Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Slumdog Millionaire and What to Do About Global Poverty

I walked out of Seattle’s old Harvard Exit Theater on a cold Friday night in December. I had just seen the film Slumdog Millionaire and overheard two people talking. One was telling the other how she had seen Bollywood movies before and that all they contained were dance scenes and Jane Austen-like plots. She hesitated, “Actually, maybe what I’ve seen were spoofs of Bollywood movies and this was, like, a real Bollywood movie.” I smiled.

At the time, Slumdog Millionaire hadn’t yet won Best Picture at the Golden Globes. It hadn’t been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (nor was it running as the heavy favorite to win Best Picture and Best Director), and director Danny Boyle and the movie’s two young lead actors – Dev Patel and Freida Pinto – hadn’t yet been hosted and gushed over by Oprah and Ellen. It was playing at a single, mostly empty theater in Seattle. Contrary to what many American viewers believe, Slumdog Millionaire is no Bollywood movie, but it is certainly a film with plenty of genuine Indian elements. It is based on the novel Q & A by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup. Most of its music is by Bollywood super-composer AR Rahman, and it even contains a (relatively mediocre) song and dance routine. Lead roles are played by famous Indian actors Irrfan Khan and Anil Kapoor. It was filmed entirely in India and the child actors were all Indian – some of them slum dwellers themselves. There is plenty of melodrama and a love story. While Slumdog Millionaire clearly draws inspiration from Bollywood, it is directed by an Englishman and is mostly in English, leading many Indians to treat it as just another Hollywood movie.

By now you’ve probably heard of Slumdog Millionaire. It is the story of three street kids growing up in Mumbai. It is part rags-to-riches fairytale, part love story, and part horrifying look into the difficulties of street life. It has been scooping up awards and critical acclaim in the US and the UK while being dogged by more controversy than other Oscar-nominated films. Most of the debate centers around the poverty shown in the film, and whether a white British male (Boyle) has the right to present Indian society in such a way in a commercially successful feel-good (kind of) film. To tell an Indian story through the lives of impoverished street children embarrasses and enrages much of India’s upper-class who see the film as a stereotypically Western view of India as poor, chaotic, violent and dirty. They see Slumdog Millionaire as a “white man’s imagined India.” Some Hindu organizations accuse the film of denigrating Hindu gods. Some human rights groups in India have condemned the film for its use of the term ‘slumdog’ (a term not commonly used that recalls the days of British colonizers calling Indians ‘dogs’). Others see Boyle’s slick, colorful production of such impoverished settings as “poverty porn” – rendering Indian poverty visually appealing and exciting for a mostly white, Western audience. Finally, the compensation given to the film’s young actors is, with Slumdog Millionaire’s success, seen to be inadequate and a way of exploiting real life slum children. No matter how Slumdog Millionaire does at the Oscars, these controversies are unlikely to die down, even if they fall off the pages of US newspapers.

I do not intend to debate each of these controversies here, though I find some of the accusations frivolous while others have some validity. What is most interesting to me is the way in which Slumdog Millionaire has brought the issue of global poverty into the limelight (literally) and has exposed our collective squeamishness with having images of it thrown in our face by a film. If we middle-class Americans must see poverty, we like to see it portrayed in a particular way – most likely in a low-budget documentary that condemns it and that offers a way out. A movie like Born into Brothels does this very well. But Slumdog Millionaire treats poverty and those who live in poverty differently, not as faceless objects of pity, but as individuals – as a story must – with agency and the capacity to be happy and full of dreams in the midst of often horrifying surroundings. In this way Slumdog Millionaire resembles Rohinton Mistry’s impressive novel A Fine Balance – also set in India, that does not shy away from the poverty that is a given in many people’s lives, but something that need not rob people of their humanity, that need not reduce them to objects to be pitied by the world’s wealthy. With this perspective poverty need not limit the range of human experience and emotions. Those who are poor have a story like everyone else, and in fact, those who are poor make up a huge amount of the world’s population. Confronting middle-class Westerners (and Indians for that matter) with the horrors of poverty and the injustice of their own affluence, while avoiding defining the poor by this label alone is something few films do. Slumdog Millionaire does it well. And if it does well at the box office, all the better.

