My preliminary final conclusion on Trump! He wanted to do some interesting things like take on China and bring production back to the U.S. and improve relations with North Korea and Russia.But he is seriously out of his depth! He doesn’t understand either the limitations of power,nor the need for strategy nor the need to be a team-player! For example ,on the China issue,it would have been far more effective if he could have got his European allies on board with his plan.But because of his individualism and hubris and lack of strategic planning ,it looks more likely that he will fail than succeed.Too bad,really.He does have the capacity to see what is wrong in certain situations which most of the other democratic politicians are either blind to or don’t have the courage to take on..He is just not skillful enough to bring his plans to fruition.P.S. That is probably also why he failed so often in business!
Category Archives: Politics
The State of Science
(Los Angeles Times)”Flames are spreading across the Amazon rainforest this summer, spewing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day. But scientists say that’s not their biggest concern.” Really!? That’s not their biggest concern?! Well it should be! For the last twenty years at least all we’ve heard about is the greenhouse effect and carbon imprint on the atmosphere.Here’s a chance to test it out.Is there a correlation between the Amazon fires and the Earth’s temperature in a way that we can see a causal connection.? Can’t find a single study on that issue ! Can you?This is not an isolated event! I often find in the scientific world that the most relevant studies are NOT being done Like on the vaccine question.What is the long-term effects of multiple vaccinations on human health.Can’t find a single study.What was the cancer rate in Cuba when they were forced to go organic for 30 years? Not a single study! We have lost the true scientific attitude and have entered the world of economic manipulation and theology.
Contemporary “Science”
So the Amazon is burning?! Good! A beautiful natural experiment on the carbon imprint theory of global warming! What can send more carbon into the atmosphere than a huge burning forest?!So if the human-caused theory of global warming is correct there should be a direct,measurable correlation between the amount of forest burning and the earth’s temperature.
That is, if we are dealing with testable, disprovable hypotheses -the basis of all real science.Instead we are dealing with theological postulates-untestable convicvtions.So I assume they will not do the studies!
Like I could find no real studies on another natural experiment- what happened in Cuba to cancer rates and autoimmunie diseases when they were forced to go organic because of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Or no studies about the long-term effects of multiple vaccinations because the theological principle is”Vaccines are safe” ! Right?
Or the long-term effects of eating food raised with pesticides(Theological principle”The level of pesticides is below the level of toxicity” Ya right.)
So science has been converted from testing observable hypotheses to massive data gathering,statistical analysis and economic manipulations by wealthy corporations like pharmaceutical companies and chemical producers who fund the “science”.If the scientists find something uncomfortable to these large corporations,they are often gagged or fired as happened clearly in Canada under the Harper administration and happens a lot more than we believe behind closed doors.
Look what has happened recently with glyphosate.Institutional,conservative by nature,judges have found the link between glyphosate and non-Hodgkins Lymphoma credible and have approved very large settlements the last one of $2 biliion dollars.And yet you find a whole-window display of this product at Home Depot! Why? The government has not acted on the evidence.”More research needed?” .No!This is pure economic manipulation..
And Westerners think only Marxist countries perverted the teachings of the Master.Francis Bacon( founder of the principles of modern science) must be turning over in his grave lol And it ain’t funny!
Let me be clear here.I am not a climate-change denier.That is the current term for a heretic! Remember those from the Middle ages?!! Well the concept is back! They just don’t use the term anymore as it sounds too “unscientific”.The Earth is warming! It is an observable fact.
