What about This????

[Peter Graham]

Chinook - if you'd ever met a member of the British aristocracy, you'd realise very quickly that most of them are unable even to stop their houses from falling down, let alone mount an effective bid to control the entire world.

The problem with any conspiracy theory is that they take enormous liberties with evidence and base entire cases on supposition, hypothesis and self serving evidence. Much like the average tome on King Arthur or crystal healing. In this particular case, the theory has come about 100 years too late to be even remotely convincing.

The problem with the theory is that Britain is no longer a true world power. We'd like to be, but we aren't. Not really. We are slowly but inexorably sliding down the league table of Top Nations. We dismantled our empire in a broadly benign way and once we've put the metaphorical cat out, we'll probably shut the lights off and have an early night, grumbling all the while about how things didn't used to be like this.

We're broke. The aristocracy is largely broke too. The two World Wars saw to that.

Our Army and Navy are too small to engage in world conquest. France is comparable in population terms and Germany is biggger. Look what happened to them when they had a pop at Russia. China would be worse.

The rantings of one colonial mentalist 100 years ago are not characteristic of how Britain now sees her role in the world.

Regards,

Peter

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by Chinook

Regardless, these statesmen and nobles haven't got a sliver of concern about what happens to the majority of the world's population as long as they sit in their ivory towers and have all the wealth and all the power. My point is, the world we live in is ruled by violence - not democracy.

I have some sympathy with this view, Chinook. I'm always amazed at the number of military bases operated by the U.S. on foreign soil, this is not a pop at the U.S., but in 2004 there were 860.

PS - please, please don't bother with David Icke - unless you want a good laugh that is.

[skeptical]

I have read some log book entries from British senior servants early in the 1900's. They are certainly arrogant bastards. They firmly believed that Anglo-Saxons were the master race, and that the British were superior to any other groups.

However, that is a long way from having plans to conquer the world. Britain has been at war with Spain, France, Holland, Prussia etc many times before then, and knew damn well that they were struggling to defeat one nation, much less take over the world. Indeed, to defeat Napoleon required a very large number of soldiers from allied nations to help.

Actually, if you look at history, and historical writings, you will find that the citizens of any nation that happens to be dominant at the time tend to show arrogant attitudes.

[Chinook]

Alright. Bloody well right. If the aristocrats aren't amassing wealth from the desecration of entire regions of third world population, overworking them and their children, overtaxing every utility including water itself, then who is? The evidence is out in the open, but it seems that the perpetrators slip into obscurity anytime the press show up and start asking questions. When you've been thrashed into living conditions that would decimate most "bums" in technocratic societies, it get's pretty hard to fight back. I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories, but I crave the truth.* I suspect corporate powers are the true culprits. If these oppressed masses had half a chance in Hades of learning how to read and write, if they had enough days in a row allowed to consume more than 1000 calories or so, perhaps they would find the strength and wits to organize some rebellion, grow their own food, maybe even set up a rudimentary government. Nah, let the dark ages go on right here among us, as long as we don't actually see it taking place.

* According to UNICEF, 24,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”Source

[skeptical]

Chinook

Even that statment of 24,000 children dying each day in poverty is a major underestimate of the harm to innocent impoverished people. I think you will find most people on this forum will agree that it is a disgrace and we should be trying to reduce the harm.

In that vein, what in practical terms, do you think we of the wealthy west should be doing about it?

[The Judge]

Chinook, if you crave the truth, do some proper research -- not on conspiracy theory websites -- and stop making wild generalisations. The conditions of people living in sub-Saharan Africa are different from, and arise from different causes from, those in Central and South America. Drug lords in Colombia are not corporate powers, but they terrorise and murder and oppress -- and incidentally bring terror, murder and oppression to citizens in the US, so just who is exploiting whom there? Muslim warlords in Sudan are not corporate powers -- nor are they puppets in the pay of multinational organisations hired by aristocrats in any country. In Zimbabwe, Mugabe inherited a thriving economy in which many black workers were oppressed but which fed itself and exported food to its neighbours; with the help of his cronies he has produced a basket-case country which can't feed its own people, where murder is routine and where many, many black workers are faced with the choice of starving or illegally entering South Africa to look for any kind of work. It is not the West which has brought this about, nor corporate powers.

Yes, there is exploitation. Yes, multi-nationals do their share of it. However, corporate bodies in the West have shareholders and consumers and they don't like negative publicity which affects their profits. Allegations of sweat-shop workers being exploited in Asia cause palpitations in UK boardrooms nowadays. They might not be doing as much as they can to stop it, but then nor are the Governments concerned.

I suggest you pick one country in which you are interested and investigate matters in depth. Look at all the socio-economic reasons for poverty, and don't begin and end at the idea of colonial domination.

[Teresa Edgerton]

It's true. Anywhere you go there is going to be some home-grown oppression and exploitation -- either acting with or independent of any outside oppressors.

[The Judge]

By chance, I've today read a review of a couple of books which have a slight bearing on this topic, and which might be of interest to people:

War Games by Linda Polman, Viking -- a polemic against aid organisations which do more harm than good in some places

The Plundered Planet by Paul Collier, Allen Lane -- which advocates a move from aid to economy building in third world countries

The review is by Aminatta Forna, the former journalist turned author, in The Sunday Telegraph. I've looked for it on-line to link to it, but it isn't there. It's possible it might appear later in the week. I found other reviews for the books, though -- in the case of Collier's, both for and against his arguments.

[Ursa major]

By the way, I recall reading about the opposing theories of the Heartland and the Rimland some decades ago: these are not Internet fantasies in origin but (probably very simplistic) sets of ideas from way back.

There are all sorts of theoretic views on world conquest, generated by everyone from loons to serious thinkers about geopolitics.

(I recall, as an example of similar thinking, some or other geostrategist explaining that once a side had conquered half the world, continued success would reduce the length of its from line. There were even diagrams. That front lines are rarely straight or even one single entity, and that the world is equally easily traversed (because of mountains, oceans, deserts, etc.) seemed to have passed the author by. By comparison (and probably only by this comparison), the Heartland and Rimland theories look soundly based.

[j. d. worthington]

As others have pointed out, the causes for such things are complex and multifaceted, and the solutions are certainly no less so. I recall an interview back in the 1980s with an engineer who was born in India and went to the U.S. universities (where he got his degree) in order to get the best education to help the people of his region in combatting some of the problems he saw there: poverty, frequent droughts and consequent famine, etc. His idea was to help them not by financial aid (save at the beginning), but by teaching them the tools to help themselves solve such problems. He undertook projects to help them learn better ways of irrigation and crop-farming, healthier structure for hygiene and disposal of wastewater, various other tools to aid in their growth into the technologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The result? It worked for a while, but a lot of it met with resistance because it wasn't the traditional way of doing things; some of the people even felt some of what he brought back went against their own religious feelings (in some way which, frankly, I could never quite clearly understand), etc., etc., etc. So a few things were incorporated; most were not.

My point? While I would love to see such things eradicated, their roots go much, much further back than British (or European) colonialism; most likely to the very beginnings of culture and civilization. And both those who oppress and those who are oppressed often play their own parts in keeping aspects of that sort of thing going. Change is frightening to people, even when that change is immensely for the better; we can see this in the resistance to many of the ideas of good science education here in the West, because what science has to show conflicts with traditional belief structures and the feelings of security those structures give to their adherents.

That being the case, I continue to maintain that the best solution to such problems is education -- for all concerned. Help people to understand the interrelationships from an early age; to understand cause and effect, action and consequence, and how things ripple out and effect so many beyond what they may be aware of; how humane solutions to problems are much more likely to provide long-term benefits and improve their standards of living, wherever on the spectrum they fall.

You will always have inequalities in society; despite the lovely poetry of the Declaration of Independence, the fact is that not all are created equal, nor is it ever likely to be possible for this to be the case; but the harshest inequalities can at least be lessened by educating people how best to help themselves and others to improve their lot... and this stretches a looong way beyond simply educating them about such improvements as listed above. It includes better science education, education on a good practical basis for ethics, education on political and social issues (so that they can make wiser decisions when it comes to elections) and the necessity to inform themselves on the ramifications of such issues; and so many, many more areas of life.

It isn't as easy or glamorous or, perhaps, emotionally satisfying as blaming any one group or another, and it's going to be one hell of a long, hard slog; but if we want to actually solve the problems, then we'd damn well better face the fact that the longer, harder road is the only one that's likely to actually get permanent results. As long as we continue to look for scapegoats and "band-aid" solutions, all we do is tinker with the incidentals of the situation; we don't do a bloody thing to change the whole.

[Chinook]

I got your attention, and although I was criticized for the method, I got a discussion going that may or may not lead to people doing something.

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

That being the case, I continue to maintain that the best solution to such problems is education -- for all concerned. Help people to understand the interrelationships from an early age; to understand cause and effect, action and consequence, and how things ripple out and effect so many beyond what they may be aware of; how humane solutions to problems are much more likely to provide long-term benefits and improve their standards of living, wherever on the spectrum they fall.

