From January 2012
-by Jay Burney
One of the more clever phrases ever created is “Not in my backyard” or NIMBY. This pejorative phrase has been used to quickly characterize someone or some organization that is opposed to a particular project. The phrase is supposed to make you think that the entity so characterized is a selfish unevolved slob that stands in the way of the kind of progress that will benefit humanity. This may be what you think when you hear the term.
This is often not close to the truth.
Campaigns or spokespersons for campaigns that use that slogan are most often financed and carried by a monetized agenda against those that stand up to prevent themselves and others from harm caused by that agenda. The NYMBY is characterized as the obstructionist. Even though that NIMBY may in fact be operating from a knowledge platform that challenges and or DEMOLISHES the point of view that the development or project is harmful and not beneficial.
In my mind, NIMBY carries a heroic connotation rather than an obstructionist one. Standing up against the tyranny of the perceived majority, defending ones own property investments, and defending a community against a predatory wealth extractor that brings harm for generations to the planet are patriots engaged in constitutional freedoms that many generations of Americans have fought and died for.
The crusaders that champion the use of NYMBY characterization against the brave souls that risk everything to stand up to the onslaught are often the apostles of the extreme anti-environmentalists that evangelize an anti-democratic and anti life philosophy in favor of social, ecological, and often economic destruction.
I first heard the phrase back when lumber and paper interests were trying to eliminate those arguing against clear-cutting our native ancient forests. The industry propagandists used the language to marginalize protestors and critical thinkers. This made it easier for the silent majority to accept the violence and publically funded police and military forces used to “clear” the protestors. The emerging nuclear industry adopted the language and strategies against those opposed to power plants and waste repositories that represented profitability for the industry and have harmed human health. The campaigns have continued by corporate agendas in the oil and gas industry and others that have gamed the system to allow for legalized and profitable pollution. Whenever I hear the phrase NYMBY I have come to think that there is a campaign underway to soften up the public for a soon to come clash that may mean violence and oppression.
A new phrase has begun to emerge in recent months, a phrase that is proudly waived as a banner by advocates for a saner and just world including climate change activists, renewable energy activists, habitat activists, and the 99% represented by the occupy movement. That phrase: NOOP. Not on our planet!
Speaking of Occupy-
Publicly funded police and military forces have a long held tradition of defending the oligarch’s interests from the 99%. The violent clearing of occupation sites across the America and the world in recent months should outrage any citizen that has a child that wants a future that works. Privatization of police and military forces funded by taxpayers and bolstered by laws that many think abrogate the Constitution, have eroded accountability and responsibility while increasing suppression and harm to American citizens here and abroad.
One small sampling of how we blind ourselves to truth involves the dangerous and caustic agent- pepper spray. It is advertised as “humane” in the same way that rubber bullets are advocated as “humane.” These are crowd control devices. Compared to National Guardsmen opening up on the kids at Kent State, it may be a more fair comparison, but pepper spray and rubber bullets are part and parcel of the violent and repressive actions that a police state is willing to terrorize peaceful citizens with. And they do cause physical harm and injury. Sometimes it is permanent. The use of these agents against peaceful citizens that are engaged in their constitutional rights is reprehensible and undemocratic. More and more and under the guidance of secret Homland Security initiatives, local police forces are becoming more militarized. This is a deeply disturbing development.
When the UC Davis security forces recently used pepper spray against defenseless students, following weeks of other police forces using the substances on occupy protestors, Fox News aired a snickering yuk yuk story characterizing pepper spray as a harmless “food” substance. By some accounts the report made people think that pepper spray is a nutritional and edible product. It is not. It is designed to stop and disable an adult human.
Rachael Maddow on her MSNBC show came up with a really good analysis of the real impact of commercial pepper spray used by police forces at all levels. She described that the chemical heat that comes from peppers is from a substance called capsasin. She displayed a chart called the Scoville Scale, designed by Wilbur Scoville to compare the powers and strengths of capsasin in various peppers and substances.
Scoville Scale
- A Sweet Bell Pepper 0 Scoville Units (SU)
- Poplano Pepper- 1,000-2,000 SU
- The Hottest Tabasco Sauce 2,500-3,000 SU
- Jalapeño Pepper- 3,500-8,000 SU
- Cayenne Pepper- 30,000-50,000 SU
(put a teaspoon of that in your mouth, or in your hands)
- Habanera Chile- 200,000-350,000 SU
Workers handling this use gloves.
