic to the point that cannot be explained away as accounting rounding errors in our pursuit of cheap energy. We’ve got gas for that…

So my suggestion to the elected officials of the United State is to observe timidity and reason, lest the public loses faith in our Democracy.

Because if a loss of faith on this pivotal issue for the American public becomes wide and deep enough, the question of whether or not we are right to lose faith becomes academic.

The loss is destructive either way…

Just ask Rome.

Yours,

Pano

PS:

Of course lobbying takes its name a bit earlier, from the lobbies or hallways of the English Parliament — well before Ulysses Grant came around. Lobby is where MPs of the House of Parliament and the peers of the House of Lords, gather before and after their debates in the Commons and Lords chambers respectively – in old England.

And the term lobbyist, has been in use since the 16th century if not earlier — but the Willard hotel lobby story, coupled with General Grant, is far more true of it’s destructive powers. Because only here in America can the “lobby” produce such dire corrupting results for the Republic, and in turn for humanity – as denial of science and their wanton willingness to sacrifice all Life for short term profit.

And given the way the lobbying influence industry works – a heady mix of campaign donations, lobbying expenditures, manipulated think tanks, and deep and complex personal relationships – unless we all stand together in protest or cut way back on our own, individual energy gluttony, big oil looks like it will continue to increase profits with the help of Washington, at the expense of our pocket, our wellbeing, and our children’s blood.

Never mind the fate of the human species, and all the other species cohabiting this planet’s present and future.

Japan’s Silent Spring echoes in silence.

In the once happy lands of Fukushima, a strange silence has erupted now that Springtime has arrived. Absent are the birds and their bird song, and  their happy landings. All is quiet in the western front….

Fukushima is a Nightmare that keeps on giving…

Because Fukushima’s dramatic nuclear radiation fallout is far from over.

This spring there are no crickets, no bees, nor song birds – to hear and rejoice – in Fukushima…

There are no butterflies…

They haven’t been here since they were wiped out by the Nuclear disaster two years ago.

An eerily quiet has dawned during this time of glorious Spring in and around the once fertile lands of Fukushima – now rendered a No man’s land.

A deathly silence has taken hold – away from nature’s sounds and smells of life everlasting – proving once and for all the error of our ways. A strange void of sound has now taken hold of Fukushima. No school children can be heard laughing and crying out, nor are there any around. No happy voices to be heard anywhere around Fukushima either.

Silent Spring indeed.

The Fukushima TEPCO nuclear power plant’s core melt down and explosions released huge amounts of radiation and apparently still do, because the nuclear reactors are far from being entombed and thus allow radiation to escape. There are measurements that radiation is still leaking, leaching, and seeping, in the air, the sea, the ground, and carried out by water … causing even the birds to fall silent. The birds are gone, because the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor melt down leaves a lasting impact on bird’s population, DNA, and their breeding patterns. The population of the Fukushima birds has shifted dramatically, as all wildlife and human species tend to relocate… towards cleaner lands.

Sadly the bees that are the queen of reproductive cycles for agriculture have disappeared from Fukushima too…

A 2011 study of birds near Chernobyl in Ukraine found that their sperm is being damaged by harmful radiated reactive oxygen species, which have been created by radiation from the country’s nuclear disaster in 1986. According to calculations by Jim Smith at the University of Portsmouth, UK, the radiation at Chernobyl has produced enough reactive oxygen species that explains the observed harm (Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0150) along the more nasty radioactive elements of the melt down that are responsible for the silence at Chernobyl. He says, the same is true of Fukushima. The biggest effects at Chernobyl were seen in barn swallows, which rely on farming activities for their food. Smith thinks the evacuation of the area and stoppage of all agricultural activities may also explain the swallows’ plight and this is truly taking place in Fukushima as well…

And the wildlife as a whole is affected negatively because the Fukushima levels of radioactivity are still way too high.  Proof of this is the high levels of radioactivity found all around Fukushima even today. Levels that are as high as the peak time of the nuclear melt down two years ago. For example, the levels of radioactive caesium in fish around Fukushima are as high now as they were a year ago, suggesting that there may be still unknown sources of continued radiation leakage and spreading contamination.

