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Again, you are mistaken about the origins of sustainability. That’s a fact. I’m guessing you never heard of Thorstein Veblen, Howard Scott, or the Technocracy Inc movement of the 1930’s. Technocracy Inc. still exists today. It’s famous “Study Course” is available online — perhaps one of the most revealing expositions of scientism ever written. There’s nothing “bizarre” about the historical facts which I am citing — they are the facts. That the terminology differs slightly is meaningless — it’s the meaning of the words that matter and the meaning is identical in both cases. Also meaningless is whether the “sustainability” movement knows about technocracy. Ideas do not require a hand me down lineage from one person in one movement to another person in another movement to show direct relationship — they just have to be the same, or close enough for guvment work, ideas, which they are. Technocracy was consumed with avoiding another Great Depression (sustainable employment climate for all) whereas the enviros are concerned with avoiding an environmental apocalypse (sustaining a planetary climate for all). So they switched motivating catastrophes, but some of their proposals are alarmingly similar. You want to talk about carbon credits? The Technocrats had “energy certificates.” Both were a way of controlling production and output. But if you DO want to show direct connection between the enviro movement and Technocracy Inc, you don’t have to go further than one of the authors of the Study Course itself (perhaps the most lasting contribution of the movement), who is also known as the father of “peak oil” theory, which is a linch pin of “sustainability.”

You also seem rather touchy about Obama, but he deserves the criticism he gets. He’s earned it. The future certainly can’t seem rosy for all the people he’s put out of work in the coal industry, most of whom are voting for Trump over Hillary. Once upon a time fusion energy was the cutting edge of energy production research, yet for the 8 consecutive years of Bush and 8 consecutive years of Obama, there was barely a peep about it. Quite possibly not a SINGLE peep about it. Yet there was a perfect opportunity for an optimist-president to have his JFK moonshot moment.

Moment lost. And projections about when fusion will become a viable energy source keep being pushed farther into the future.

Instead they are pushing solar and wind which are fine as far as they go — I fully support them, but more along the lines of Elon Musk’s approach, where each home that has a powerwall can theoretically become the source of power generation of its own needs, rather than everyone subscribing to centralized solar and wind power production, but I don’t think I have ever heard solar and wind portrayed as the preferred energy source of a starfaring civilization. They are the preferred sources of energy of people who are downsizing expectations and preparing for a highly regulated future where dreams come with shackles.

I don’t know what this Africa Initiative is but I did sit in on a 3 day meeting — sales pitch, actually — for a 4 billion dollar windfarm project in one of the best wind and solar resource areas of the country, which also happens to be dirt poor, so I want to see if this other initiative is similar. Nobody cares about building billions of dollars of assets and infrastructure in dirt poor areas of the country (or world?) unless its going to make a certain group of people richer than they already are.

Good for you on Veblen. Do you also have Elsner? Veblen was merely the father-figure to a movement that was more sharply defined by Scott and others, and unless you have more than just Veblen you really don’t have an understanding of the technocratic movement — what its ideals were, how it resembles current trends, or the philosophical sameness between technocratic thought and the sustainable development movement, how measuring and tracking the consumption habits of every single person (sound familiar? smart meters anyone?) was necessary to achieve a sustainable society.

There’s plenty of evidence for anyone who is objective and interested. I’m not interested in doing anyone’s homework — I’m quite busy doing my own, thank you, but I will say that you are going to have to spend money on actual books, some of which are going to be hard to find because they are long out of print. Don’t assume that everything you need is available in links.

As for NWO — well that is so obvious that I’m shocked anyone would even italicize the words like its a controversy anymore. Is it really? That’s so easy it doesn’t need my help if you really want to know.

The term “technocrat” and “technocracy” are even out in the open and being used by mainstream sources. Google them. If it sounds paranoid to you then you haven’t been paying attention lately. EU technocrats in Brussels are the same class of unelected experts that Howard Scott envisioned, not yet with the same MILITARY powers, but perhaps you caught the story last week about the call for the EU to have its own army? Remember plans for the NAU simultaneous with denunciations of the claims that it was a plan for an American Super State? Remember that the EU was born over 50 year ago as an economic pact and is today now talking about its own army? All of this is true.

If you are going to play, come to the game more prepared. Don’t expect me to get you schooled, particularly when you already show a dismissive attitude that doesn’t suggest an openness to facts that challenge what you already learned to believe.

