This was Vietnam prior to the American invasion.
This was one of people of Vietnam.
This is what war brought. It is a scene repeated across the world.
Friends, most of the world’s people are poor but peaceable. They just want to live their lives with no trouble, bring up their kids as best they can, protect their families, laugh and dance, share what they have. I know this because I’ve traveled extensively and received warm hospitality from people with nothing.
If peaceful people are in the majority, why then do we allow war to occur? Who benefits from war besides the rich and powerful? What does it achieve besides bringing death and destruction and terrible injuries to the innocent?
The sane people of the world must use their people power to stop all war and punish those who profit from it.
The truth is that war is evil and warmongers need psychiatric help!
‘When you smile at me I will understand because that is something everybody, everywhere does in the same language.’
(wooden ships by Crosby, Stills, Nash)
I wonder if humans will learn to celebrate their similarities and discuss their differences. I live my life with the understanding that we are all inter-connected; we have far more in common than most people are willing to accept. Too caught up in greed and ego.
‘Be the change you want to see’.
Gardening and raising chickens works for me. Simplicity in life.
Letting the chickens out of their coop at first light, tending the garden while watching the sunrise, finding serene purpose in life; inter-connectedness. I smile at the world, hoping it will see; and smile back at me.
David, I share your concerns about the future of humanity.
There’s not much I can do but try and set an example of the change I want to see.
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Titania Reply:
November 6th, 2011 at 12:45 pm
mark, i do so agree with you!
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Mark, I’ve reached the same conclusion. I’ve accepted that I can’t change much but I’ll do what I can without becoming despairing.
My new blog look mirrors my change. It makes me feel better already!
Cheers.
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This is from Nassim Taleb.
The Great Bank Robbery
NEW YORK – For the American economy – and for many other developed economies – the elephant in the room is the amount of money paid to bankers over the last five years. For banks that have filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion. Extrapolating over the coming decade, the numbers would approach $5 trillion, an amount vastly larger than what both President Barack Obama’s administration and his Republican opponents seem willing to cut from further government deficits.
That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools, and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees. Such transfers represent as cunning a tax on everyone else as one can imagine. It feels quite iniquitous that bankers, having helped cause today’s financial and economic troubles, are the only class that is not suffering from them – and in many cases are actually benefiting.
Mainstream megabanks are puzzling in many respects. It is (now) no secret that they have operated so far as large sophisticated compensation schemes, masking probabilities of low-risk, high-impact “Black Swan” events and benefiting from the free backstop of implicit public guarantees. Excessive leverage, rather than skills, can be seen as the source of their resulting profits, which then flow disproportionately to employees, and of their sometimes-massive losses, which are borne by shareholders and taxpayers.
In other words, banks take risks, get paid for the upside, and then transfer the downside to shareholders, taxpayers, and even retirees. In order to rescue the banking system, the Federal Reserve, for example, put interest rates at artificially low levels; as was disclosed recently, it also has provided secret loans of $1.2 trillion to banks. The main effect so far has been to help bankers generate bonuses (rather than attract borrowers) by hiding exposures.
Taxpayers end up paying for these exposures, as do retirees and others who rely on returns from their savings. Moreover, low-interest-rate policies transfer inflation risk to all savers – and to future generations. Perhaps the greatest insult to taxpayers, then, is that bankers’ compensation last year was back at its pre-crisis level.
Of course, before being bailed out by governments, banks had never made any return in their history, assuming that their assets are properly marked to market. Nor should they produce any return in the long run, as their business model remains identical to what it was before, with only cosmetic modifications concerning trading risks.
So the facts are clear. But, as individual taxpayers, we are helpless, because we do not control outcomes, owing to the concerted efforts of lobbyists, or, worse, economic policymakers. Our subsidizing of bank managers and executives is completely involuntary.
But the puzzle represents an even bigger elephant. Why does any investment manager buy the stocks of banks that pay out very large portions of their earnings to their employees?
The promise of replicating past returns cannot be the reason, given the inadequacy of those returns. In fact, filtering out stocks in accordance with payouts would have lowered the draw-downs on investment in the financial sector by well over half over the past 20 years, with no loss in returns.
Why do portfolio and pension-fund managers hope to receive impunity from their investors? Isn’t it obvious to investors that they are voluntarily transferring their clients’ funds to the pockets of bankers? Aren’t fund managers violating both fiduciary responsibilities and moral rules? Are they missing the only opportunity we have to discipline the banks and force them to compete for responsible risk-taking?
It is hard to understand why the market mechanism does not eliminate such questions. A well-functioning market would produce outcomes that favor banks with the right exposures, the right compensation schemes, the right risk-sharing, and therefore the right corporate governance.
One may wonder: If investment managers and their clients don’t receive high returns on bank stocks, as they would if they were profiting from bankers’ externalization of risk onto taxpayers, why do they hold them at all? The answer is the so-called “beta”: banks represent a large share of the S&P 500, and managers need to be invested in them.
We don’t believe that regulation is a panacea for this state of affairs. The largest, most sophisticated banks have become expert at remaining one step ahead of regulators – constantly creating complex financial products and derivatives that skirt the letter of the rules. In these circumstances, more complicated regulations merely mean more billable hours for lawyers, more income for regulators switching sides, and more profits for derivatives traders.
Investment managers have a moral and professional responsibility to play their role in bringing some discipline into the banking system. Their first step should be to separate banks according to their compensation criteria.
Investors have used ethical grounds in the past – excluding, say, tobacco companies or corporations abetting apartheid in South Africa – and have been successful in generating pressure on the underlying stocks. Investing in banks constitutes a double breach – ethical and professional. Investors, and the rest of us, would be much better off if these funds flowed to more productive companies, perhaps with an amount equivalent to what would be transferred to bankers’ bonuses redirected to well-managed charities.
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David,
Glad to see you back on the old net again. Your new look to the site is very nice.
Indeed the war mongers ARE sick, very sick.
Having survived a tour in Vietnam, I can say that war is the most pornographic thing we humans have ever devised. It would be great if the human race would stop this war crap and grow up and act like semi-rational beings. I say semi-rational as I doubt that collectively we can act fully rational. Yes, while I try to be hopeful about humanity, it is very hard to do so. That being my opinion, I just ask that humanity TRY to at least act semi-rationally. Small steps at first. IF we can do that, then maybe someday humanity can become fully rational.
We need to over come the false divisions that have been created to keep us apart. Yes, religion is the major factor that divides humanity. We need to stop believing in sky varies and “chosen” peoples. All of humanity needs to stop that foolishness. The sooner the better for all life on this planet.
Just my 2 cents worth.
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David,
I just wanted to add that none of us are responsible for the condition of the world today. You and I never had that sort of power. The banksters and their “too big to fail” gangster pals rule this world.
All you and I can do is do try our best to treat every living being with courtesy, decency, and respect. The old “do unto others” bit. It is NOT a religious idea, just plain old human decency in my opinion. If we do our part, it just might make a small part of this planet a nicer place. Realize our limitations and do our best to make this life better in our own small way.
I try to live that way every day. I do not expect to get results, but every so often, I do and it is very nice to know that you have made at least one person feel better for even a short time.
Sorry to “preach” on so long.
On another note. I am glad to see you kept the charter of the PEACE movement on site.
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Charlie, thanks for your great comments and support. A few posts back I really did look ‘into the abyss’ and what I saw regarding the world and the future horrified me.
We really are on a path to destruction and extinction if we, the decent people who are in the majority, don’t stand up and get rid of the lowlife that are currently running the world. We have the power because of our numbers but we are divided at the moment.
The anti-corporate, anti-war protest movement is our hope. We must do our best to support it.
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Thanks, Gazza, for the quote. Greed has been made a virtue in this world compliments of the money-grubbers. Most people are not educated enough to work out they are being screwed by a conscienceless elite composed of politicians and the rich.
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The world we live in is controlled by the Elders, who control the money supply and currency exchange. Wars have been financed on both sides to make the most profit. Examine the funding of the Russo-Japanese War, Russian Revolution, Hitler’s rise, etc. Today it is the same family’s banks who profit. Now the EU is faced with five ex soverign nations who didn’t want debt slavery, but a reasonable return to soverignty. It’s not in their plans. Debt Rules!
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Ray, undoubtedly there is much going on behind the scenes, much that the man or woman in the street doesn’t know about. Those pulling the strings want to keep it that way.
Unfortunately, those pulling the strings are stupid. They think their money and power will save them from what’s coming. They are deranged!
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David Crosby and the rest were military plants, read Dave McGowan’s series on Laurel Canyon and weep. The whole hippy bs was created by the government to split the working class. All these creeps, Zappa, etc. all tied to military, germ warfare etc. families or worse, none could play, set up by the military in Laurel Canyon with the Manson Family. As a Sheriff said, to quote as best I can, “We would have busted Manson way before . . . but orders came from on high not to do it . . . ” He did not mean LAPD as bad and infiltrated by the CIA as they were at the time of Bobby Kennedy’s public execution, shot in the bach of the head by a brainwashed hypnotized Sirhan standing in front of him with a gun. Now the new photos brought out by the Irish journalist of half the CIA murdering crew right there on site that night, yawn go the sheeple in the USA, until the Haliburton death camps, already financed and ready for instant set up get fully geared up, fools get what they deserver, the USA has murdered half the world for generations calling itself a spreader of freedom, spreader of bs and murder for Israel and its billionaire henchmen . . . . but in the end, there will be justice, bc this world is an illusion and you play your cards at the end you get your bet . . . .
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In the end there will be justice, says trkinsella! Only if the people prevail say I.
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Ray…True! I’m reading the protocols and am completely amazed. What’s written there is truly mind boggling in its understanding of the human condition.
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