American Patriot Tulsi Gabbard

American Patriot Congress-woman from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard is fighting for citizen civil rights and environmental justice against the corporate MIC. Tulsi is a military veteran for peace. She wants to end perpetual wars and invasions by calling out corrupt liars at the highest levels, which would make us more secure for homeland defense. She also wants to legalize cannabis so veterans and civilians can have natural medicine that works for them, instead of making them criminals. She would make a great president.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Problem of Real Science and the Bias of Money

Regarding Corporate Science Corruption

 

“How do we find out about the real science behind corporate chemicals?” is a great question. There are major court cases that are on-going and are finally exposing how scientists (not just politicians) are affected by where they get their funding, as other historic cases have shown before. Activists are attacked by people claiming to be the voice of scientific reason who defend corporate science, although they seem to know less about the corporate details involved with how the business world affects science and our environment (not just politics). It is very difficult to get people interested in large scale safe environments above immediate MONEY to supply specific food, drink, and shelter for individuals and loved ones…. until those things are taken from us; but then without money we lack much power within the system, and we are accused of emotional bias, as though corporate lackeys are objective. ‘Ring of Fire’ on Youtube has lawyers involved so they are covering the news about these issues, with a bias that is dedicated to exposing how corporations function by using science for their profit as the structure of their power. It is not true that companies use science for purely objective reasons, or that they would allow themselves to be subjected to ‘objective’ science if it did not benefit them, and in fact they do everything within their power to make sure that they can control studies in their favor.

Is there any way to know if the ‘peer-reviewed’ information has filtered out any bias towards the company? This is the best way to ask the question about our most ‘objective science’ regarding company neurotoxins and carcinogens. No offense to scientists, but it happens like with the Oil and Tobacco companies, pay-checks often come first for families. It does not benefit employed scientists to admit to bias, it just simply affects their way of interpreting data and conducting tests. Nuclear scientists are more prone to be in favor of things that cause nuclear radiation by down playing the risks which are acceptable costs for them in favor of ‘advancing science’ and getting their funding. Every profession is subject to this problem of economics, so i am not picking on scientists, i am an architect and many of us are rational and brilliant too, but profit influence happens in our field as well because it is the system that hires us that is on trial when it comes to environmental science ethics. Environmental peer review for Climate Change seems to be large enough to have not been as corrupted in the favor of companies as much as specific chemicals that companies produce to sell.

With so many billions of dollars at stake for corporations like Monsanto (GMO and Glyphosphate Science), our courts and scientists may not even be aware of how to be objective when their own family members have bought into the propaganda that allows them to pay their bills and provide and protect their loved ones. As with Oil Companies and Tobacco Companies, we should assume that toxins can affect us and our environment, and those that produce them should perhaps be more responsible by being held accountable. Few people will not be biased in one way or another, but real science should be the goal, not corporate greed. If it sounds like I am describing a fictional dystopia, perhaps the reader should be more realistic about how Capitalism actually works in reality (our EPA is in ruins in 2018). The larger problem of real science and the bias of money that affects us all will continue to exist so long as we allow our government to be influenced by corporate money at the highest levels, more than they are influenced by environmental ethics and a desire for more ethical science which means being more objective than the influence of money (which is asking a lot). People are innocent until proven guilty, but if a provable crime needs to be investigated we need to let the evidence decide if people are using corporations as tools to corrupt politics and science, and harm humanity in favor of profits for the few.

As an architect i take rationality and logic about designs very seriously, so i do not believe scientists are alone in wanting to take credit for knowing how we interact with our environment and how we can make technological innovations for improving humanity by using ‘facts’. “Peer reviewed” does not mean scientists do not all have their own human biases regarding how data is interpreted; that is part of my point. “Purely objective” as a philosophical ideal is worth talking about for the sake of science and law enforcement and ethics etc… This issue of the influence of money on science (and every profession and field of study) will not go away, but it is one we should deal with honestly in studying the sustainability of civilization. Peer reviews are not exempt from being reviewed over decades, with new conclusions drawn.

 

 

 

Philosophical Anarchism

Anarchy is absence of supreme government leaders, company authorities, or laws. Anarchism is rejection of central state or group hierarchy for collaborative democracy and independent freedom. Anarchy does not mean ‘let chaos rule’, but can be messy as individuals express themselves voluntarily. Lack of direction from a boss can be scary for many who prefer to be told what to do. Another problem is the political vacuum of anarchy allows despots to use charisma and power to shatter the ideal potential of anarchy and democracy, and create populist structures of obedience to corrupt state systems.

Anarchy is a natural feeling for many people who have an intuitive reaction to any perceived authority over them; which maybe related to our pre-history. Civilization is considered new and brief compared to thousands and thousands of years when humans must have lived more or less like other wild animals with no writing, and no language rules, in primitive anarchy. This anti-authoritarian type of human nature can manifest in complex egalitarian cultures, and thus can create advanced anarchy systems based on cultural capacities. Proudhon considered anarchism to be a political philosophy for “stateless societies based on voluntary associations”. Having no desire for authoritarian companies or governments, anarchists often try to organize and maintain voluntary institutions (like SCOD).

Labor unions (aka trade unions) are groups or collectives of workers, organized to represent their job interests within capitalism. Unions are similar to trade guilds, except they are often employees of companies that need to negotiate with bosses using social pressure and collective protest bargaining, with threat of striking vs lay-offs to enforce contracts. Safety standards, living wages, and benefits are labor themes.

Philosophical anarchism often relates to democracy, communism, socialism, and labor unions because they all are systems to empower workers to control leaders, companies, and governments by the people being responsible for their power. The term ‘worker’ (proletariat) represents the bulk of citizens or their families, and therefore the masses of society. When the workers have to power to vote directly and frequently on their bosses, companies and governments become decentralized and depend on social networks and sub-cultures.

[see also Mondragon, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman]

Power Corrupts People

Baron J.E.E. Dalberg-Acton (aka Lord Acton 1834-1902) was a noble English Catholic historian, politician, and writer. Lord Acton knew several major foreign languages. Acton’s linguistic and religious passion may have influenced Tolkien many years later. A fellow Catholic, Tolkien used the literary legacy that power tends to corrupt even the best men, as his main theme. In Lord of the Rings, the most powerful Ring cannot be used as a tool for good by even the best heroes, because they too would eventually be corrupted, no matter their intentions. The revelation seems to be that power is part of Original Sin as described in the the Bible, in the book of Genesis, in the Garden of Eden. The Old Testament myth that humans fell from the grace of godly paradise because we submitted to the evil temptation of power (the apple advocated by the serpent), seems to have found new expression in the words of these men. Acton collected a large historical library for the “History of Liberty”. Acton was politically Liberal, and travelled greatly. Acton loved reading original historic letters. Acton lived at his country house in Aldenham, Shropshire; and served in the House of Commons. Acton admired the U.S. Government for the Constitution, but oddly sided with the southern Confederacy for defending individual citizen liberties against the tyranny of Union Federal empire (while ignoring slavery). Acton was appointed to the Royal Victorian Order, as a Knight Commander (KCVO).

“History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys.” “There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.” [about Oliver Cromwell] “The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge.” “Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.”

In 1887 Lord Acton wrote his most famous quote:

“…I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you super-add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the jailer to murder Mary, and William III of England ordered his Scots minister to extirpate (destroy) a clan. Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes; you would spare those criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them higher than Haman (biblical Persian minister in the Book of Esther), for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science.”

He is best known for that remark he wrote in a letter to an Anglican bishop; but according to an editor of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica: “Lord Acton has left too little completed original work to rank among the great historians; his very learning seems to have stood in his way; he knew too much and his literary conscience was too acute for him to write easily, and his copiousness of information overloads his literary style. But he was one of the most deeply learned men of his time, and he will certainly be remembered for his influence on others.”

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Mohandas ‘Bapu’ Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was an Indian Hindu non-violent civil disobedience activist. Gandhi was leader of the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule. Gandhi’s self-sacrifice inspired freedom movements for civil rights across the World. Raised in a merchant caste family in India, he later trained in law in London. Gandhi first used non-violent civil disobedience in South Africa, for colonial civil rights. Returning to India in 1915, he organized farmers and workers to protest against high land tax and bigotry. Leading the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led national campaigns for social causes and self-rule (Swaraj).

Gandhi helped India challenge the British salt tax by marching in 1930. In 1942 Gandhi called for the British to leave India. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in South Africa and India. Gandhi lived modestly in a community and wore a traditional hand-spun Indian dhoti and shawl. Gandhi was vegetarian and took long fasts for spiritual and political reasons. Muslim Nationalism (Pakistan) and Gandhi’s Hindu pluralism in India helped to force Britain out of India in 1947.

Displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs migrated; and religious violence broke out in Punjab and Bengal. Gandhi visited the riots to help and fasted to stop religious violence. Hindu nationalist conservatives criticized and assassinated Gandhi. Gandhi’s birthday is commemorated in India as a national holiday, and worldwide as the International Day of Nonviolence. As with all martyr heroes that lives real lives, Gandhi had many human flaws of the sort that might be emphasized more when historical writers express loss of popular favor their cults.

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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s work was certainly influenced by the events of the World Wars, despite his public refusal of metaphor speculation. ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ explores abuse of corrupt power, by considering that the temptation of use of power can eventually corrupt anyone. The One Ring of Power created by Sauron promises great power, but eventually corrupts all who use it. Even good people are corrupted by lust for the Ring because of its power to rival Sauron, and by using its vast powers even the lightest souls darken. The ones best able to carry the Ring are innocent souls with meager ambition, and the best they can do with the Ring is to destroy it.

Tolkien said these words about power: “The proper study of man is anything but man, and the most improper job of any man . . is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.” [Letters #52] Tolkien believed that leaders should be judged by their example, more than common people are judged [James 3:1]. Power and authority allow for the most terrible things. The misuse of power often ruins leaders and followers who allow the abuse to happen. Vigilant active citizens will demand wise balance.

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Power within us and others is clearly our responsibility; not only to control our own will power to keep it within reason, but also to influence the power that we allow others to hold over us and others. If citizens cannot control their own leader’s passion for power from within a government using democracy, then it will be left up to other governments in other countries (see World Wars). The conclusion to the problem of power is perhaps best summarized by Spiderman in Marvel Comics – “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

Corruption Trials Can Create Change

Some people fear holding officials accountable, in fear of another corrupt vice politician hypothetically causing more problems, or that it would mean endless hearings and trials about corruption, thus grid-locking government more than usual. Having more public attention about corruption, could force restructuring of democracy for functionality. To me it seems irrational to allow a terrible leader to continue causing harm, by any illogical reasoning that allows abuse instead of ethics. To be fair it would be interesting to hear a scenario where oligarchs would allow our change to happen; which might well be impossible so long as corporations and plutocrats control the economy and campaign finance aka bribery. Perhaps the ultimate conclusion is that people en mass create the social change that years from now facilitate economics and politics for small people and all people. How grassroots change happens is first by compassionate communication for the less fortunate poor, with at least some frequency and sympathetic rationality using arts and sciences to reflect egalitarian goals and aspirations. Over time systems become run by people with the collective core values that groups of people expect and demand, even if their words and promises fall short of actions. Needed actions tend to happen when individual people feel empowered enough to carry out the activities that give them rewards (see Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’). If individuals can run large groups democratically with enough members to fill offices and run accountability rules, then Plato’s need for a Philosopher King would be overturned by the majority of masses joining Socrates and Diogenes in noble quests in common spaces using dialog instead of only fixed rhetoric and abuse of power. Perhaps democracy can hold leaders accountable, rather than jail or execute public nuisances.