But the birds, the fish, the crickets and the bees aren’t the only ones disappearing: All wildlife is gone, because radiation harms wildlife in seriously sinister ways, by damaging their DNA and thus not allowing to reproduce healthy offsprings. The three headed yet short lived lizards of Chernobyl are a good example of this Fukushima nightmare because these mutant lizards have been seen here too…

Ken Buesseler from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts analysed data from almost 9000 samples of sea life, taken more than a year after the meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant. The amount of caesium-134 in the fish has not yet decreased. The isotope has a half-life of two years, so Buesseler says caesium-134 must still be leaking into the environment (Science, doi.org/jm4).

The Fukushima area is chock-full of radioactive debris, that is far from being cleaned up. And the anaemic efforts from the industry cleaners hired by TEPCO and government to shift dirt around and hide it under the proverbial earth carpet — are finally seen for what they really are. Pure window dressing to make people feel a little better, although everybody knows that — much like Chernobyl — nobody will be allowed to return.

The Fukushima people, farmers, agriculturalists, fishermen, residents and children are very far from ever returning back to their homes, because the various radioactive elements strewn around Fukushima as were thrown from the explosions, and carried by the winds, have a half life of 6,700 years.  So it’s very likely they will persist in giving trouble for a long time to come rendering the area uninhabitable for hundreds of generations – no matter what clean up efforts take place.

God’s green earth indeed…

It’ so quiet in the irradiated area around Fukushima, now that the wildlife species much like the humans have disappeared in their bid to escape the nasty fallout.

And after all this — amazingly the Japanese government wants to restart some of the stopped nuclear reactors regardless of the vociferous opposition offered by the usually rather stoic Japanese public.

Yet to remind them of their continued and exaggerated folly, the Fukushima disaster keeps on giving — proving the bitter ironies of the myth of the easy, plenty, and stable nuclear energy, as advertised by the industry, greenwashing PR, and compliant governments, around the world.

Stupid Fools indeed.

Now another element comes out — freshly unearthed from the rubble that Fukushima now is.

The element of verity, just surfaced from under the nuclear disaster debris of Fukushima:

The TRUTH…

And this came about in a rather circuitous way.

From the Civil Courts.

Seems that the truth will be finally spilled out from the hearings related to a case seeking recompense for health and life related damages due to Fukushima reactors spewing radioactivity here and there and everywhere. Mostly everywhere…

Because the Fukushima’s fallout is far from over…

Under the present day remove, the Fukushima human costs are also slowly revealed.

Slowly at first as it alway happens, but reveal they will.

Mainly …  because … of litigation.

And because Justice has a way of arriving fashionably late — yet it always doe.

Litigation about who should pay for Fukushima melt down related illnesses, for the deaths, and for all these all too human costs and the life term loss… is now on.

And as it turns out now that the American GIs are suing — amongst others — the truth might come out along with a sense of justice overdue and overlong.

Today the thousands of US Marines who sped to the scene of the Nuclear meltdown to assist with the containment effort and help the people of Japan — have gotten sick from radiation related illnesses and are seeking recompense.

The US military personnel and their families are seeking $2 billion in damages for illnesses they believe were caused by the nuclear plant’s meltdown. They allege that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, misrepresented the amount of radiation present when it accepted US military assistance to deal with the crisis.

Soldiers aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, which rerouted from Korea to assist Japan, after the reactors at Fukushima went into meltdown in 2011, have filed a lawsuit against TEPCO in the District Court for the Southern District of California. So far, 24 people are claiming damages, but Paul Garner, a lawyer based in San Diego, California, who is representing the plaintiffs, says that the 70,000 US military personnel and families stationed in or near Japan at the time could be party to the suit if they wish.

