Meeting American Decline Face to Face

With the following headlines of the "New Normal", "America's Decline", and the speculated ad showing "Americans working for China by 2030", the comment posted on Renaissance2's blog seems to hit the nail on the head ; especially so, as it clarifies the misconceptions some people think are the causes of America's decline: i.e.; "roosters, rabbits, Jane Fonda, illegal aliens, Democrats, Republicans..."

(reprinted with permission http://r2meshwork.ning.com/profiles/blogs/what-will-it-take-to-convert )

Comment to Four Years.Go "Converting diverse streams of the global movement into a mighty river":

I agree, "to first establish the beginnings of a balanced social perspective that recognizes a broader set of values” – but I add, ‘with the integration of simple, common sense, yet advanced science as common ground, rather than opinions and beliefs’.

Fortunately, the fathomless beauty of Nature the late Bucky Fuller points us toward, does not have a ‘catch 22’ playground between ‘chicken or the egg’, ‘science or big, ill designed, corporate, big brother, masters’. Like heads or tails, not to be denied, but seen from a viewing point rather than a point of view.

Understanding prevents this type of pseudo dichotomy as revealed by StarSteps, with scientific validation of the age old philosophies surmised by Walter Russell and Judge Thomas Troward, merging physics and metaphysics (Plato’s suggestion); Understanding the radius of curvature, symbolized by our ancestors with the circle & sine wave, un-hides the hidden variables, removes the foundational problems described in The Trouble With Physics, and as previously stated, leads toward self recognition of very advanced and practical solutions to contemporary “issues” on the tripod of reality - physical, mental/social, and the vague spiritual dimension revealed by the ‘zero point’ of no time, no space, also found in the realm of advanced martial arts and meditation.

This type of common sense/common ground of Understanding replaces unsupported beliefs, and opinions no longer valid, and would not tolerate the applied concept John Taylor Gotto, New York’s Teacher of the Year wrote about in "Dumbing Us Down".

This type of common sense/common ground of Understanding would not tolerate The Brookings Report’s false statement: Withholding of certain information from the public is necessary to prevent 'social disintegration' – while, in actuality, relinquishing suppression of certain simple, scientific, fundamentals connecting quantum and relativity, threaten governments and multinational corporations, an erosion of the power structure.

This type of common sense/common ground of Understanding would not tolerate, year after year, listening to our wonderful news helicopters tell us how stuck we are on the continuously deteriorating American freedom highway parking lots.

This type of common, self recognition Reality Ground, would, in a democracy, have everyone demanding and getting a Corporate redesign to mandate and serve Life Foremost, not Profit Foremost. (a lot more profit comes from serving life and the exploding population, a point Al Capone, Nero and Hitler would disagree with)

Industrial & Organizational Psychology would be brought back to the sustainability side to support the studies of IISD, Ralph Nader, Natural Capitalism, and dethrone The Divine Right of Capitalism (a corporate design uprooting our constitution) http://www.fuel2000.net/divineright.swf .

This will never happen without individual, followed by group self recognition of a larger grasp of the Infinite Wonder and Possibilities the grand design of Reality offers, grounded in a common sense and advanced Science of Understanding, our extended sensory tool, our strongest Ally by far.

Obama in Asia Bumps into the New World Order
Juan Cole: Meeting American Decline Face to Face in an Ascendant Asia
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/12/opinion/main7048150_page3.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
Unsurprisingly, beneath the pomp and splendor of Obama’s journey through Asia has lurked a far tawdrier vision -- of a much weakened president presiding over a much weakened superpower, both looking somewhat desperately for succor abroad. If the United States is to remain a global power, it is important that Washington offer something to the world besides arms and soldiers.

Obama has been on the money when he’s promoted green-energy technology as a key field where the United States could make its mark (and possibly its fortune) globally. Unfortunately, as elsewhere, here too the United States is falling behind, and a Republican House as well as a bevy of new Republican governors and state legislatures are highly unlikely to effectively promote the greening of American technology.

In the end, Obama’s trip has proven a less than effective symbolic transition from George W. Bush’s muscular unilateralism to a new American-led multilateralism in Asia. Rather, at each stop, Obama has bumped up against the limits of American economic and diplomatic clout in the new Asian world order.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney thought in terms of expanding American conventional military weapons stockpiles and bases, occupying countries when necessary, and so ensuring that the U.S. would dominate key planetary resources for decades to come. Their worldview, however, was mired in mid-twentieth-century power politics.

If they thought they were placing a marker down on another American century, they were actually gambling away the very houses we live in and reducing us to a debtor nation struggling to retain its once commanding superiority in the world economy. In the meantime, the multi-millionaires and billionaires created by neoliberal policies and tax cuts in the West will be as happy to invest in (and perhaps live in) Asia as in the United States.