Have you heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs? (Maslow)

The only way people can be educated is to have their basic needs met first. That includes food, water, shelter, and security.

Water problems affect half of humanity:

• Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.

Poverty Facts and Stats — Global Issues

Also:
Number of children in the world:
2.2 billion
Number in poverty:
1 billion (every second child)

Here's some more statistics to annoy you:

"Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen." Source

"In 2005, the poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all the consumption:" Source

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Chinook

Here's some more statistics to annoy you

I don't see where such statistics would "annoy" me (I won't speak for others, but I have my doubts there, too). We were talking about solutions to the problem, no? In order to actually solve the problem, you are going to need to concentrate on such educational requirements. Otherwise, no matter how much you pour into making certain people are fed, clothed, and housed, these problems will continue unabated in actuality, however much they may be eased apparently. This is what I was referring to when I used the term "band-aid" solutions above.

Certainly, people need the basic requirements met before education can be of much effect. But without that education, nothing changes. The basic underlying problems remain unaltered, and the same pattern repeats again and again. Only when people are educated to a level where they can make informed choices is there a genuine chance of changing their circumstances in any permanent or meaningful way. Once this is done, they have a much higher possibility of taking control of their own lives instead of being at the whims of either natural disasters or other people -- either their own governments or outside forces... because with proper education and critical thinking installed, they are much better able to plan ahead and actually make changes: to their environment, to their lifestyle, to their government, their culture, the level of education of their children (and thus their possibilities to take even further steps toward improvement), and so on.

It is, of course, much more satisfying emotionally to be able to take some immediate positive action, such as sending money or supplies to the needy; but without taking that further step to ensure they can make changes themselves, it is nothing more than abetting the cycle. One gives, one feels good about oneself, and then one goes on with one's life, while the people receiving the help find themselves once more faced with the same situation just a little bit down the road.

As for the rest of the stats you post... there really isn't anything new or startling there; I'd say it's pretty common knowledge among those who are at all informed about such things. Again, though, this speaks to whether we choose to make the fundamental difference required to actually change the situation, or continue to use the same "solutions" which we have applied ad infinitum before... and which, however they may alter things temporarily, really don't do a damned thing beyond that.

It may seem strange to tie this in with sff, but it really isn't, as science fiction in particular, and fantasy not infrequently are ways of examining such issues in a context where one can look at such problems and proposed solutions and speculate where those solutions themselves might lead. Moorcock addresses this in his introduction to The Eternal Champion, which he says

is in one sense the shout of a young man who fins the world a more complicated place than he imagined and feels, therefore, betrayed.

I think we are all prone to look for "solutions" which, in the end, are simplistic and do not take into account the enormous complexities of such problems -- especially problems of this sort, which have existed (in one form or another) as long as human beings have been on this planet; and which, in fact, likely have their origins in instincts and behaviors which predate humanity itself.

If we are ever to find a solution to such things, even a moderately workable one, we must begin to be cognizant of these aspects and add them into the equation; for simplistic solutions, however satisfying they may be in the short run, in the end do little save create problems of their own.

[Chinook]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

If we are ever to find a solution to such things, even a moderately workable one, we must begin to be cognizant of these aspects and add them into the equation; for simplistic solutions, however satisfying they may be in the short run, in the end do little save create problems of their own.

Thank You J.D. - You have certainly laid out the immensity of the problem, or should I say the the way to a long lasting solution. Yes, I agree that "band aid" solutions will not suffice. It's why I don't normally give much money (or credence) to charities, since I immediately realize that (at least) half of what I give will go to administrative costs, and now I'm paying partly for the salaries of the charity workers. What I would like to get my hands on is the specific names and locations of those corporations, their CEO's and CFO's names, that are involved in these huge crimes to expose them to the world for what they are, and hope that I could: 1) do this anonymously so that I could live to see the results, and 2) get the information to any organization that could do something about it.

So, I will do some research and let you guys know what I find.

[Interference]

Hey, leave David Icke alone - he got the dimension wrong, but the lizards are essentially accurate. They look a lot like Peter Stringfellow, incidentally, though curiously Peter Stringfellow isn't one of them. Go figure.

Now, as to British colonisation plans, well of course that's the plan with their evil fish and chips chains springing up all over the world and the British Theme Pubs and the dastardly English language everywhere you turn, why it only makes sense. The troops will feel right at home. Besides, the "make them speak the language before we invade" ploy is a very practical first step, and proves they've learned lessons from the past.

[nixie]

Before our plans for world domination comes to fruition, we really need to decide on a leader