Just in case someone hasn’t already deduced this, I am opposed to war. I mention energy and food production as being major problems in terms of environmental damage and being unsustainable. War is right up there and contributes substantially to difficulties solving the other problems.
The American public is easily manipulated by those in power. They simply create a crisis that requires them doing what they want to do as a solution, and then we demand they do it.
We don’t elect the people really in power. The people who are really in power are global, they have no allegiance to our nation or any other. They only want to maintain their wealth and power at any cost, Human life means nothing to them.
Those really in power make sure that enough of the major party candidates represent their positions to maintain a majority.
Look at the last presidential election, George Bush and John Kerry, both Harvard graduates, one of them even attended classes there. Both members of Skull and Bones. They are distant cousins.
Neither was in favor of getting us out of Iraq. Clearly, the powers that be preferred to keep G.W. in office else they wouldn’t have bothered to rig the elections or bring up the old standby distraction issues of gay marriage, abortion, and flag burning.
Between the two parties it was a lose-lose, though I believe Kerry may have been slightly less evil. I think of the two he is more intelligent and thus slightly less easy for the powers to be to manipulate, hence their preference for Bush.
These people, the ones really in control, whatever label you want to give them, powerful multi-nationalists who control banking, energy production and distribution, food production and distribution, etc, whatever label you give them, they seem to have some dangerous beliefs.
One thing I am convinced they believe is that the scenario presented in Revelations, as frequently interpreted, will be played out, and the world will be against Israel and Israel will be victorious. I think this has a lot to do with our support for Israel in spite of the fact that it alienates every Arab nation and maintains instability with accompanying high levels of death and suffering in the region.
I also believe that these people are convinced that we’ve exceeded the planet’s carrying capacity by a about 5-1/2 billion and they’re intent on culling the human heard. Of coarse they will exempt themselves from this culling. They view war as a step in the right direction.
A lot of people feel Iraq is about oil, that our nation needs oil and we will do what we have to do to secure it. The truth is our nation is floating in oil, but most of it is expensive to extract and refine. The recent super giant field discovered in the Gulf of Mexico is larger than Ghwar, formerly the largest oil field in the world.
Cheap production of middle eastern oil undercuts the market and prevents the oil companies from getting $70/barrel for oil so they keep the middle east destabilized to prevent that from happening.
Scientifically, we could have brought controlled nuclear fusion on-line in the 80’s if we had the political will and were willing to invest the resources necessary to do so. Over the last two decades, the science surrounding plasma confinement has improved, but by the late 80’s we knew enough to reach break-even, it would have required large reactors, but we could do it.
It is my believe that if Armageddon happens, it will happen only as a function of self-fulfilled prophesy. We need a more balanced approach to the middle east, one that allows those people to determine their own destinies without our interference.
Instead of wiping out 90% of the population, I believe we could live in a sustainable manner by using the resources we have intelligently. Addressing the energy situation will address any water shortage by making desalination economical. It would eliminate the incentive to fight over energy or water which seem to be major areas of contention these days but it
would not address religious differences.
I would be willing to bet that we’ve wasted more oil on the Iraq invasion and occupation than we will ever get from Iraq. A good start would be to stop wasting resources fighting over those that we have.
So what do we do? We can’t seem to change our government through elections in so far as our involvement in war is concerned. We can’t seem to do so through mass demonstrations because they don’t get coverage from the controlled commercial media.
I am feeling pretty frustrated about the whole situation as well as pretty depressed.
Hello Nanook,
I want to begin my stating that I don’t consider myself to be much of a biblical scholar, or an economist. What I am is an experienced Population Ecologist. I get to see, time and again, the effects of unrestrained population growth, and what happens to a wild species when they exceed the carrying capacity of their environment. This overpopulation causes Famine, there being more animals than the habitat can support. That causes disease from malnutrition and too much interaction between individuals, and increased competition for available resources, aka War. (sounds a bit like revelations, doesn’t it?) The cycle for small rodents is only about 3 years, about 25-40 years for most small animals. For a species like humans with a generational gap of about 25 years and a litter of only one, I would conclude about a 900-1200 year period would elapse between cycles. However, with agriculture and technology, we have continually been able to increase the carrying capacity of our habitat. Even so, small population collapses have occurred at about the right intervals throughout human history. The Plagues of medeival times. The collapse of Rome, etc. We can’t be far from another collapse. However, as a Population Ecologist, and Wildlife Manager, I know that such collapses are preventable with agressive management efforts. Increased Hunting and Trapping are utilized by Game departments to keep the populations of game animals high, but below carrying capacity to encourage large, diverse, but not excessive populations. Revelations, in my opinion, can be taken two ways. Either as a prediction, or as a warning. It’s only a prediction if humans continue to behave like animals. Self inflicted population management, and active adherance to the principles taught by Jesus and Siddhartha could easily prevent an apocalypse from ever happening.
I’d be interested in learning your thoughts.
Jack Thompson
Wildlife Biologist
A All Animal Control of Puget Sound
http://www.aallanimalcontrol.com
Personally, I believe it’s a combination of things, but largely self-fulfilled prophesy.
If it weren’t for the Biblical prediction of the return of the Jewish state, do you think Israel would have been set aside at the conclusion of world war II?
Humans differ from the other animals in terms of these natural population cycles in that humans tend to reduce their reproduction rate when resources are plentiful, other animals increase it.
In every modern industrialized country, without considering the effects of immigration, population growth is negative, population growth is only occurring where poverty is widespread.
We have the scientific knowledge necessary to increase the carrying capacity of Earth significantly more while simultaneously reducing the damage to the environment.
However, human greed prevents it’s implementation.
Now I know what I am about to say will offend a lot of people, but I believe it all comes down to breeding rights. Alpha males, powerful men, do not want other people to have a decent standard of living because it reduces their competitive advantage in breeding.
Why would I say such a ludicrous thing? I read about a study in which men were offered $5 for nothing, except that if they accepted the $5, another man would also receive $20.
Men who had low testosterone levels accepted the $5, but men with high testosterone levels turned it down if another man receiving $20 was a condition of their receiving the $5.
So we’ve got a world in which powerful leaders of major international corporations, oil companies, banks, major food producers, are driven by instinct, to keep as much of the world in poverty, or at least at a wealth level significantly less than their own.
As long as this exists, we’ll have wars, we’ll have shortages, we’ll have famine, and we’ll have cycles of overpopulation.