The New Normal: What to Expect of Our Economy
Wage Inequality Helped Drag the Middle Class Into a Great Recession, So When Will What's Lost Be Regained - if Ever? http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/26/sunday/main6901893.shtml?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel

New Ad Shows U.S. Working for China in 2030, Pays Homage to "The Deficit Trials"
A new television ad by the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste (C.A.G.W.) puts forth a controversial "potential vision of the future": one in which the U.S. literally works for China http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20020435-503544.html?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.5

Science in a Post-Bush World

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It!

"The government's scientific advisory process has been distorted by political considerations. As a result, our once dominant position in the scientific world has been shaken and our prosperity has been placed at risk. We have lost time critical for the development of new ways to provide energy, treat disease, reverse climate change, strengthen our security, and improve our economy," the letter said."

Today, with the science of energy stagnated and petrified, stunting education and wisdom, it is no wonder the masses are 'flag freaking' toward their own self destruction, rather than flag waving toward an unlimited, unbounded, prosperous future for all.

Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ If more people knew that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have a chance.

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension would eliminate the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity. "In a primitive tooth and claw society you have survival of the fittest. But as technology progresses it makes the Power, Greed, Controller, Killer, instincts so destructive that you eventually have survival of nobody at all, except maybe a few cave men. Either evolution weeds out the Power, Greed, Controller, Killer instincts or everybody ends up dead. Either moral evolution goes hand in hand with technological evolution and connects with scientific survival requirements for evolving, living systems, or we're doomed."

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when devoid of a Bill of Rights for Human Life, devoid of scientific parameters necessary for Life's evolution, sustainability, and survival.

Science in a Post-Bush World
Intertwining Ideology and Science Has Compromised Advancement, Scientists Say
By KI MAE HEUSSNER
Nov. 6, 2008—
After eight years of brawls with the Bush administration on issues including climate change, stem cell research and health care, scientists across the country aren't just hungry for change they can believe in, but science they can trust.
While many a scientist has picked apart many a science-based policy of President Bush, the underlying issue that has sparked outrage from across the scientific community is the politicization of the discipline.
"The idea of putting ideology into decisions about science -- that has really denigrated the role of science," said Martin Chalfie, a Columbia University geneticist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry in early October.
Along with 75 other Nobel Laureates, he endorsed now-President-elect Barack Obama in an open letter that also blasted the Bush administration.
"The government's scientific advisory process has been distorted by political considerations. As a result, our once dominant position in the scientific world has been shaken and our prosperity has been placed at risk. We have lost time critical for the development of new ways to provide energy, treat disease, reverse climate change, strengthen our security, and improve our economy," the letter said.
As Obama the senator becomes Obama the president, these scientists and throngs of others eagerly wait for him to gain the ground lost by his predecessor.
Overcoming Legacies of George W. Bush
"The past eight years of denial and delay are over," Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) President Kevin Knobloch said in a statement the morning after the election.
Particularly when it comes to policies related to global warming, the organization is looking for a fast and clean break from the approach of Bush that did not recognize man-made global warming, and obstructed international cooperation.
But that is hardly the only issue area that needs tending, scientists say.
In science-related agencies all over Washington, such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Drug Administration, "scientists have been so patiently waiting for change. They've hung on and they've kept their heads down," said Francesca Grifo, senior scientist and director of the Scientific Integrity Program at UCS.
In 2006, she led an effort by leading scientists that condemned political interference in science. In 2004, the UCS first issued a petition calling for the restoration of scientific integrity to federal policy making. Today, that document bears the names of more than 15,000 scientists, Grifo said.
On issues from A to Z, federal bureaucrats have undermined the scientific method and changed reports to make them politically or ideologically palatable, she said.
Earlier this year, a survey conducted by the UCS found that nearly two-thirds of the Environmental Protection Agency's scientists complained of recent political interference in their work.
Other examples of political interference, Grifo said, include amending the reports by biologists on endangered species and premature proclamations that the air quality at Ground Zero was safe.
Wanted: A Cabinet-Level Science Advisor
On several hot-button science issues, Obama has offered approaches and policy changes that scientists have applauded.
Recognizing the potential of stem cell research to treat Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury and other disorders, he has said that he supports expanding such research and would lift the current administration's ban on federal funding of research on human embryonic stem cell lines created after Aug. 9, 2001.
He has also said that there can no longer be any doubt that human activities are influencing the global climate.
To reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the amount scientists have advocated (to 1990 levels by 2050), he has proposed a market-based cap-and-trade system that sets a cap on the amount of a greenhouse gas that can be emitted.
Scientists, like Chalfie, are heartened by these proposals and expect Obama to follow through on them.
But they say that they're also watching out for one key decision: the creation of a cabinet-level science advisor.
"Look at what the [next] president does in terms of appointing a science advisor," said John Porter, chairman of Research! America, a nonprofit medical and health research advocacy alliance, and former Illinois congressman.
The sooner Obama appoints a science advisor, the better, Porter said.
Bush didn't appoint John H. Marburger as his science advisor until five months after taking office. And he didn't give the position a cabinet ranking.
Obama has said that he will appoint a chief technology officer, and the names of Google's Vint Cerf and Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos have been floated as possible contenders.
However, Porter emphasized, the high-level position should represent all the sciences.
In terms of research, Porter said, the new administration should ensure that the physical sciences keep up with the life sciences and funding levels should increase by 3 percent, above inflation, annually.
Obama's plan to double research funding in 10 years, is a "worthy goal," Porter said, adding that the economic climate could present a challenge.
Regardless, he said, he is hopeful that Obama's victory means the role of science is moving up.
"I think it's a new day for science in America," said Shawn Otto, chief executive officer of Science Debate 2008. "At last we're going to see a return to policy that's crafted on evidence instead of the other way around."
Obama has won supporters from the scientific community, he added, because he not only has demonstrated an ability to synthesize the known facts into policy, he also makes an effort to reach out to those who may disagree with him.
And that, Otto said, "is similar to the best traditions of the scientific process."
2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