No offense taken. Each person has to decide to know, that it is important to know, that it is not a waste of time to know. If you feel you have no skin in the game on this, I can’t give you any. But it’s not a trivial matter to understand this stuff. I recently read a 400 page unpublished dissertation from 1962 on Technocracy. It’s not convenient information to share so what you are asking for is not realistic. The evidence would literally fill a book, having a bibliography, and while we like to get into discussions like this on the internet, this is really not the best forum to resolve them. But every point I mentioned was true and is available from regular mainstream sources. If one or two people decide to look into any of those points and get interested, it’s a win.

That’s what I hope happens.

dmduncan Today 1:05 pm

What speech did you listen to?

The one that you referenced. The one in Africa talking about “cars” and “air conditioning.” Whoever posted this clip on YouTube mischaracterized it just as you did. Again, the speech IS NOT Obama prohibiting Africans from having cars or A/C, or telling them “no you can’t.” It is quite clearly a hopeful speech advocating renewable, sustainable energy. And as mentioned in the article I linked, the speech was made in conjunction with an optimistic proposal for renewable energy in Africa. I don’t know how you can possibly get pessimism out of this speech, even without the context of Obama’s energy initiative, and especially given that context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBE0RKbRbl4

dmduncan Today 5:05 pm

It’s impossible to prove a negative, so I can’t prove that the inferences you’re choosing to draw are not implied by any statements in the speech. But, suffice it to say that I don’t see how one could draw your conclusion from that speech, and especially not from the overall context. My guess would be that you’re trying to support a certain ideology with your interpretation, rather than taking the speech at face value. Obama has long expressed concern over climate change, and he has done more than any previous president to deal with it. To that end, he is out promoting renewable energy, which also happens to be economically efficient and a source for permanent productive capacity increase in the long-run. These are all good things. Not conspiracies nor prohibitions against the peasantry. Obama is not the police of Africa. He can’t force Africans not to drive cars or have A/C. And I don’t believe that he would even if he could. He’s advocating renewable energy globally, because it’s a good thing per se and it deals with the problem of climate change. Addressing a problem is not pessimistic when accompanied by a proposed solution.

dmduncan Today 8:17 pm

I can’t imagine what you regard as a straw man in what I said.

As anybody will tell you, “boil over” in this contest is simply a strong metaphor describing what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—a group composed of climate scientists from 130 nations—has concluded through careful measurement and study of data spanning many decades. It’s a perfectly normal thing for a leader concerned with climate change to say when he’s trying to explain it to lay people. As I said, if you have some sort of evidence from a reputable source that it’s all really an international conspiracy, I’d be willing to read it. Otherwise, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I don’t typically go in for conspiracy theories without compelling evidence. As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And a normal looking crowd reacting normally to a normal speech about a normal issue ain’t it.

All of this. If you are trying to derive this from what I said, I’m not arguing any of this:

“Not conspiracies nor prohibitions against the peasantry. Obama is not the police of Africa. He can’t force Africans not to drive cars or have A/C. And I don’t believe that he would even if he could.”

1. It’s not necessarily a conspiracy — at least not an obvious one, since conspiracies usually have some element of illegality, and I’m not a lawyer. However, there is secrecy whenever explicitness would alienate support, as there was in the case of the Rome Treaty when it was “just” an economic pact that later became the European UNION, the success of which Vincente Fox hoped to replicate with the North American Union proposal. Secrecy is how all sorts of organizations astroturf ideas and products that they want to make look naturally adopted, and I’m assuming you won’t challenge the reality of astroturfing. Strictly speaking, astroturfing isn’t conspiracy. But it’s not cool either.
2. One intent of globalism is to equalize wealth across the globe; for some that means a higher standard of living and for others that means a lower standard of living, and for the wealthy architects of this plan it means more wealth and power if it means anything at all. There are all sorts of names you can call that proposal, none of them particularly democratic-sounding.
3. That particular quote of the Obama speech fits the pessimistic zeitgeist of our time compared to the optimistic zeitgeist of the 1960’s and earlier. Obama is not making a “power play” any more than George W was planning on staying in office after 2008 — which is something a left wing friend of mine assured me he would try to do. Obama’s just delivering a farewell pitch, as far as I can tell, but it wasn’t that good.
4. The NWO is a label that most people use because some of the most powerful and influential people of our time keep using it themselves to describe what is actually happening and which they are openly advocating for, which is the establishment of a global economic order through trade pacts that in fact subvert the sovereignty of nation states. Some points of it they are secret about (see #1) and on some they are not. What they DON’T publicize very well (because people don’t like it) is that these trade deals obligate elected leaders to follow the dictates of unelected technocrats — in the EU’s case that means Brussels, and in the TPP’s case who knows?, and that this is a very sneaky way to make elected leaders subservient to the orders of unelected technocrats, undermining government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” which I (like Lincoln) do not want to see perish from this Earth.