-Bhut Jolokia, or Ghost Pepper, known as the hottest pepper on earth
-1,000,000 SU
- Concentrated Commercial Pepper Spray
-2,000,000 -5,3000,000 SU
- Pure Capsaicin, 15,000,000 SU
Deborah Bloom, author of the book “The Poisoners Handbook” says that commercial pepper spray is off the charts in terms of chemical power. The capsaicin is not only designed to disable a person but when sprayed into eyes causes a caustic reaction including cellular disruption, pain, and immediate shock. Repeated exposure to pepper spray can cause permanent damage to eyes, skin, and the repertory and nervous systems.
Rachael Maddow
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#45410896
Showing posts with label Occupy Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Occupy Language. Show all posts
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Language Counts-Media and the Art of Influence
From January 2012
-by Jay Burney
The art of influence exists everywhere from the front pages and newsy teasers grabbing at us from every niche, to the shadowed recesses of the moments between moments on the video and internets tubes. Influence comes to us in the classroom, the workplace, the local barroom and the convivial kitchen table coffee klatches. We cannot be free of influence.
We experience this influence in all forms of the media. This public marketplace transcends mere advertising, which while on the surface may seem to occupy certain well-defined spaces, it does not.
We are saturated in media and messaging that attempts to inform our every waking and sleeping moment. This highly nuanced agenda setting works.
Fortunately, resistance is not futile. We, each of us, have the ability to think critically. In that fundamental context, language counts. Our critical thinking skills are informed by language. Language inspires learning, thinking, and action. Critical thinking is not a lost art. We can do this. This is fundamentally what humans do.
The Hidden Hands
Frank Luntz is someone that we should all know about. His job is to influence what you think. Luntz is a political pollster cum phraseologist who wrote earlier this year: “Words matter. The most powerful words have helped to launch social movements and cultural revolutions. The most effective words have instigated great change in public policy. The right words at the right time can literally change history.”
Luntz should know. His career as a consultant to Republicans focusing on messaging has been in the forefront of American thinking for over 2 decades. His expertise is in testing words and phrases that help his clients sell idea products and influence public opinion. Lets change that wording. He does not so much “influence” public opinion as he “creates” public opinion. Words count.
Early in Luntz’s career he worked with Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Western New York’s Bill Paxon, Tom Delay, John Boehner, and the conservative Heritage Foundation to help craft the 1994 “Contract With America”. This document, which was often called the “Contract On America” by an outgunned democratic political apparatchik, helped the republicans gain a historic Congressional majority. It catapulted Gingrich to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Now that that Newton is resurgent, Luntz’s work will continues to shape our opinions.
One of the early phrases that Luntz coined was “death tax”. Prior to Luntz’s language engineering it had been called the relatively ambivalent sounding “estate tax”. This allowed the government to collect a fee from property inheritors in order to cover public expenses such as filing and paperwork to insure orderly transitions of property. The wealthy class considered this an unfair burden and launched a campaign to transfer this responsibility to the general public.
The phrase “death tax” evoked a powerful emotional and primordial image that sparked voter resentment.
It worked. According to James L. Martin, chairman of the conservative 60-Plus Association- “Republicans employed the term “death tax” so aggressively that it has entered the popular lexicon”. It changed thinking and the political landscape.
Media makers including reporters and news editors consistently employed the phrase uncritically. This is one of the fundamental successes of Luntz’s social engineering strategies. The designed attitude adjustments created by the language engineering has been used to fortify the somewhat undemocratic “don’t tax the rich” meme that runs deeply through the furrowed channels of contemporary politics.
The anti-tax movement, couched in the vapors of the fragrant greases of accusations that taxing the wealthy is in fact “class warfare” inspired by social justice leaders, is financed by the likes of the fabulously rich Koch Brothers. Their media message money has paid off. Today America remains tightly bound in the gridlock characterized by political blood feuds pitting “no taxes” v. “cut social spending” programs.
Language counts here. Important social programs that uphold quality of life for most Americans have been characterized as “entitlements”. That carefully crafted word has invaded our ability to reason. Now it prejudicially occupies our minds regarding every social program extant, proposed, or considered. It consumes us with the profound implication that people are getting something for nothing. In fact programs such as Social Security and Medicare are programs that have been paid for over a lifetime of investments by the recipients. Most programs that are designed to improve quality of life including education, health care, and a vast variety of employment and social services are bought and paid for by decades of the blood sweat and tears of the taxpayers. Our society has built these important social systems and this sets us apart from many other societies across the globe. This is the kind of American Exceptionalism that counts. These social systems that provide access to quality of life for all people make societies around the world want to be like us and not hate us. This is the shining light that people will come to, to replicate, to make the world a better place for all of humanity. Implying that ANY programs that improve the quality of life for humanity is “getting something for nothing” is a shameless, disingenuous, and unambiguous strike against the 99%. It is a false equivalency that promulgates class warfare. And it works.
The free market fundamentalists use the entitlements platform to argue oxymoronically that while corporations are people, they should not pay taxes like most people. They assert that the wealthy class should not pay taxes because these kinds of expenses prohibit the profits for the 1% and that those profits will trickle down to the 99%. Will Rogers may have created the “trickle down” phrase, but former WNY Congressman Jack Kemp famously used it to great effect. Kemp may have misunderstood Roger’s intent because whenever I hear it, looking up involves getting some of that nasty trickle splashed on my face. I want a better life for my children.
Reformist voices on the other side of the coin represent that everyone including the wealthy, should “pay their fair share”. Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive thinker, advocates for economic policies that that assert that no one in America has become wealthy on their own. No one should be excluded from paying a fair share of taxes. Warren makes the point that the 99% are significant tax-paying investors, fought for and died for our freedoms, and took all the risks to create opportunities for money to grow for the 1%.
She points out that taxpayer investments have allowed massive public spending including the building of infrastructure such as roads, sewers, water access, and the power grid.
What about “corporate entitlements”? TARP, and Wall Street and bank bailouts recently revealed to exceed $8 trillion are astonishing expenditures born on the backs of American taxpayers. What did the 99% get in return? Little access to wealth, no jobs, declining education, declining quality of life, decades of war, global depravation, and environmental destruction embodied in such things as catastrophic climate change.
Speaking of war, public spending for the military is one of the greatest creators of private wealth in the history of the world. This kind of closeted socialism of moving public wealth to the private sector are paid for in blood and taxes by the 99%, and create massive profits for the 1%.
The simple yet powerful reduction of complicated economic political theories to “trickle down” and to the next generation of phrases such “job creators” is incredibly deceptive. Deeper critical analysis almost always leads to the conclusion that tax breaks for the wealthy class do not lead to genuine job creation. Real, “on the ground jobs” that are “trickling down” are leading to a brave new world of lower wages, reduced benefits, less education, and the elimination of the middle class. America is beginning to look like the third world country. At the same time the corporate economy is booming and private wealth is skyrocketing. Shouldn’t the equation creating the third world be the other way around? Shouldn’t a rising tide raise all boats? I guess we all need boats. Not that we are entitled to them, but given our generations of investments, maybe we can find a way to have better access to boats that float.
Next time- A Profile of the Job Creators.
-by Jay Burney
The art of influence exists everywhere from the front pages and newsy teasers grabbing at us from every niche, to the shadowed recesses of the moments between moments on the video and internets tubes. Influence comes to us in the classroom, the workplace, the local barroom and the convivial kitchen table coffee klatches. We cannot be free of influence.
We experience this influence in all forms of the media. This public marketplace transcends mere advertising, which while on the surface may seem to occupy certain well-defined spaces, it does not.
We are saturated in media and messaging that attempts to inform our every waking and sleeping moment. This highly nuanced agenda setting works.
Fortunately, resistance is not futile. We, each of us, have the ability to think critically. In that fundamental context, language counts. Our critical thinking skills are informed by language. Language inspires learning, thinking, and action. Critical thinking is not a lost art. We can do this. This is fundamentally what humans do.
The Hidden Hands
Frank Luntz is someone that we should all know about. His job is to influence what you think. Luntz is a political pollster cum phraseologist who wrote earlier this year: “Words matter. The most powerful words have helped to launch social movements and cultural revolutions. The most effective words have instigated great change in public policy. The right words at the right time can literally change history.”
Luntz should know. His career as a consultant to Republicans focusing on messaging has been in the forefront of American thinking for over 2 decades. His expertise is in testing words and phrases that help his clients sell idea products and influence public opinion. Lets change that wording. He does not so much “influence” public opinion as he “creates” public opinion. Words count.
Early in Luntz’s career he worked with Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Western New York’s Bill Paxon, Tom Delay, John Boehner, and the conservative Heritage Foundation to help craft the 1994 “Contract With America”. This document, which was often called the “Contract On America” by an outgunned democratic political apparatchik, helped the republicans gain a historic Congressional majority. It catapulted Gingrich to the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Now that that Newton is resurgent, Luntz’s work will continues to shape our opinions.
One of the early phrases that Luntz coined was “death tax”. Prior to Luntz’s language engineering it had been called the relatively ambivalent sounding “estate tax”. This allowed the government to collect a fee from property inheritors in order to cover public expenses such as filing and paperwork to insure orderly transitions of property. The wealthy class considered this an unfair burden and launched a campaign to transfer this responsibility to the general public.
The phrase “death tax” evoked a powerful emotional and primordial image that sparked voter resentment.
It worked. According to James L. Martin, chairman of the conservative 60-Plus Association- “Republicans employed the term “death tax” so aggressively that it has entered the popular lexicon”. It changed thinking and the political landscape.
Media makers including reporters and news editors consistently employed the phrase uncritically. This is one of the fundamental successes of Luntz’s social engineering strategies. The designed attitude adjustments created by the language engineering has been used to fortify the somewhat undemocratic “don’t tax the rich” meme that runs deeply through the furrowed channels of contemporary politics.
The anti-tax movement, couched in the vapors of the fragrant greases of accusations that taxing the wealthy is in fact “class warfare” inspired by social justice leaders, is financed by the likes of the fabulously rich Koch Brothers. Their media message money has paid off. Today America remains tightly bound in the gridlock characterized by political blood feuds pitting “no taxes” v. “cut social spending” programs.
Language counts here. Important social programs that uphold quality of life for most Americans have been characterized as “entitlements”. That carefully crafted word has invaded our ability to reason. Now it prejudicially occupies our minds regarding every social program extant, proposed, or considered. It consumes us with the profound implication that people are getting something for nothing. In fact programs such as Social Security and Medicare are programs that have been paid for over a lifetime of investments by the recipients. Most programs that are designed to improve quality of life including education, health care, and a vast variety of employment and social services are bought and paid for by decades of the blood sweat and tears of the taxpayers. Our society has built these important social systems and this sets us apart from many other societies across the globe. This is the kind of American Exceptionalism that counts. These social systems that provide access to quality of life for all people make societies around the world want to be like us and not hate us. This is the shining light that people will come to, to replicate, to make the world a better place for all of humanity. Implying that ANY programs that improve the quality of life for humanity is “getting something for nothing” is a shameless, disingenuous, and unambiguous strike against the 99%. It is a false equivalency that promulgates class warfare. And it works.
The free market fundamentalists use the entitlements platform to argue oxymoronically that while corporations are people, they should not pay taxes like most people. They assert that the wealthy class should not pay taxes because these kinds of expenses prohibit the profits for the 1% and that those profits will trickle down to the 99%. Will Rogers may have created the “trickle down” phrase, but former WNY Congressman Jack Kemp famously used it to great effect. Kemp may have misunderstood Roger’s intent because whenever I hear it, looking up involves getting some of that nasty trickle splashed on my face. I want a better life for my children.
Reformist voices on the other side of the coin represent that everyone including the wealthy, should “pay their fair share”. Elizabeth Warren, a leading progressive thinker, advocates for economic policies that that assert that no one in America has become wealthy on their own. No one should be excluded from paying a fair share of taxes. Warren makes the point that the 99% are significant tax-paying investors, fought for and died for our freedoms, and took all the risks to create opportunities for money to grow for the 1%.
She points out that taxpayer investments have allowed massive public spending including the building of infrastructure such as roads, sewers, water access, and the power grid.
What about “corporate entitlements”? TARP, and Wall Street and bank bailouts recently revealed to exceed $8 trillion are astonishing expenditures born on the backs of American taxpayers. What did the 99% get in return? Little access to wealth, no jobs, declining education, declining quality of life, decades of war, global depravation, and environmental destruction embodied in such things as catastrophic climate change.