As far as I can make out there are only two possible explanations( of course the Ultimate cause is the Will of God but we will not go there as this is too inflammatory for the fundamentalist secularists lol).So getting back to the intermediary causes ..It is either due to human activity( the consensus position now) or due to the sun’s activity.(C.F. Henrik Svensmark and others.) Personally at this point ,I favour the latter theory.Ever noticed the sun’s effect on your daily temperatures and seasonal temperatures?! In Canada that can be up to 60 degrees Celsius! No one,even the hard-core “scientific”types, doubts that is an effect of the position relative to the sun! So the one or two degrees they are talking about seems like a pittance for the sun.BUT I could be wrong(the scientific position lol).I have looked at some of the evidence( i am supposed to say here that I am not a climatologist.That is the current protocol but people who know me know that I am not a big believer in experts.They get things wrong on a regular basis in my observations .So citing climatologists just doesn’t do it for me)..It seems to me that once you understand the scientific principle that “association does not mean causation” most of the carbon theory falls apart.But I am, in true scientific fashion, still willing to be convinced otherwise.
America,the Beautiful!
Why are people scandalized and outraged by the cruel treatment of immigrants and refugees at the border?! America is already treating it’s own citizens cruelly! It does that when its own poor citizens are refused medical care because they don’t have insurance.Homeless people are already being mistreated just because they are homeless.Prisoners are routinely subject to mistreatment and abuse in the name of security.And what about the homes of people being seized by the bankers and evictions by the landlords etc.,etc.How about the mistreatment of slum-dwellers by the police?So in fact,mistreatment is endemic and normalized in America.The only people who are regularly well-treated and respected are the wealthy,successful ones- no matter how they maneuvred their way to wealth and success-no matter how many people they trampled on on their way to the bank! No wonder Trump is president! And no wonder he hobnobs with Putin and MSB and Kim Jong-un.They are rich and successful,no?!
PS In America,it’s not about compassion.Did you ever hear that word in a Trump speech,lol?! Very rarely heard even amongst Democrat politicians! It’s all about winning and losing! We can hear it over and over again in the Trump talks.Refugees are losers,no?.How do you expect them to be treated?!.
Democratic Candidates Debates
Democratic debates: Like with our process of selection for medical school( selecting out high-performance robots with little creativity and insight) our process of choosing political leaders is seriously flawed.It is selecting out people who can survive high-stress environments(they universally look stressed out-I would like to have heart and EEG monitors on all of them lol) and who can glibly argue about all the trendy political subjects.No original insights ,no creativity,no profundity.I heard nothing about stress at the workplace.All they talk about is the unemployment rate and the GDP.I heard nothing about the causes of Alzheimer’s disease,autism,cancer,autoimmune disease -all of which are now of epidemic proportions.All we heard about is about plans for more allopathic symptomatic medicine.And I certainly heard no talk about the moral degeneration in America.They all take that for granted as normal! So briefly,ALL of the candidates are out of touch with what is really important.How can things possibly go well given that reality?!
Climate Change Theories?!
If Henrik Svensmark, astrophysicist from Denmark ,is correct(and he is the most credible scientist I have heard on this subject) the problem of climate change may be in the midst of self-correcting! That is because the sun’s activity is settling down and the cosmic rays which help produce cloud cover are increasing.So we may well be panicking for nothing as we did about the milennial problem in 2000! At the base of this discussion ,is this anthropocentric hubris that thinks man is at the source of all problems and solutions.There are cosmic forces at play here-way beyond man’s capacity to intervene. This does not mean that we are not in the midst of destroying the planet through our indifference to chemicals and pollutants of all sorts,many of which are carcinogenic!, but that is a matter for another and perhaps ultimately more important discussion
.PS I like individual geniuses like Newton and Einstein and the great Sufis like Jellalluddin Rumi.They remind me of our Prophets like Mohammed and Jesus and Moses who came down, individually, with a deep-seated truth that elevated us all.I despise “group-think” whether it is conservative or so-called progressive.It reminds me of Fascism and nationalist and religious bigiotry.
The American Dream
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The American Dream has become the American nightmare! But,it always was just that-a dream! From the War of Independence through the Civil War which took over 500,000 lives to the war on drugs and violence in the slum-areas of major cities,life in America has always been difficult.And part of the problem is the “Big Lie”. No,not the chronic “small” lying of Trump.The bigger lie -that we hear at all the political conventions in America-that one party or the other is going to solve all your problems and make you happy.That is simply a denial of reality and people who have read my material know that in Arabic the word for lying(kathaba) and the word for denying are the same.The nature of this world is testing and suffering.So beware of anyone promising you “heaven on Earth”. Salaams(and that involves coming to terms with what IS not imagining what isn’t!).
This problem is,in fact,very deep in the American psyche.Remember the Declaration of independence that states that “all people have the inalienable right to’Life,Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness'”.Really?! Let’s take them one by one.1) Life- NO! Our lives are in the hands of our Creator.He can take it at any time!;2) Liberty-Really?! Think of all the constraints on our liberty-beginning with our genetics,our circumstances,our fragile physical and mental natures.Sheikh Nazim used to compare our choice(relative to the concept of liberty) to that of a passenger on a flight to Paris.He can chose to get up from his seat,to go to the washroom,to try to talk to his neighbour.But the flight is going to Paris in any case.Over that ,he has no control.3) Pursuit of Happiness-Really?Many if not most of the conditions required for happiness are out of our control! If we get sick,can we be happy,if we lose a loved one or fail seriously at a major project of ours can we be happy? Not really.And if we pretend to be happy when we are not,is that any better?No it is worse.So a better phrase could be Pursuit of Satisfaction or pursuit of acceptance.In Arabic the word is”rida” and it is a much more realizable goal than happiness.
So,the entire basis of the American Constitution is defective and out of touch with reality.Should we,then, be surprised that things are not going well? Maybe a better slogan than Make America Great would be Make America Real lol.But then we could not add the suffix”again” because,in fact,it has never been Real! It has always been a dream. Salaams,Ibrahim
The Mueller Report-The Obsessive vs. the Psychopath
The Mueller Report is out today..Fascinating politics and gamesmanship! Two major points;1) As I stated in my original article”The Modern Institution as Obsessional Personality”(soon to be published in my new book) the Obsessional Personality(Mueller in this case) systematically gets it wrong! His obsessive preoccupation with details regularly leads him to” mistake the forest for the trees” and miss the big picture.Theory proved once again!
2) Trump owes us another book entitled: “The Psychopath’s Guide to Doing Wrong without Getting Criminally Prosecuted”. I’m sure it will be a big hit in the prisons and simultaneously in the Boardrooms of American Corporations including of course the Banks and Wall Street.Way to go,Donald.You are truly the incarnation of the American dream,for some, and the American nightmare for many others!
The Notre Dame Fire-An Alternative Reaction
After the terrible fire at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris the chorus of voices in reaction came out in unison:”Oh mon Dieu(good start lol) C’est une tragédie.How are we going to rebuild?”and condolences and sympathies were offered from around the world.Politicians and journalists oblige,of course.
Let’s try another approach.What if the French instead said:”This is a sign from our Lord.What have we done wrong?” Maybe this is about our treatment of North Africans in our country.Maybe this is about how we are treating the refugees showing up at our shores from around the world and us not showing them enough compassion.Maybe God is not happy about us abandoning our own religion.Or maybe we should be putting more energy and value into being God-fearing instead of putting so much store in hedonism and pleasure-seeking? Wouldn’t that be amazing?! And isn’t that what we should be doing,not only the French but all of us?!
It is interesting to observe that individuals,often enough but by no means always ,do exactly that! It is called ‘tauba’ in our tradition(turning back to God, repentance).But nations seem to be incapable of such a gesture.Why is that? The individuals in the collective seem to be reinforcing the illusion and supporting the lie instead of the Truth(remember Nazi Germany and the Serbian massacres and the Burmese persecution of the Rohingya just to mention a few relatively recent events) .Collectivities appear to be even more perverse than individuals.So beware of the social influences around you.They are more likely to be corrupting than salutary.
All that being said,my sympathies go out to the French nation.They are so intelligent in their heedlessness lol Salaams,Ibrahim