[Brian Allgar]

Janice, I suspect that Norman actually intended to refer not to the PTT, but to the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which does indeed sound like a very nasty piece of work.

Here is an extract from the information accompanying the Avaaz petition that I signed:

The TPP will shape lives across the world from North America to Chile to New Zealand, but most of the text was written in secret by negotiators and corporations, without public input. When Wikileaks revealed a portion, we got a sampling of how bad it is:

• If a nation bans a toxic chemical, or labels genetically modified foods, or tightens environmental regulations, TPP empowers companies to sue governments in secret global tribunals, run by corporate arbitrators. If the government loses, taxpayers could be forced to pay companies billions of dollars for lost profits.
• Under TPP, pharmaceutical giants could extend their monopolies so far that cheap life-saving drugs for cancer and AIDS patients could be prevented.
• The deal could criminalise those who sound the alarm on corporate illegal activity through a computer system.

Those are just a small part of the agreement. We have no idea what corporate lobbyists wrote into the bulk of the treaty because governments have refused to release the text to the public.

*************************************************

Did you get the GM bit? Monsanto could sue governments that allow the labelling of consumer products to state that they contain genetically-modified ingredients.

Here is the address of the petition if you're interested.

I believe the text has now been published. I haven't read it, but I understand that among other things, it contains no reference to the problems of global warming; instead, it increases the carte blanche given to the ravagers and despoilers.

You can certainly find a lot more information about the TPP on the Internet.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Well, that makes more sense. But it does underscore that deciphering his messages is a difficult task. Even with the letters put in the right order, I don't see what that has to do with the topic of this thread. That said, I am certainly anti-Big-Pharma and regard Monsanto as a public enemy.

Thank you, Brian.

[Janice D. Soderling]

I would like to comment Bill C's post #109 about the "three kinds of refugees".

It seems that developed European countries are facing three quite distinct classes of arrivals: enemy jihadist soldiers; Syrian refugees; and economic migrants from Africa and the Middle East. The policies, and rhetoric, regarding each should be kept distinct. This seems elementary, but you can see people confusing them at every turn, possibly under the influence of shock. Keeping out enemy soldiers is a very high priority, since every one of them that lax policies (or even strict policies) let in could cause untold harm. The presence of the first group makes admitting the second group more difficult -- very slow and painstaking -- but not impossible. The third group makes keeping out the first group and letting in the second group even more difficult. It appears that European countries need very strict border controls now and need to turn back all but bona fide asylum seekers until further notice.

Who is a bona fide asylum seeker?

It is not simple to sort refugees into categories. Though presently there is a heartbreaking stream coming mostly from Syria, educated middle class people who know what fate they will suffer if ISIS gains total control, there are also those who come from other war zones, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen. Particularly young men and boys from Afghanistan, who in many cases are traveling onward from temporary resettlement in Iraq are fleeing from forced conscription into Iraq's army. The Swedish radio recently had an interview with a boy in his mid-teens whose father, unable to read, in the course of applying for a prolongation of the permit for the family to stay in Iraq had put his mark on a document binding him and the boy to fight for the Iraqi army. If they were killed, the family would be allowed to stay permanently. When the father learned what he had "agreed" to, the family sent the boy off to Sweden. One of the many, many children who have made the hazardous journey alone and who may never see their family again.

And what about all these young men in their twenties who do not want to fight for ISIS and therefore flee. They are the most suspect group these days and are being turned away because the limited resources of housing are being prioritized to children without dependents and families with children. So countless will be subject to deportation. And if granted asylum they are no longer guaranteed a roof over their head. Where will they go? It is winter now, and snow will soon be everywhere.

When is a refugee not a refugee? When he is classified as an economic refugee. Some make it all the way to Europe from Nigeria and these (mostly men) are among the first to be deported because they are labeled "economic refugees". http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/nigerian...essure/8663426 That despite the fact that Boko Haram has displaced thousands of Nigerians. At least 74,000 Nigerians have fled to northern Cameroon, 18,000 to south-west Chad and at least 100,000 in Niger.

I am currently reading "Drone Theory" by Grégoire Chamayou, who is a research scholar in philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. I was particularly struck by this paragraph and I want to share it to a wider audience:

[The policy of the RAF in WW I raids in Africa] ended in bitter failure. An assessment made by a British officer in 1923 describes perverse effects strangely similar to those seen today, three generations later, in the same regions of the world. "By driving the inhabitants of the bombarded area from their homes in a state of exasperation, dispersing them among neighboring clans and tribes, with hatred in their hearts at what they consider 'unfair' methods of warfare, these attacks bring about the exact political results which it is so important, in our own interests, to avoid, viz. the permanent embitterment and alienation of the frontier tribes.

You don't have to be particularly smart to realize how this applies to the refugee problem of today.

It is worth remembering that they flee to the West because they are West-friendly.

In conclusion, for those interested, here is an overview of Sweden's 25 largest immigrant population as it was last year. (This is prior to this year's huge influx.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden

Curiously, (and I'm not hinting at any hidden meaning by mentioning this), there is an almost equal number of foreign-born residents in the Swedish population from the USA (19,569) as from the Russian Federation (19,028).