When discussing global poverty and the political and social attempts to alleviate it, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the numbers and to be numbed to the experiences of individuals who must live in such dire conditions. It is easy to feel guilty that you are not the one living in extreme poverty or to feel that those who are poor deserve it, that they just need to try harder. It is also easy to feel hopeless in the face of such a widespread and complex problem. How exactly should the global community address the problem of poverty? Should we place an emphasis on greater individual incomes and saving and buying power? Or should the emphasis be in developing societal infrastructure to improve quality of life by ensuring better health care, education, access to employment, etc.? Some put their faith in the free market to lift all boats, but then the free market seems to demand that many people remain poor, and it doesn’t provide any plan for improving societal shortcomings that contribute to poverty. Some believe government programs are the answer, but improving education, health care, job training programs and the like can be costly and complicated, and simple welfare schemes may perpetuate poverty. A host of non-governmental organizations and foundations play a growing part in addressing poverty, but can arbitrarily bestow charity that perpetuates cycles of economic dependence. The work of groups like the UN’s Development Program connects these participants and strategies offering a practical and promising way of addressing poverty on a global scale.

But uplifting the poor is not all that is needed. Our relatively new found awareness of the toll we inflict upon the environment requires that the discussion about alleviating poverty must include the using and distributing resources. Ending poverty through growing economies and enabling hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese to drive gas-guzzling cars and to use energy as recklessly as we in the US do is no longer an environmentally viable option. And neither is telling people in poorer countries that they can’t have what we do, that they can’t live how we do. Rapidly developing countries need to do their part to make their growth politically and environmentally sustainable, no question. In a way, the more difficult task is ours however. If global economic growth continues (a given in most minds before the last six months of economic turbulence) most other people in the world will be increasing their consumption and use of resources. The Brazilian student may move up from a bike to a scooter, the Vietnamese family may upgrade to an oven from a cook top stove. In the US however, unless we plan on aggressively defending our unfair hoarding of resources from the global community, we will need to begin to reduce the amount of resources we use. Drastically. Even if free markets can lift all boats, it will mean environmental disaster. The middle class American lifestyle has never been sustainable. We are realizing this just as the world’s two largest countries are economically booming, and striving for that lifestyle. No longer will the United States – six percent of the world’s population – be able to consume 30% of the world’s resources. That’s a fact.

But, I suspect it is a fact that will go ignored or denied. Sure, we may use compact florescent bulbs instead of incandescents. We may recycle and compost. But most of us probably won’t give up our car (or even our second car). Most of us won’t give up our washer and dryer, or our oven, or our spacious homes. In the end, I suspect that we’re all just a bit too selfish and stuck in our ways to make large personal sacrifices for an abstract common good. We want to end poverty, but we don’t want to give up what we’ve been blessed with, and without this sacrifice on the part of the better-off, poverty will continue no matter how much effort is directed at alleviating it.

Like any movie, Slumdog Millionaire has its shortcomings. Its plot is somewhat thin and its characters are not very well-developed. It is a movie more about image than substance. Its details are easily refuted by Indian audiences. However, its vividly showing audiences who have not faced poverty and hardship the lives that many in this world are compelled to lead allows it to be more than just a film. It gives poverty a face and a story that will open most audiences’ eyes to something new – hopefully bringing tangible benefits to the world’s poor while eliciting an honest introspection about what people often must and can do without.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? A Police Officer’s View on Drugs: Part 2

Several months ago, in my first piece as a writer for Demockracy, I talked about my perspective as a Police Officer who is against the War on Drugs. In the months that followed, this article became a very popular piece on this Web site and across the social networks. As such, I’ve had several requests to follow up on this piece and talk more about my career experiences and share my insights on this ill-begotten war on drugs. From these requests, I’ve decided to write a follow-up piece. In this follow-up article, I will explore some of my personal experiences that have led me to many of my current conclusions. I hope you enjoy and please share any comments that you may have.