NASA Climate Scientist Says "We're Toast"

Perpetual Freedumb Toward a Devastatingly Lethal Climax - or a Return to Freedom, Life, Liberty, Health, with Limitless, Unbounded Potential for all, in a world of exploding human population, with its myriad needs, wants and desires?



Science & Technology had the capacity to promise us the latter back in the late 1940's- Life, Liberty, Health, Unbounded Potential for all - with the revolutionary advanced definitions of Space, Time, Mass, Matter, Energy, Gravity (StarSteps) springing forth from an extended view of E=MC2 embracing the Radius of Curvature of All Natural Law.


The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.



NASA Climate Scientist Says "We're Toast"
WASHINGTON, June 24, 2008
(AP) Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action. James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises. "We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance." Hansen brought global warming home to the public in June 1988 during a Washington heat wave, telling a Senate hearing that global warming was already here. To mark the anniversary, he testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming where he was called a prophet, and addressed a luncheon at the National Press Club where he was called a hero by former Sen. Tim Wirth, D-Colo., who headed the 1988 hearing. To cut emissions, Hansen said coal-fired power plants that don't capture carbon dioxide emissions shouldn't be used in the United States after 2025, and should be eliminated in the rest of the world by 2030. That carbon capture technology is still being developed and not yet cost efficient for power plants. Burning fossil fuels like coal is the chief cause of man-made greenhouse gases. Hansen said the Earth's atmosphere has got to get back to a level of 350 parts of carbon dioxide per million. Last month, it was 10 percent higher: 386.7 parts per million. Hansen said he'll testify on behalf of British protesters against new coal-fired power plants. Protesters have chained themselves to gates and equipment at sites of several proposed coal plants in England. "The thing that I think is most important is to block coal-fired power plants," Hansen told the luncheon. "I'm not yet at the point of chaining myself but we somehow have to draw attention to this." Frank Maisano, a spokesman for many U.S. utilities, including those trying to build new coal plants, said while Hansen has shown foresight as a scientist, his "stop them all approach is very simplistic" and shows that he is beyond his level of expertise. The year of Hansen's original testimony was the world's hottest year on record. Since then, 14 years have been hotter, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Two decades later, Hansen spent his time on the question of whether it's too late to do anything about it. His answer: There's still time to stop the worst, but not much time. "We see a tipping point occurring right before our eyes," Hansen told the AP before the luncheon. "The Arctic is the first tipping point and it's occurring exactly the way we said it would." Hansen, echoing work by other scientists, said that in five to 10 years, the Arctic will be free of sea ice in the summer. Longtime global warming skeptic Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., citing a recent poll, said in a statement, "Hansen, (former Vice President) Gore and the media have been trumpeting man-made climate doom since the 1980s. But Americans are not buying it." But Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., committee chairman, said, "Dr. Hansen was right. Twenty years later, we recognize him as a climate prophet."
MMVIII The Associated Press

U.N. Chief: Act Now On Global Warming

Pay very close attention to THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS. Scientific ignorance/suppression in the energy sector, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat to the survival of civilization in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present, lethal danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming confirm an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options which modern civilization requires for survival. For the majority, the thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications which eliminate lack, limitation and unbalanced threats through the normal evolutionary progression of energy systems