That’s all.

No, conspiracies are not just secret plans. Football teams have secret plans — that doesn’t make them conspiratorial organizations. It makes them competent strategists.

Astroturfing is a PR strategy often used to sell people crap without calling attention to the crap parts. It only works as well as it is kept hidden.

And if you are suggesting that to “solve the problem of climate change” a POTUS has to paint a false picture of a disaster that will never result from a scenario of too much car and a/c ownership that will never actually happen without Africa being powered by fusion plants, then we will have to agree to disagree. It’s false.

Africa is not a threat. And if you are really concerned about the earth and you really are optimistic and don’t want to keep a down people in the dirt — push fusion research, solve the problems, get it done, and let poor nations prosper with energy wealth so you don’t have to say silly things like Obama did to a Third World continent of people who would like to enjoy the same things we do.

That everything worldly is conditional and operates within limits that we must respect is a given. But the choice in one’s communications from the pulpit of the presidency to emphasize the limits that prevent us from something, rather than to emphasize humanity’s creative capacities that get us where we want to be by changing the set of limits in which we operate, makes a difference in what people aspire to do.

Solar and wind are not new technologies, and they cannot solve the energy problems of mankind. They are old technologies that Obama is pushing people to SETTLE for. That’s not “leveling” with people, that’s normalizing the low expectation of doing nothing new, and doing nothing new is going to guarantee our problems don’t get fixed.

Fusion is a new thing. It’s a frontier that poses a problem we have yet to crack, but that once cracked will supply a plentiful source of clean nuclear power, and it needs funding.

The only nuclear power I hear Obama ever talk about is fission, which I am vehemently opposed to.
Obama lumps nuclear power in with “clean” energy. Needless to say, there are quite a few of us who disagree with that assessment, and who would like to see the kind of determination to fuse the atom for energy production as we showed during WW2 to split the atom for weapons production.

The bottom line: I think people need to be more zen and less alarmist about climate change to solve our growing energy problem.

Sorta like Bill Gates, who I think we can all agree is not a “winger” of the “right,” and whose optimism in this piece regarding an energy “miracle” is exactly what I am talking about; we need less fear and more determination to do something new — not to settle.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/we-need-an-energy-miracle/407881/

dmduncan June 6, 2016 6:41 pm

P.S. Just to be clear, I’m saying that you seem to be choosing to see the speech in a way that fits with the whole Technocracy theory/model that you’ve taken an interest in, even though there’s no mention in the speech of any of the Technocracy concepts that you’ve been discussing. Whereas I’m taking the speech at face value: a president who has spent his presidency in pursuit of renewable energy and combating climate change is giving a speech in which he advocates for renewable energy and combating climate change, accompanied by a specific plan (i.e. the Africa energy initiative) for doing just that. If you choose to see an ulterior motive behind the speech, I can’t stop you. I’ve tried to see it your way, but it just doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

dmduncan Today 10:09 pm

“As anybody will tell you, ‘boil over’ in this contest is simply a strong metaphor.”…The trope is nightmarish and provides a reason for action that is based on horror rather than delight…

Because he’s talking about a problem that needs to be solved, not a wonder that people should be delighting in. And to that end, he’s proposing a solution to the problem (a solution that carries great additional benefits), which is the difference between an optimistic outlook and a pessimistic one, as I said at the very beginning. A pessimistic speech would be, “We’re doomed! Nothing can save us!” So, we’ve come full circle. The alternative would be to ignore the problem and not address it all. Would that be more optimistic? I suppose one could regard it as more optimistic in an ignorance is bliss sort of way. But, I don’t think that’s a good way for a president to handle serious problems.

Did you know that term was pushed by the CIA after the JFK assassination for the media to use to discredit talk of a larger conspiracy in his death?