LEAP

As I’ve shared in the past, I am a retired Policeman from Vancouver B.C., and I represent LEAP, Law Enforcement Against [drug ] Prohibition. We are a worldwide organization of Police Officers, Corrections Personnel, Judges, and many others who work in different areas of law enforcement, both active and retired. We currently number some 8,500 members. Our advisory board is made up of one US Governor, four sitting US Federal District Court Judges, five former police chiefs, the ex-mayor of Vancouver B.C, Senator Larry Campbell, the Former AG of Colombia, and from the UK, a former Chief Constable and the former head of narcotic task forces for all of England. We do not support drug use and realize that in an ideal world we would be better off without it. What we do believe is that “The War on Drugs” has created most of our problems with drugs and addiction today. Addiction is a disease, not a crime.

More On My Experience

With that said, let me tell you a bit more about myself and why I have come to these conclusions. I joined the Vancouver Police Department in 1973 and served for 28 years. The date of my joining is important, as the year before in 1972 a Canadian Parliamentary Committee known as Le Dain concluded that due to the high costs of enforcement and the relatively benign effects of marijuana, that there should be a gradual withdrawal of criminal sanctions over time resulting eventually in legalization of marijuana. All in-depth studies going back to the British India Hemp act of 1895 have come to the same conclusion about marijuana. However, the Canadian Parliament chose to ignore those recommendations.

As I recall, there was little focus on drugs when I went through the Vancouver Police Training Academy. (I did however learn that reasonable force extended to choking a dealer to prevent his swallowing the evidence and that the ponytails favored by so called hippies made a very effective handle to restrain them.) After completing training, I discovered that drug enforcement was mainly left to the individual officer’s discretion. No high level traffickers were ever investigated. Enforcement was done only at the street level. Those, however, who centered their activities on drug enforcement made substantial overtime amounts from court appearances. This policy, however, has never been the policy of the Federal Police, the R.C.M.P. They, unlike municipal departments, receive considerable federal funding to enforce the drug laws and do so enthusiastically.

One individual I worked with during my early years routinely arrested individuals on the basis of a dirty hash pipe or a spoon with enough residual heroin to analyze. It was not unusual to bring in 4 or 5 individuals from a rundown hotel room on the basis of a small baggie of weed. At that time, the hotel clerks would tell us the rooms where they suspected the occupants of drug use and hand us the keys, while we turned a blind eye to the other illegal activities carried out by the hotel managers and staff. (I suspect these hotel managers were probably the largest traffickers in the buildings and, according to more than one source, charged prostitutes a premium for brief hotel stays.) Drug charges in Vancouver often resulted in some officers doubling their wages from the overtime and court time involved. The drawback was that there was less police presence on the streets to handle the ongoing and routine crime of downtown Vancouver.

In 1995, I started the Vancouver Police Anti-Fencing Unit. Addicts tend to concentrate in the low rent districts as do pawnshops that often supply the addicts with money. The dealers are normally right outside the pawnshop doors to complete the equation. The average addict at that time was spending between $100-$200 daily on his or her addiction. Unfortunately, pawnshops normally only pay 10 cents on the dollar; therefore to support their habits, the addicts have to steal $1,000-$2,000 worth of property. The evidence of stolen property in these pawnshops was so rife as to be almost ludicrous. I remember at one time entering a pawnshop when an addict came in with an armload of stolen property from London Drugs. While negotiating with the owner, he was ripping the London Drugs labels off CDs with his teeth while negotiating the price with the pawnbroker, as he had no spare hands to do the job.

There are unfortunately a small percentage of people who through nurture or genetics, always seem to fall to the bottom and are unable to survive without their self-medications. They have no time for treatment as their days are filled with theft to support their addiction, finding a dealer, and after purchasing their drug of choice, never knowing the quality of their purchase. We cannot help these individuals by locking them away. We must not kid ourselves; in jails, drugs are readily available. Generally, the prison system tolerates drugs as they tends to calm the inmates. The substance that the jail staff often fear is actually alcohol, which leads to riots and destruction. I was told by numerous prison guard colleagues that alcohol is so valued by some of the old alcoholics in jail that they will often attempt to import considerable quantities of drugs, just to trade for alcohol, which is much harder to find inside.

