Showing posts with label colonization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colonization. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

The Corporate Colonization of Our Democracy

Monday, March 7, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by Christopher Hall
The United States of America has gotten so large, certain regions or even states, are taking on the same kind of burdens that third world colonized people have elsewhere. Americans are being colonized by a corporate-government complex right here in our own backyard.

In parts of Asia, Central and South America, and in the whole of Africa, colonization has long since created the "slave-in-place" model that worked only when the indigenous people behaved. This required a puppet ruler be put into place by the US and European countries, who have been colonizing in these continents for centuries. When it has worked for the empire countries, they have gotten along with their selected ruling elite who governed on behalf of the foreign corporations, and not at all on behalf of their citizens who suffered impoverished lives, extracting their own natural resources to hand over to the empire.

When it has not worked, is when the people resisted the colonization efforts, and we all know India as one example. Recently, with new technology, people have been getting upset about their living conditions in colonized (or even so-called post-colonized) regions, where they all get the tweets about how great life in the first world is, but suffer horrible poverty and joblessness at home in the third world.

Americans already know how good life is supposed to be in the first world, with "You can have it your way," and other $1.99 faux American Dream statements, but what's happening today is that corporations are controlling American government just like the colonizers did around the globe, and as a result, over the last several decades, life has gotten harder and worse for Americans: actually, they really aren't having it their way.

The very same colonialism we have conducted overseas has now come home to roost here in America, and that was a deep irony just waiting to happen. This comes directly from a situation where private sector corporations are funding certain US candidates to get elected, then paying countless lobbyists to influence them all day long once in office, so the laws of the cities, counties, states and federal government favor the corporations. This means people in America are getting burdened just like people in the third world, where the government does not work for them, but rather, works for the power base, the big corporate money interests: favoring the financial sector, outsourcing manufacturing jobs, increasing productivity making the worker work harder, and so on, to maximize profit.

There is always some collusion going on between the upper end of the corporate sector and their elected, lobbied politicians to control the worker on the left and the consumer on the right -- one and the same person, world-wide. Indeed, the corporations view the people as their workers and consumers -- exactly like a flock to feed and fleece, and the US Government is seen facilitating this under direct corporate supervision, functioning like an HR department with laws in place of policies.

Clearly, the corporations prefer their consumers who pay them, over their workers, who cost them money. Indeed, for many Americans, it is this problematic duality that corporations exploit, and the people get very upset sometimes, here and around the world.

In Wisconsin, the governor is clearly in the court of the corporate ruling elite, and we all knew that, long before the prank call. He has a whole state to rule over like a puppet corporate dictator. If more corporate elite ruling politicians are elected by discontented but highly mistaken people on the right, there will just be greater discontentment for all people as puppet dictators are elected in lavishly, corporate funded political campaigns.

Government staff employees paid $60k--$120k aren't necessarily more out to get you than private sector power brokers who make millions and billions. But the elected politicians are different: they are embraced by the corporations during the candidate-funding-election process, and never let go of once they win and get into office. They often are already on the inside long before they run for office.

Have you noticed that people vote, they don't lobby, and that corporations lobby, they don't vote? Corporations lobby 24/7/365, and have the money and connections to do so, while the rest of us 308 million Americans are pretty much ignored by the corporate sponsored politicians who haven't the time to listen to the small people, since they are so busy listening to the big people.

Across the country, Americans should all join in Denial Of Service (DOS) attacks directed at our politicians and demand all of their time until we feel like we have gotten back our government of, by and for the people. Until then, America will continue to be colonized, where the ruling class will exploit Americans for their labor-consumer function: they will pay less for labor, extract the most from the consumer, all without killing them both, and pocket the balance for profit.

It used to be that all of your labor and consumption was kept on the family farm and not laundered through the corporations. The time has come to find a contemporary way of having a greater say over our persons who labor and consume so we pocket the difference.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars

By The Associated Press
Monday, November 15th, 2010 -- 10:18 am

Scientists propose one-way trips to Mars to jump-start new era of humans in space

Invoking the spirit of "Star Trek" in a scholarly article entitled "To Boldly Go," two scientists contend human travel to Mars could happen much more quickly and cheaply if the missions are made one-way. They argue that it would be little different from early settlers to North America, who left Europe with little expectation of return.

"The main point is to get Mars exploration moving," said Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University, who wrote the article in the latest "Journal of Cosmology" with Paul Davies of Arizona State University. The colleagues state — in one of 55 articles in the issue devoted to exploring Mars — that humans must begin colonizing another planet as a hedge against a catastrophe on Earth.

Mars is a six-month flight away, possesses surface gravity, an atmosphere, abundant water, carbon dioxide and essential minerals. They propose the missions start by sending two two-person teams, in separate ships, to Mars. More colonists and regular supply ships would follow.

The technology already exists, or is within easy reach, they wrote.

An official for NASA said the space agency envisions manned missions to Mars in the next few decades, but that the planning decidedly involves round trips.

President Obama informed NASA last April that he "`believed by the mid-2030s that we could send humans to orbit Mars and safely return them to Earth. And that a landing would soon follow,'" said agency spokesman Michael Braukus.

No where did Obama suggest the astronauts be left behind.

"We want our people back," Braukus said.

Retired Apollo 14 astronaut Ed Mitchell, who walked on the Moon, was also critical of the one-way idea.

"This is premature," Mitchell wrote in an e-mail. "We aren't ready for this yet."

Davies and Schulze-Makuch say it's important to realize they're not proposing a "suicide mission."

"The astronauts would go to Mars with the intention of staying for the rest of their lives, as trailblazers of a permanent human Mars colony," they wrote, while acknowledging the proposal is a tough sell for NASA, with its intense focus on safety.

They think the private sector might be a better place to try their plan.

"What we would need is an eccentric billionaire," Schulze-Makuch said. "There are people who have the money to put this into reality."

Indeed, British tycoon Richard Branson, PayPal founder Elon Musk and Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos are among the rich who are involved in private space ventures.

Isolated humans in space have long been a staple of science fiction movies, from "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" to "2001: A Space Odyssey" to a flurry of recent movies such as "Solaris" and "Moon." In many of the plots, the lonely astronauts fall victim to computers, madness or aliens.

Psychological profiling and training of the astronauts, plus constant communication with Earth, will reduce debilitating mental strains, the two scientists said.

"They would in fact feel more connected to home than the early Antarctic explorers," according to the article.

But the mental health of humans who spent time in space has been extensively studied. Depression can set in, people become irritated with each other, and sleep can be disrupted, the studies have found. The knowledge that there is no quick return to Earth would likely make that worse.

Davies is a physicist whose research focuses on cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He was an early proponent of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts.

Schulze-Makuch works in the Earth Sciences department at WSU and is the author of two books about life on other planets. His focus is eco-hydrogeology, which includes the study of water on planets and moons of our solar system and how those could serve as a potential habitat for microbial life.

The peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology covers astronomy, astrobiology, Earth sciences and life.

Schulze-Makuch and Davies contend that Mars has abundant resources to help the colonists become self-sufficient over time. The colony should be next to a large ice cave, to provide shelter from radiation, plus water and oxygen, they wrote.

They believe the one-way trips could start in two decades.

"You would send a little bit older folks, around 60 or something like that," Schulze-Makuch said, bringing to mind the aging heroes who save the day in "Space Cowboys."

That's because the mission would undoubtedly reduce a person's lifespan, from a lack of medical care and exposure to radiation. That radiation would also damage human reproductive organs, so sending people of childbearing age is not a good idea, he said.

There have been seniors in space, including John Glenn, who was 77 when he flew on the space shuttle in 1998.

Still, Schulze-Makuch believes many people would be willing to make the sacrifice.

The Mars base would offer humanity a "lifeboat" in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable, they said.

"We are on a vulnerable planet," Schulze-Makuch said. "Asteroid impact can threaten us, or a supernova explosion. If we want to survive as a species, we have to expand into the solar system and likely beyond."