I do. I’ve seen tons and tons and tons of JFK assassination stuff. That “JFK: Evidence of Revision” massive 10-part series is very intriguing and compelling. The JFK conspiracy theory is one that I’ve seen substantiated with persuasive evidence in the form of claims made by Johnson’s mistress, people who knew Oswold, and others.

But, the JFK conspiracy theory has a lot of distortion of the truth and BS involved with it, too. Cyril Wecht, for example, leading people to believe that the head wound in the front was an entrance wound, thus lending merit to the grassy knoll shooter and so forth. Also, the misinformation about the layout of the car which allegedly precluded the single bullet trajectory, but it turned out that the conspiracy theorists were mistaken about the layout. And also the issue that was made about the difficulty of firing 3 shots from the carbine rifle in however many seconds. Multiple investigative journalists have shown that it wasn’t all that difficult. But, there is compelling evidence that people knew of the assassination plot beforehand. The RFK assassination is also intriguing. The allegation of the CIA hypnotizing Sirhan Sirhan is very interesting, though I haven’t seen any rigorous analysis and rebuttals of that theory. When these theories are presented in a one-sided manner, that can involve cherry-picking evidence but you don’t know it’s cherry-picking, in a nicely presented audiovisual format, it can be very compelling.

dmduncan Today 12:54 am

No, the alternative speech simply doesn’t frighten people into action with apocalyptic imagery that is unscientific, it rewards them into action with images of promise and hope of what a better world will look and feel like when we succeed in doing things a certain way. THAT is the difference between optimism and pessimism,

That’s not leveling with people. It’d be ignoring the elephant in the room. It just so happens that the consequences of not pursuing renewable energy technology aren’t simply economic, but worse—likely permanent environmental changes that carry damaging effects for property and human life. What you’re suggesting is that a leader trying to motivate people to help solve the problem of climate change should refrain from leveling with them about the actual consequences of climate change. Your alternative would be less persuasive and less forthright. And I can’t imagine why anyone trying to motivate and inform people about the need to act on climate change would leave out the most important reasons for doing so—the likely irreversible environmental changes. I would not have used Obama’s hyperbole of “boil over,” but I understand why he said it. It was a colloquial expression in a speech to lay people, and he said it off the cuff. We all know what he meant—a strong metaphor for dangerous temperature increase. Again, I don’t believe that leaving out such important facts is the difference between optimism and pessimism. The difference is whether or not you provide a hopeful outlook for solving the problem that you’re raising.

The 1960s ana|ogue to what you’re proposing would be if the anti-war movement had failed to level with people about the number of fatalities resulting from the Viet Nam War, and only talked about the benefits of peace and love. But, they didn’t do that. They leveled with people about the scope of the problem, but conveyed a hopeful outlook for solving that problem. And it worked. Likewise with the civil rights movement. The analogue to your proposal would be if MLK had failed to level with people about the difficult nature of their challenge, about the pervasiveness and depth of segregationist sentiment, and only talked about how wonderful equal rights would be. But, he didn’t do that. He talked about his “dream,” and his dream included both the problem (that his children were being judged by the color of their skin) and the solution (but in the future they would be judged instead by the content of their character). MLK told his followers that they would endure suffering. That they would be beaten. That they would be threatened at home and worse. But, he accompanied those descriptions of the problem with a solution (nonviolent resistance) and the hopeful outlook that it would eventually shame White America into supporting intervention and legislation by the federal government. And it did.

Likewise with JFK vis-a-vis the space race and other problems we had with the USSR. The centerpiece of JFK’s 1960 campaign was an alleged “missile gap” with the Soviets that didn’t actually exist. This was an outright scare tactic. But, he realized that there are two sides of the coin to persuading people—fear and hope, the carrot and the stick. Behind the space race lay the threat that the Soviets would put a missile base on the moon or in orbit that would kill us all. JFK didn’t ignore this threat. He didn’t fail to discuss the scary stuff. But he accompanied it with a hopeful solution: the USA will beat the Soviets to the moon. And it worked.

And therefore, your analogies fail to persuade. It’s absurd, for instance, to compare the fake problem of a boiling planet because everybody in Africa got cars and air conditioners — a scenario which does not exist and which is not going to — to black people being segregated and too intimidated to vote.

Obama concocted a fake doomsday scenario to scare people away from just WANTING.

dmduncan Today 5:05 pm

I just watched the clip again, and there is no expression or general emotion visible in the audience. The camera does not close-up on their faces, and they all just have the appearance of listening attentively to a man giving a speech. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this.