As a policeman, I attended many untimely drug related deaths in the downtown eastside area of Vancouver where I spent much of my career. Overdoses of various drugs were very common. No one paid much heed, and most were not too traumatic to me, as relatives were usually far away, often in Northern BC or other Provinces, and it was up to the local RCMP detachments to notify them. That area in Vancouver is the poorest area in Canada according to tax returns and acts as a magnet to those who have run away from home due to abuse, sexual and domestic. Few of them had any local support in Vancouver. These individuals rapidly became involved in the drug culture of the area and many died there. It was impossible to determine if the drug deaths were a result of long-term abuse, mixing too many drug cocktails or the strength of the drug being greater than expected, either by deliberation, such as we hear of with a hot cap, or by accident.

It was only when I attended deaths out of the usual pattern that the reality of the horror really set in. A one time partner of mine lost his 16 year old daughter to a drug overdose. Unfortunately, her dealer did not monitor her slide into abuse. He did not offer her counseling or monitor the purity and strength of the drugs he sold. He was probably an addict himself, dealing to support his habit. The outrage is that he and thousands more are still out there still selling their products, everywhere to our children.

Solutions?

Raw opium increases in price by several decimal places from the poppy fields, to the addicts in North America. Coke is not quite as profitable and the other drugs even less so, but anyone can rapidly rise to enjoy the lifestyle of say a successful surgeon or lawyer with no educational requirements, experience, skills, and very little work required. The only way we can break this cycle, ensure a uniform product, help those who request it, and monitor those who need help is to legalize the product, heavily regulate it, and supply it to those in need.

Why don’t we go out and arrest all drug dealers? We could arrest them all and you know what will happen? There will be fights, stabbings, shootings and deaths, AND tomorrow new dealers will be there to carry on business as usual. When you arrest a drug dealer, the only thing you create is a job opportunity. As an example, there was recently an investigation of an individual planning to blow up a city block in Surrey, BC, in order to rid it of all the drug dealers there. Some may believe that his point of view could be justified. The only problem was that he himself was a dealer and hoped to take over all the business with the others gone.

Ask yourself if heroin or cocaine were legal, would you use them? I wouldn’t. No one who is rational and has aspirations for a meaningful life is going to. In fact, 99% of all people tell us that they wouldn’t. The first drug laws were enacted because 1-3% of the population was believed to be addicted to drugs. By addicted I mean unable to hold meaningful work and behave in a socially responsible way. Today, after countless millions have been arrested and billions of dollars spent, the percentage of addicts is still estimated at between 1 to 3 % of the population.

Let’s take the money from the criminals, reduce property crimes, reduce prostitution, reduce disease, and give our social agencies the funds to really have an impact on society. Above all, let’s give that 1-3% a chance of a real life.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Obama, Mexico, and the Drug War

Remember the War on Drugs? Sure you do. It was after the Cold War and before the War on Terror. It continues to be an attempt to crack down on the illegal drug trade into the U.S. It turned out to be little more than an excuse to continue the Cold War in places like Colombia. It also resulted in new domestic judicial rules such as three-strikes-and-you’re-out, and draconian mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, over-crowding prisons with disproportionately minority, nonviolent, first-time offenders in possession of small amounts of drugs.

Since September 11, 2001, we haven’t heard much about the War on Drugs. With the attacks of that day, the threat of religiously and ideologically motivated radical Muslim terrorists immediately became more grave than the crime and violence connected to Latin American (mostly) drug cartels. Our collective focus has been on the threat posed by Islamic terrorism since 2001 and we have largely ignored the growing threat posed by increasingly powerful drug cartels on our southern border.

Last year, drug violence and corruption in Mexico surged, especially in towns and cities along the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2008 over 6,000 people were probably killed – that adds up to over 16 people every day – twice as many as in 2007. Many of these killings were particularly gruesome – beheadings and execution style killings. Drug cartels are suspected of downing a plane, killing Mexico’s Interior Minister, and corruption related to drug trafficking has reached the highest levels. The Sinaloa, Gulf, and Tijuana cartels have infiltrated the judiciary, the police, and political parties. The director of Mexico’s Interpol Office and an employee of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency were both arrested for collaborating with cartels. Last spring, the Justice Department declared that Mexican drug cartels pose the “largest threat to both citizens and law enforcement agencies in this country and now have gang members in nearly 200 U.S. cities.” And the U.S. Army High Command has determined that due to the violence, corruption and instability caused by drug trafficking in Mexico, its government, along with Pakistan’s, should “bear consideration for rapid and sudden collapse.” Former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey recently stated that thanks to drug cartels “Mexico is on the edge of the abyss – it could become a narco-state in the coming decade.” Mexico’s foreign minister has had to defend her government against accusations of its being a failed state.

These are damning statements that President Obama’s incoming administration should not take lightly. While I hope the situation in Mexico and U.S.-Mexican relations will be treated with the seriousness they deserve, Obama has not shared his plans concerning Mexico or the Drug War very openly with the American public. Indeed, he appears to have followed Bush’s lead and has focused his foreign policy sights on – you guessed it – Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and other problems in the Middle East. Given our country’s complex and numerous entanglements in the region, this is understandable. But with the drug trade destabilizing our southern neighbor and threatening to cross the border and sow violence, corruption, and instability on U.S. soil it is surely necessary to give our attention to all of these situations, however difficult it may be.

The U.S.-led Drug War has always been deeply flawed and arguably ineffective. The U.S. has always been eager to solve the problem by force – instigating violence in other countries (massive military funding to Colombia, Mexico, etc.) and treating the drug trade in the U.S. as essentially a moral and policing problem that can be solved with a zero tolerance approach and enough cops, guns, and jails. The U.S. has been reluctant to pursue cheaper and more effective ways of battling the drug trade – drug treatment for addicts in the U.S., and development aid for farmers in other countries for example. The War on Terror has pushed the War on Drugs to the back burner, and it has pushed ‘soft’ strategies even further back. It seems we have given up trying to reduce the demand or the supply of illegal drugs in the U.S.

So what exactly does Obama plan to do about the threat posed by illegal drug trafficking? He did not mention Mexico or drugs in his inaugural address, and his public statements since being elected haven’t given many clues. The new whitehouse.gov foreign policy agenda page says nothing about Latin America, preoccupied as it is with Middle East concerns. And as a candidate, Obama said little specific about Latin America or drug trafficking, though at least he mentioned Latin America on his campaign website.

It appears President Obama will not be as hands-off as President Bush when it comes to problems in Latin America. He has indicated a desire for closer and improved relations with Mexico. President-elect Obama was visited by President Felipe Calderon in Washington where they discussed economic issues (including Obama’s campaign pledge to renegotiate NAFTA, something Calderon is opposed to), the environment, immigration, and drug trafficking. Neither man gave many details about their discussion, but Obama has indicated support for the Merida Initiative, passed last June, which commits the U.S. to increasing aid to Mexico for equipment and training to combat organized crime. It does nothing to reduce the U.S. demand for drugs, however.

President Obama also envisions an ambitious new Partnership for the Americas”. In a Miami speech during the campaign he declared:

We need an agenda that advances democracy, security, and opportunity from the bottom up. So my policy will be guided by the simple principle that what’s good for the people of the Americas is good for the United States. That means measuring success not just through agreements among governments, but also through the hopes of the child in the favelas of Rio, the security for the policeman in Mexico City, and the shrinking of the distance between Miami and Havana.

This soaring rhetoric is unfortunately not, as far as I can tell, matched by detailed or original strategies for combating the drug trade along the U.S.-Mexico border. Increased cooperation between the U.S. and other Latin American countries will surely be helpful and appreciated, but in the midst of so many other problems, the U.S. may not have the resources or the political will to see these changes through. Yet there are glimmers of hope – commitments to improve cross border partnerships between U.S. and Mexican states and pledges to increase drug treatment programs in the U.S.

It is also instructive to examine the recent decisions Obama and his inner circle have made regarding the Drug War. As a candidate, Obama promised to end DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in California, but since his assuming office raids have continued. Obama’s staff has said that as soon as new Department of Justice officials are appointed the raids will end, heartening news for those who support medical marijuana laws – and a difficult promise to avoid making good on. Obama does not support legalizing drugs – not surprising for a U.S. president – while at the same time advocating more treatment than incarceration for users, a significant shift from previous presidents. He has suggested ending mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent first-time offenders, and ending a federal ban on funding needle exchange programs reversing years of federal drug policy.

This appears promising, yet Obama’s coterie does not have a history of breaking ranks with the War on Drugs consensus. Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of law enforcement solutions, toughening sentencing rules for drug users, and criminalizing drug use. He played a significant part in creating the position of Drug Czar. He has made more moderate decisions in recent years, but many Drug War opponents remain skeptical of him. Rahm Emanuel has been a vocal supporter of the Drug War, at least when it fits his political agenda, and has a mixed record on issues like medical marijuana. Incoming Attorney General Eric Holder also vigorously supported harsher Drug War policies during his years under President Clinton and as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Obama’s interim Drug Czar – Ed Jurith, a longtime lawyer for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and former Clinton Drug Czar – has been described as “civil and thoughtful” in the ongoing debate over drug policy though he has by-and-large supported the Drug War. It is rumored that Obama’s permanent Drug Czar pick is Republican Jim Ramstad, who has opposed needle exchange programs, a crucial tool in decreasing the spread of HIV and other fatal diseases amongst addicts. While Drug War opponents may not be thrilled with these selections by Obama, many are taking a wait-and-see approach and acknowledging that these individuals are at least politically open to making policy changes.

And in Mexico? Will Obama put forward drug policies innovative and intelligent enough to effectively curb the violence and corruption flourishing along the U.S.-Mexico border? Will he be able to create a new, smarter mix of drug fighting strategies that reduces the violence and corruption that has accompanied drug trafficking in the U.S. and Mexico? While Mexico and the U.S. border states (dealing with the threat of the same drug-related problems) are committed to effectively managing and limiting, if not stopping, the drug trade, it remains to be seen how committed the Obama administration in far-off Washington will be. Inspirational rhetoric is one thing, but confronting difficult societal problems and defeating organized gangs of unrepentant killers is another – just ask former President Bush.

Error: Unable to create directory /home/demockra/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2010/09. Is its parent directory writable by the server? Epoch’s End

I should start by stating that I am a novice in the fields of economics and finance. My career was as a law enforcement officer. I do, however, believe that I have a firm grasp of world history, human nature, and a sense of how much the human spirit can endure until endless mass frustration leads to a chain of events that explodes into actions which can result in regime change and major shifts in worldwide belief systems.

After the First World War, communism and socialism emerged to duke it out with Hitler’s fascism and other conservative regimes for the balance of power in Europe. After the Second World War, unfettered missionary capitalism emerged in the US, bolstered by evangelic Christianity. Liberalism and socialism tended to dominate in old Europe where the relative place of religion diminished, and today is virtually non-existent in many such secular states. Into this mix, multinational corporations emerged, with no allegiance to anyone except their shareholders. Their power enabled them to shape government policies, and their financial weight enabled them to implicitly blackmail governments into giving them sweetheart deals, which were often to no ones benefit except theirs and the richly rewarded politicians who supported them. From this standpoint, I do suspect that the shock waves radiating around the world from the stock market meltdown were not entirely created by a few bad apples running amok in Wall Street, but were rather a symptom of the basic dishonesty that seems ensconced in most stock markets around the world.

Events of the past decade and the past year in particular have convinced me that we are at Epoch’s End and that the current worldwide geopolitical and economic system is so broken that it can never be completely fixed. What will emerge I cannot venture to guess, but it will likely take many years to reach this yet unknown new global equilibrium. In this new equilibrium, the standard of living that many in the western world have taken for granted in recent generations may not be seen again.

Certainly many have been expecting Epoch’s End, through global warming, plagues or famines, but its tipping point appears to have occurred not through those venues, but through economic breakdown. As life has proceeded happily upward for us in the developed world since the Second World War, we have long forgotten that this uninterrupted growth was unprecedented in recent world history. World history suggests that the past fifty or sixty years are more likely to be seen as an outlier rather than as a permanent new paradigm. In the past, plagues have wiped out the working forces, old industries closed down and new ones developed, and populations followed the jobs. Crop failures caused those who wanted to survive to move on to new areas or even to new continents. Growth has been followed by stagnation. Fifty or sixty years may seem like a long time in the scope of a human lifetime. However, it is all but a footnote in world history.