[Michael F]

Janice,

Thank you for that quote from "Drone Theory".

I’ve long thought there is something in the West’s (and specifically, in America’s) methods of combat in the Middle East, something having to do with disparity in power and recklessness in its use, that creates a hydra of our ‘enemy’, engendering multiple heads for every one that we cut off.

(This leaves aside the question of why we have been cutting off heads in the Middle East for most of my adult life -- a question that I, as an American, find impossible to answer without feelings of impotence, shame and disgust.)

[Norman Ball]

Well Janice...

I take responsibility for sending you down the PTT rabbit hole. As Brian pointed out I was referring to the TPP and transposed the acronym. I spent 15 years in the telecommunications industry and will spare you a toe-to-toe debate on tariffs and deregulation. So my apologies for opening up a false trail and your tireless research as a result.

You insist on characterizing Inside Russia as a propaganda site when it originate perhaps 20% of its own content, and performs little more than a 'Drudge-like' wire editor function for the rest. The quality of the content is uneven, granted, but broadly gathered. Caveat emptor is the rule for any entity that troubles itself to deliver news to your doorstep. Media assets are not valued at billions of dollars for their agnostic aspirations. Media influences. Go back and read your Adorno and Marcuse. No, I'm only kidding because you will crack the books. You're a marvel of fastidiousness. Or to paraphrase Adorno, it is not simply that mass media has the potential to deceive, but that it deceives as a matter of course.

A very brief word on conspiracy. When the owners of 50% of America's weath, all 400 of them, can comfortably be seated within a small auditorium, society has permitted the requisite scale to exist for conspiracies to be hatched, or can we at least say the alignment of interests is so compelling that potential for abuse looms large? These people share similar tax strategies, estate planning, security concerns, schooling. So in a number of 'benign' social contexts they have every reason to talk amongst themselves and further leverage their interests; this without even broaching nefarious world domination plans. Undue wealth concentration is an accident waiting to happen if it hasn't happened already.

I am a late-arriving Christian which means I am an eschatologist. History is purposeful, directed and ends rather cinematically. You might say the Judeo-Christian God is the ultimate eschatologist. There are secular eschatoligies too, Workers' Paradises and the like. So we may yet share something in common besides our good looks.

[Norman Ball]

I wondered Janice if Bill Carpenter's attempt (#39) fairly captured your 'first principle':

"a certain peaceful just, transnational order is the highest desideratum. This should be achievable on a democratic basis, but not until populations are sufficiently enlightened to know that this is best. As people are now, they will be at each other's throats without a higher power to keep them in line. The democracy at several removes of the EC seems to answer for now, with its ability to guide national governments."

[Julie Steiner]

Regarding eschatology in general, since Norman mentioned it, and I think it's relevant:

ISIS is interested in eschatology, too. Very interested. They wish to hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the Mahdi, who will, according to them, unite to battle the Antichrist and rid the world of evil.

I completely lose patience with millennialism, which promises an easy way out for all earthly problems. (And sometimes delivers--I can't argue that the millennialist group that committed mass suicide one neighborhood over from mine didn't escape this world of woe, in their version of the Rapture.)

No need to bother saving the environment or paying off the debts we've racked up for future generations to deal with, if the world is going to end soon anyway. Don't bother working for peace and justice, either. It's so much easier to just confidently slap a bumper sticker on one's gas-guzzling SUV--"WARNING: IN CASE OF RAPTURE, THIS CAR WILL BE UNMANNED"--and then piously sing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Or "Jesus, Take the Wheel," if you prefer.

As my own Church approaches the eschatology-rich season of Advent, I wish more of my fellow believers would focus less on this or that frightening sign that the end of the world is near, and instead focus on Jesus's description of the Last Judgment in Matthew 25:31-46--in which how we have treated other people is presented as of paramount importance.

(The "I was a stranger, and you welcomed me" bit particularly jumps out at me these days. What good is it to ace the end-time prophecies and flunk that? Maybe the Son of Man arrives on the clouds in glory only after he arrives as a little Syrian girl in a barely-seaworthy vessel.)

[Janice D. Soderling]

You insist on characterizing Inside Russia as a propaganda site when it originate perhaps 20% of its own content, and performs little more than a 'Drudge-like' wire editor function for the rest. The quality of the content is uneven, granted, but broadly gathered. Caveat emptor is the rule for any entity that troubles itself to deliver news to your doorstep. Media assets are not valued at billions of dollars for their agnostic aspirations. Media influences.

Of course media influences. And it mostly influences those whose critical thinking abilities are impaired. Others laugh at its intended influence as people once laughed at Tokyo Rose, Lord Ha-ha, Ezra Pound.

I will say it again: Russia Insider (not Inside Russia, at least try to get the name straight) is a propaganda site and so is its sister medium Russia Today. It is not hard to find claims that this is so for instance http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhim...king-the-news/ . But if you chose to doubt it, just look at the content of the site. The "broadly gathered" content is in fact carefully selected. This isn't a new media trick. One should be equally dubious when accessing content from say, Fox News, StandWithUs, The Christian Post, Catholic Encyclopedia, Portside, Dabiq, etc.

Afterthought, added in: I include Portside because it has a clear agenda just as the others do. I most often agree with the Portside articles, but not always, and I try to remember that it, like the others, has a bias.

That said, there are news sources which, on the whole, uphold the idea of democracy, free press, honest information. Do not trust any of them blindly, but be aware that some are more reliable that others.

Reading the rest of your post, Norman, I am still confused about your message. Do you believe that I believe that wealth concentration is a good thing, and so is a "Worker's Paradise"? Liberate yourself from befuddlement and apply your powers of reason why American anti-trust legislation is no longer enforced to put big business in its place; the place intended by a democratic nation which relies on taxes to ensure education, health care, infrastructures, good housing, good roads and good policemen.

To the question of Super-PACs and election integrity.

To combat the ridiculous ranting of demagogues who have taken over a once respectable, albeit conservative, party.

To the question of why so many Americans adore politicians who never, who never, uttered a sentence that wasn't gobbledygook. Donald Trump and Sarah Palin come to mind but they are only the avant-garde of foggyism and demagoguery.

To the ridiculous claim of American exceptionalism.

To the ridiculous idea of a Second Coming accompanied by cinematic selective rapture.. Oh, wait a minute. Uh...

Dabiq, incidentally, is named for a mythological site relevant to jihadist apocalypse. I mention this in conjunction with Julie's informative post above. May I add that there have been many thought-provoking replies in this debate. I may not agree with every part of every one, but from Nigel's rebuttal and Susan's reflections on Rome and onward, there have been many contributions that I've read with interest.

[Norman Ball]

Exactly Julie. I detest the prevailing Christian neurosis of waiting for the clouds to part, which is usually accompanied with obsessive divination. Being a Christian day-to-day is so much harder than perching on a hill waiting for God(ot). That's rather sterile and life-evading.

Now that we've re-righted the acronym, the TPP has everything to do with eroding national sovereignty. Maybe your sources differ on that appraisal, Janice. Sourcng is iffy as so few are allowed to read it. One can always hope the peoples' best interests are front-and-center and that the unprecedented secrecy isn't hiding an anti-democratic intent. But yes, this could be a precedent for future transnational agreements.

Don't feel obliged to commit to a definition on my behalf, nor certainly my interpretation of Bill Carpenter's attempt, but he alludes to this as possibly being one of your 'first principles':

"It seems that a certain peaceful just, transnational order is the highest desideratum. This should be achievable on a democratic basis, but not until populations are sufficiently enlightened to know that this is best."

Whomever the proponents of this might be, it reads to me like a whopper of an until. How do we prove our deservingness after self-determination has been relinquished to this transnational order? What precedents are there of bloodless reverse-devolutions of power at the first signs of popular maturation? The problem of course is that the vanguard never self-dissolves --without coaxing. And given the perfecting of surveillance technology, dissolution seems even less likely in the years ahead. If globalism truly succeeds at becoming global, where will the exogenous counterforce march from should things veer dystopian?

You say, "it seems to be ingrained in the psyche of the human being to seek a Great Controller to deal with contingencies he cannot control." Indeed it does. The Soviet Union had its own go at it in the atheistic guise of democratic centralism. This may be the brand of democracy you have in mind when you say:

"yes, I do believe that the nation-state has passed its heyday. The current global response to the Paris attack seems to confirm that. Breaking down larger states into smaller ones based on religion or ethnicity with no overarching political deterrents (i.e. the EU) will make the individual state more vulnerable..."

I guess it's fair to say you're no fan of localism. That's okay. Not everyone comes away inspired by the stateless Kurds' experiments with grassroots self-governance. To me, democracy is the lack of overarching politcal deterrents. I mean, what about the vulnerability of the people to an overarching transnational entity? I find you oddly silent on this point. I don't know if the on-line Britannica is on your sanctioned reading list, but I'll venture it. There are other sources for definitions:

http://www.britannica.com/topic/democratic-centralism

"Democratic centralism purported to combine two opposing forms of party leadership: democracy, which allows for free and open discussion, and central control, which ensures party unity and discipline... Unrestrained discussion, [Lenin] insisted, would produce intraparty disagreements and factions and prevent the party from acting effectively."

There's nothing wrong with being a democratic centralist, though I can't resolve what strikes me as its glaring internal contradiction. It's a recognized form of governance with an historical track-record. Maybe the kinks the Soviets experienced have been ironed out.

[Steve Mangan]

I'm a gay man living in Turkey -- a secular state but predominantly Muslim, and never felt happier or safer. At home in England I was thrown out of home at 16 for being gay, homeless for several years, I suffered regular beatings, was stabbed and hung and left to die, my dog killed and mutilated (parts of his body still stuffed in my coat pockets by our attackers when I left the hospital), when I got a home was victimized and my property vandalized. Me and my partner of 25 years have never suffered as much as a bad word since we moved here, 11 years ago -- and the (muslim) community and (muslim) friends are the most genuine and supportive of people I have ever known.