Speaking of war, public spending for the military is one of the greatest creators of private wealth in the history of the world. This kind of closeted socialism of moving public wealth to the private sector are paid for in blood and taxes by the 99%, and create massive profits for the 1%.
The simple yet powerful reduction of complicated economic political theories to “trickle down” and to the next generation of phrases such “job creators” is incredibly deceptive. Deeper critical analysis almost always leads to the conclusion that tax breaks for the wealthy class do not lead to genuine job creation. Real, “on the ground jobs” that are “trickling down” are leading to a brave new world of lower wages, reduced benefits, less education, and the elimination of the middle class. America is beginning to look like the third world country. At the same time the corporate economy is booming and private wealth is skyrocketing. Shouldn’t the equation creating the third world be the other way around? Shouldn’t a rising tide raise all boats? I guess we all need boats. Not that we are entitled to them, but given our generations of investments, maybe we can find a way to have better access to boats that float.
Next time- A Profile of the Job Creators.
Occupy Language
From December 2011
By Jay Burney
It often seems that humanity is dissolving into a boiling melting pot of greed, hatred, and violence. War has existed unceasingly for decades and generations and has effected every living thing on the planet. War is unsustainable form a social and environmental point of view, and yet it seems to be one of the prime strategies of economic development strategies.
War Profiteering
There is a rigorously defended definition of this term that demands that a war profiteer is any individual or organization including a personcorporation that “improperly” benefits by selling weapons, services or other goods to parties at war.” That begs the question, “what is improper”? Legally that has been defined in a variety of ways. However, in these days of escalating privatization, increasingly virulent mushroom clouds of secrecy, and the rise of declining accountability we are going to go out on a limb here and call it what it is. Is there ever a justification to profit from war making? I say no. If there is profit, it is inappropriate and damned the lawyers, it is profiteering. Let the pejorative fall where it may. I will boldly stake out the position that profits gained from war are unethical. Language counts.
Private profiteering from war is a long established wealth creator. In fact, it is probably the prime wealth creator in the history of the planet. The Rothschild’s, the Fords, the Bush’s are just a few of the family’s whose names and wealth runs through the successful continuation and prosecution of war.
It must not come as news to you that war has economic benefits for certain portions of the private sector. Conservative estimates of the cost of the Iraq war, which began a decade ago, are 3 trillion American taxpayer dollars. Others have estimated that the cost of that war will exceed $6 trillion. A trillion is a lot. One trillion is a thousand billion, or a million million.
Some of our best-known corporations were built on the backs of war profiteering. These include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Gruman, General Dynamics, General Electric, CCAI, Triton, Bechtel, Aegis, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and an open ended no bid contract awarded to Dick Cheney’s Halliburton.
During the past two decades, the growth of private contracting has increased at the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security.
American World War II General George C. Marshall was famously quoted as saying “A democracy cannot fight a Seven Year War.” Has democracy changed?
Since World War II most of the Fortune 500 have engaged in defense contracts or have otherwise benefited from taxpayer funded Defense appropriations. President Eisenhower in his farewell Presidential speech warned us against the growth of the “Military Industrial” establishment. For the first time in our history he said, “we have now created a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions”, and “its influence is felt in every city, every State House, and in every office of the Federal Government”.
To borrow a phrase, some we know, some we do not know, and some we know we don’t know.
Oddly enough the United States does not even have a functioning system to track war costs and expenditures. The GAO, Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, Pentagon Inspector General, and others, have complained loudly that the US lacks even a basic method to account for where the m I am shocked, just shocked.
Some, including the increasingly important and relevant Occupy movements think that much of this social disintegration benefits the 1% at the top of the economic food chain, while discarding the remaining 99%. It is really hard to ignore that argument. The occupy movements around the world, which include among other things the wiki leaks movements, expose on an almost hourly basis the hidden power and manipulation of the plutarchs that sit increasingly less comfortable in that 1%. What are plutarch’s you might be asking. Interesting question.
Plutocracy comes from a greek word: Greek ploutokratia, from ploutos and it means wealth. It implies a ruling class of wealth. A Plutocracy is a government run by the wealthy class.
Another word that we hear a lot more of lately is “Oligarch”. Again a word of Greek Origins. It is a form of power structure in which the power rests with the elite class distinguished by a ruling class of royalty, wealth, family, commercial and or military strength.