Over the last 50 or 60 years we have come to expect that things will always improve–we will have better cars, holidays, and medical care, and our incomes will continue to provide more of these things. Many companies have based their development on a policy of increasing their revenues as much as 10% a year. Most of these companies have psychologists study shoppers brain waves to use exactly the right words in their sales promotions and to find the best place to put certain items in the store to trigger the buying impulse. We have all happily shopped and shopped for more and more things we don’t need. Products we really need require no advertising. How many television commercials do you see for bread and milk? If the whole world were to enjoy the standard of living that we currently enjoy in North America, we would need three worlds just to keep up. Perhaps most selfish of all, most people now expect to live longer without giving any thought to the potential consequences of this like increasing the world’s population, all the problems of pollution, global warming, polluted water ways, etc. With the world’s population approaching 8 billion plus people, it is close to cardiac arrest. We can’t expect to live forever and have growth forever; death and cyclical stagnation of populations and civilizations are a part of the natural balance of our planet.

As you probably expected, I am nothing of an expert in the ways of the multinational corporation. However, what I do know is that there are many Chinese workers, working at monotonous, dangerous jobs for $5 a day or less, with unpaid overtime expected. They produce cheap quality goods for us that we really don’t need. Who then is the net gainer? At least in the short run, it is a few wealthy shareholders. In order for this situation to flourish, our wage levels must remain 20 times higher, for the same or less effort, than a Chinese worker. The whole approach is broke.

As I write, more and more western governments are announcing huge spending plans to stimulate the economy, using vast amounts of borrowed money. That money is all coming from the sale of our bonds to China. If it works, perhaps we can put off Epoch’s End for a few years, as we attempt to pay the huge debts. Certainly our wages will take a huge hit, and lifestyles will need to readjust. But what if it doesn’t work, what if our spending doesn’t pick up enough to reopen the factories in China? What if China were to ever demand repayment of those bonds to assist their own citizens? We will be bankrupt, there will be no wages for any civil servants, no military wages, no police wages, and no pensions or benefits of any kind will be paid.

Further, as a people, many of us have become lethargic and ignorant. How is it possible to consider people for the highest offices in the land without demanding that they have the knowledge, stability, and honesty to do the job? When you visit your doctor you know that his or her certificate represents years of study, tested time and again by exams and practicum. Yet we are prepared to accept persons for the highest offices because they look good, string a fine line of BS and are just like you and me. Well I have news for you, I don’t want a person like me running a country.

In Canada from where I write, we had a recent Federal Election. The Liberal leader Stephan Dion was put down continually because he didn’t speak perfectly in his second language of English. He didn’t look good in front of the cameras, and he was often filmed from the wrong angles. The saddest thing was that nobody seemed to have the slightest interest in hearing the substance of what he actually was saying. We could save enormous amounts of money and time if we simply gave the job to the best actor and provided a good speech writer. Perhaps getting precisely that for many years has resulted in all our difficulties today. Franklin D. Roosevelt would probably never have been elected today, wheelchair bound as he was. Winston Churchill, similarly, was drunk too often to be electable today. At that time we paid attention to what was said, not the carefully buffed images we see presented today.

In the last U.S. election, most were too polite to state publicly that the election of Sarah Palin as vice president could potentially place every citizen of the US one 72-year old heart beat away from danger. Yes, thankfully Ms. Palin did not become vice president. However, for one of the two major parties of the world’s leading nuclear superpower to even nominate her for vice president should be scary enough. In the case of Mr. Obama and Mr. Dion, being an intellectual was seen as a negative by many. We call this civilization? Thankfully, after eight years of George W. Bush, the America people took a chance on an intellectual. New Canadian Liberal leader and respected Harvard intellectual, Michael Ignatieff, may get a chance in the next few years as well.

If we are indeed at Epoch’s End, we will have all caused this through greed, but most of all because we have failed to keep our eyes on what has really been going on, failed to keep people honest, and preferred to switch on the football game rather than take a glimpse at the foreign-affairs columns or use our computers to access the mass of information which is availably so readily today, yet ignored by most. If we are at an Epoch’s End, it is indeed our own damn fault.