The plaintiffs claim that the Fukushima radiation leak caused leukaemia, bone and blood cancers, testicular cancer, vision problems, birth defects, pregnancy complications, unnatural body induced abortions, and extreme gynecological bleeding, and other radiation related illnesses.

“It seems like a regular pattern of sickness — a whole lot of cancers,” says lead plaintiff attorney Garner.

The Pentagon has put together an online registry to document radiation levels in Japan and surrounding areas where military staff might have been. According to the website, all the known levels are far too low to cause harm. That concurs with a recent World Health Organization assessment which found that infants in the immediate vicinity of the stricken plant may have a slightly increased risk of developing some cancers, but that the risk to adults is low.

David Brenner of Columbia University in New York says that although leukaemia can develop within a brief period after exposure to radiation, “at the doses of relevance here, one would not expect much else by way of health effects in the first two years”.

This will be a long road, but do we know the facts yet?

Surely some of the facts will be revealed in the course of the proceedings…

TEPCO’s legal issues and compensation lawsuits certainly don’t end there either.

Earlier this month, over 1600 residents from around the Fukushima nuclear radiation exclusion zone, filed a lawsuit with Fukushima District Court, demanding compensation for damaged health, erasure of human rights, and displacement.

This is unprecedented because Japan is not a litigious society and certainly not one where the people take on the government and big business through the court system.

A seismic shift is taking place where the exceedingly polite & bureaucracy accepting people, now had had enough of the Nuclear industry and it’s obfuscation of the facts relevant to people’s ill health caused from their exposure to the nuclear radiation.

Seems to me that somehow the Ethics of doing business for the Good of the public have not penetrated into the Iron Triangle patronage system of Japan Inc.

And the giant disaster in Fukushima has not been enough of a wake up call into getting the bureaucrats of the government ministries to listen to public opposition to nuclear energy, seeing as they approved the restarting of the nuclear reactors across Japan.

Something’s got to give…

Yours,

Pano

PS:

Naturally TEPCO shielded by Japan’s government has not bothered to respond yet, feeling that the matter will be dealt with in due time and in due course same as the Fukushima nuclear disaster created the Fukushima exclusion zone — by their own accounts — due to no fault of their own…

Seems that Japan’s bureaucrats think they are of a different species – impervious to radiation  - and a breed apart…

Yet REALITY begs to differ.

I am constantly approached by real ambitious young stars asking me for this favour and that favour…

Often times the foolish ones ask me for money.

The more intelligent one ask for advise and winning tip.

And the really smart folks are asking me to be their mentor.

But the wise ones ask me to teach them.

And then the exceptional – One in a million – ask me to help them think and get outside the box.

Cool people all of them…

Frankly …

Am flattered.

Let me though tell you a couple of things about mentoring and teaching …

True mentoring does not consist merely in giving spontaneous and wasteful financial help.

That’s all wasted on things…

Teach a man how to fish etc…

True help is not even teaching one, how to acquire a few facts of business, finance, history, or just plain deal-making.

True help is to give them the hard lessons that will shape their character.

Because in my book, real mentorship is all about the development of character.

And character cannot be developed easily.

Only through experience of trial and error … character can be created.

Then it’s only through suffering said character can be strengthened.

And then it’s only through the strong character we developed — that vision gets cleared.

With clear vision – and all other earlier mentioned elements – ambition gets inspired.

And with inspiration success achieved.

As the Basketball Hall of Famer John Wooden used to say:

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

Don’t mind the names people call you — do the hard things…

Be the difficult one…

Swim against the tide…

Be the misfit square peg when the world wants all of you to be rounders.

Play the crazy tune that nobody else hears…

Dance to your own music.

Yours,

Pano

PS:

I knock a few heads around on occasion …

That’s why they call me Joe Hard…

Now you know…