Let us then come to know that when we hear the term economic growth it is often thrown together with sustainable development.
This latter term is an oxymoron. Especially as it is coupled with a political economic system that is so fundamentally distorted by wealth gained by war profits. You may think that any growth is better than no growth but lets see how you feel when that war machine sets you and your family in its sites. Because, given the ethics of war and the ethics of profit, it surely will be finding you. Language counts. And so does our ability to think through a seemingly impossible situation. Do it while you still have time.
By Jay Burney
It often seems that humanity is dissolving into a boiling melting pot of greed, hatred, and violence. War has existed unceasingly for decades and generations and has effected every living thing on the planet. War is unsustainable form a social and environmental point of view, and yet it seems to be one of the prime strategies of economic development strategies.
War Profiteering
There is a rigorously defended definition of this term that demands that a war profiteer is any individual or organization including a personcorporation that “improperly” benefits by selling weapons, services or other goods to parties at war.” That begs the question, “what is improper”? Legally that has been defined in a variety of ways. However, in these days of escalating privatization, increasingly virulent mushroom clouds of secrecy, and the rise of declining accountability we are going to go out on a limb here and call it what it is. Is there ever a justification to profit from war making? I say no. If there is profit, it is inappropriate and damned the lawyers, it is profiteering. Let the pejorative fall where it may. I will boldly stake out the position that profits gained from war are unethical. Language counts.
Private profiteering from war is a long established wealth creator. In fact, it is probably the prime wealth creator in the history of the planet. The Rothschild’s, the Fords, the Bush’s are just a few of the family’s whose names and wealth runs through the successful continuation and prosecution of war.
It must not come as news to you that war has economic benefits for certain portions of the private sector. Conservative estimates of the cost of the Iraq war, which began a decade ago, are 3 trillion American taxpayer dollars. Others have estimated that the cost of that war will exceed $6 trillion. A trillion is a lot. One trillion is a thousand billion, or a million million.
Some of our best-known corporations were built on the backs of war profiteering. These include Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Gruman, General Dynamics, General Electric, CCAI, Triton, Bechtel, Aegis, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and an open ended no bid contract awarded to Dick Cheney’s Halliburton.
During the past two decades, the growth of private contracting has increased at the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security.
American World War II General George C. Marshall was famously quoted as saying “A democracy cannot fight a Seven Year War.” Has democracy changed?
Since World War II most of the Fortune 500 have engaged in defense contracts or have otherwise benefited from taxpayer funded Defense appropriations. President Eisenhower in his farewell Presidential speech warned us against the growth of the “Military Industrial” establishment. For the first time in our history he said, “we have now created a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions”, and “its influence is felt in every city, every State House, and in every office of the Federal Government”.
To borrow a phrase, some we know, some we do not know, and some we know we don’t know.
Oddly enough the United States does not even have a functioning system to track war costs and expenditures. The GAO, Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, Pentagon Inspector General, and others, have complained loudly that the US lacks even a basic method to account for where the m I am shocked, just shocked.
Some, including the increasingly important and relevant Occupy movements think that much of this social disintegration benefits the 1% at the top of the economic food chain, while discarding the remaining 99%. It is really hard to ignore that argument. The occupy movements around the world, which include among other things the wiki leaks movements, expose on an almost hourly basis the hidden power and manipulation of the plutarchs that sit increasingly less comfortable in that 1%. What are plutarch’s you might be asking. Interesting question.
Plutocracy comes from a greek word: Greek ploutokratia, from ploutos and it means wealth. It implies a ruling class of wealth. A Plutocracy is a government run by the wealthy class.
Another word that we hear a lot more of lately is “Oligarch”. Again a word of Greek Origins. It is a form of power structure in which the power rests with the elite class distinguished by a ruling class of royalty, wealth, family, commercial and or military strength.
Let us then come to know that when we hear the term economic growth it is often thrown together with sustainable development.
This latter term is an oxymoron. Especially as it is coupled with a political economic system that is so fundamentally distorted by wealth gained by war profits. You may think that any growth is better than no growth but lets see how you feel when that war machine sets you and your family in its sites. Because, given the ethics of war and the ethics of profit, it surely will be finding you. Language counts. And so does our ability to think through a seemingly impossible situation. Do it while you still have time.
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