U.N. Chief: Act Now On Global Warming
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 25, 2007
(CBS/AP) With tales of rising seas and talk of human solidarity, world leaders at the first United Nations climate summit sought Monday to put new urgency into global talks to reduce global warming emissions. What's needed is "action, action, action," California's environmentalist governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, told the assembled presidents and premiers. The Bush administration showed no sign, however, that it would reverse its stand against mandatory emission cuts endorsed by 175 other nations. Some expressed fears the White House, with its own forum later this week, would launch talks rivaling the U.N. climate treaty negotiations. President Bush wasn't among the more than 80 world leaders on hand for the summit. But former Vice President and ex-Senator Al Gore was - delivering a luncheon speech on changes already attributed to global warming, including last week's scientific report that the Arctic ice cap this summer shrank to a record-small size. "We cannot continue a slow pace," said Gore, proposing that heads of state meet every three months beginning in 2008 to ensure the world is doing all it can to meet the threat. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set the day's theme in his opening address, calling for action and describing the U.N. negotiating umbrella as "the only forum" where the issues can be decided. "Two decades ago, here in this hall, climate change first surfaced on the world's political agenda," said the U.N. leader, warning that the stakes are nothing less than "the protection of the global climate for present and future generations of mankind. Much has happened since those early days, but the fundamental challenge remains unchanged and has become even more pressing." "I'm convinced that climate change and what we do about it will define us, our era and ultimately the global legacy that we leave for future generations," said Ban. "Today, the time for doubt has passed. The United Nations panel on global climate change has unequivocally affirmed the warming of our climate and linked it to human activities." At the day's end, Ban said he believed the scores of speeches showed a "major political commitment" to success in the global talks. Monday evening, President Bush attended a dinner, a gathering of key climate players hosted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Late Monday, U.N. chief Ban was asked by reporters about Mr. Bush's position during the dinner discussions. "He made it quite clear that what he's going to do is help the United Nations effort," he replied. Ban organized the one-day summit to build momentum for December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia, when Europe, Japan and others hope to initiate talks for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. The 175-nation Kyoto pact, which the U.S. rejects, requires 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. It set an average target of a 5 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2012 for emissions from power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transportation sources. Advocates for emissions reductions say a breakthrough is needed at Bali to ensure an uninterrupted transition from the 1997 Kyoto pact to a new, deeper-cutting regime, something that almost certainly would require a change in the U.S. position. The chief U.N. climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, told the summit of the mounting evidence of global warming's impact, including the accelerating rise in sea levels as oceans expand from heat and the runoff of melting land ice. "The time is up for inaction," he said. A Pacific islander, President Emanuel Mori of the Federated States of Micronesia, told the summit that encroaching seas are already destroying crops, contaminating wells and eating away at his islands' beaches. "How does one explain to the inhabitants that their plight is caused by human activities done in faraway lands?" he asked. The United States has long been the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. President Bush objects that Kyoto-style mandates would damage the U.S. economy and says they should be imposed on fast-growing poorer countries like China and India in addition to developed nations. He instead is urging industry to cut emissions voluntarily and is emphasizing research on clean-energy technology as one answer. On Thursday and Friday, Mr. Bush will host his own Washington climate meeting, limited to 16 "major emitter" countries, including China and India, the first in a series of U.S.-led gatherings expected to focus on those themes. "The Washington meeting is a distraction," Hans Verolme, climate campaigner for the Worldwide Fund for Nature, told reporters. U.S. leaders "need to show they are serious and implement domestic legislation to reduce emissions," he said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at the summit, put the Washington meetings in a different light, describing them as designed "to support and help advance the ongoing U.N. discussion." Japan's envoy, former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, said Tokyo believes the separate U.S. talks will "contribute to achieving consensus" in the U.N. process, in which all agree that China, India and others must eventually accept emission limits. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Washington sessions show "the Americans are back in the climate process." But Japan and others, to one degree or another, stressed that all nations - including the United States - must accept emission targets. To try to spur global negotiations, the European Union, which must reduce emissions by 8 percent under Kyoto, has committed to a further reduction of at least 20 percent by 2020. Speaking for the EU, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Monday's summit that "all the developed countries and the largest emitters" must commit to a 50 percent reduction by 2050. He also said the U.N. negotiating process is the only "efficient and legitimate framework." Schwarzenegger told delegates that U.S. states are embracing emissions caps even if the Bush administration isn't. California's Republican governor and Democrat-led legislature have approved a law requiring the state's industries to reduce greenhouse gases by an estimated 25 percent by 2020. "California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action," Schwarzenegger said. "What we are doing is changing the dynamic."
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc