by Richard Hobday
In the right hands sunlight is a medicine. Throughout history it has been used to prevent and cure a wide range of diseases, and a few doctors still use its therapeutic properties to good effect. However, at the present time it is widely held amongst certain sections of the medical profession and the population at large that the damaging effects of sunlight on the skin far outweigh any benefits. Public health campaigns reinforce this message in an attempt to curb the annual increase in skin cancers. Any illusions about tanned skin being a sign of health or providing more than minimal protection to further exposure to the sun's rays seem to have been dispelled.
Sunlight may cause skin cancer, but there is also evidence that it could prevent a number of very common and often fatal diseases: breast cancer; colon cancer; prostate cancer; ovarian cancer; heart disease; multiple sclerosis; and osteoporosis. When combined, the number of people who die from these conditions is far greater than the number of deaths from skin cancer; which is why the current bias against sunlight needs, in my opinion, to be redressed.
But before going any further, let me explain how I came to write The Healing Sun. Usually books of this kind are written by doctors of medicine, or medical journalists, and not doctors of engineering. However, my background is a little unusual in that for many years, while I was designing or evaluating what could broadly be called solar energy technologies of one form of another -- solar collectors; equipment for use in spacecraft; and energy-efficient buildings -- I was also studying complementary medicine. Working alongside architects on one particular project I became aware of a 'lost' tradition of designing sunlit buildings to prevent disease, rather than to save energy, and I became interested in the healing powers of sunlight.
I began to study the history of sunlight therapy and found that the physicians who practiced this ancient healing art, and the architects and engineers who supported them in their work, used sunlight very differently from the way many of us do today. In comparing this with some of the latest findings from medical research on sunlight and health I have, as you will see, come to some rather controversial conclusions.
The sun transmits energy in the form of electromagnetic waves: radio waves; microwaves; infrared radiation; visible light; ultraviolet radiation; and x-rays. Only a small amount of the sun's energy reaches us, as most of it is filtered out by the earth's atmosphere, so solar radiation at ground level is composed of visible light, and ultraviolet and infrared waves. Until the latter part of the 19th century it was thought that the 'heat' of the sun -- what we now know to be the infrared rays -- caused sunburn. Then scientists discovered that it is the ultraviolet component of sunlight which causes the skin to tan, and they began to use ultraviolet radiation on skin diseases. They then found that they could get better results with sunlight itself.
Sunlight therapy has a habit of being discovered and then falling from favor, and when this happens it disappears almost without trace, sometimes for hundreds of years. It was very popular at the beginning of the 20th century, but has since seen a dramatic reversal in its fortunes with the result that a great deal of knowledge about the healing powers of sunlight has been ignored or forgotten.
Did you know, for example, that sunlight kills bacteria and is quite capable of doing so even when it has passed through window glass? Also, were you aware that sunlit hospital wards have less bacteria in them than dark wards, and that patients recover faster in wards which admit the sun? As infections actually caught in hospital are now the fourth most common cause of death after heart disease, cancer and strokes, it is worth bearing in mind.
The human race evolved under the sun, and the sun's healing powers have been worshipped for thousands of years. In fact, your forebears were probably better informed about the sun's healing properties than you are: people hold very different views on sunbathing depending on when they were alive and where they happen to live. Take, for example, a typical well-educated resident of Essen or any industrial city in Germany in the 1920s. Let us say he had served in the German army during the Great War, was wounded, and returned home having recovered from his injuries. Someone in these circumstances would have held sunlight in much higher regard than many of us do today. He would probably been aware of the scientific discoveries that had been made about light in the years immediately before the war: in 1903 the Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded to the Danish physician, Niels Finsen, in recognition of his success in treating tuberculosis of the skin with ultraviolet radiation.
Then again, during the war, military surgeons may have used sunlight to disinfect and heal his wounds at a sunlight therapy clinic in the Black Forest, or a similar institution in the Swiss Alps. Had he contracted tuberculosis on his return to Germany, sunlight therapy, or heliotherapy as it became known, might have been used to aid his recovery. The physicians who supervised the treatment of his wounds or tuberculosis would have paid very close attention to the way he responded to sunlight and, in particular, how well his skin tanned. In those days, the deeper the tan, the better the cure.
Sunbathing for health in this way required the services of skilled physicians who knew precisely the conditions most favorable for their patients: the best time of day to expose them to the sun; the best time of year; the correct temperature for sunbathing; what foods to give; how much exercise to allow in each case; which type of cloud cover would let enough of the sun's rays through to cause burning and so on. Then, as now, the overriding concern was to prevent burning; but it was the actual process of tanning which dictated the progress of the treatment and whether or not it was successful.
During the 1930s sunbathing was encouraged as a public health measure. Diseases such as tuberculosis and rickets were common in the industrial cities of Europe and North America at this time and it became accepted practice to expose anyone considered susceptible to either of them to sunlight. So the sun was used to prevent disease as well as cure it. Also, architects were introducing sunlight into buildings to prevent the spread of infection because, as we have already seen, it kills bacteria. They designed hospitals and clinics for sunlight therapy and even included special window glass so that patients could tan indoors during bad weather -- ordinary window glass prevents tanning because it acts as a barrier to ultraviolet radiation.
In marked contrast to our German friend of the 1920s, someone living in Britain today would have a very different impression of sunlight and its effects on the human body. The received wisdom is that there is no such thing as a safe or healthy tan, and that a tan is a sign of damaged skin trying to protect itself from further injury. Children and adults are advised to protect themselves from the sun; particularly during periods of sunny weather during the spring and early summer. They are to avoid the sun between the hours of 11 am and 3 pm and protect themselves with T-shirts, hats and sunscreens. As you can see, there has been a complete reversal in thinking on the subject.
Reasons for the current antipathy towards the sun are not hard to find. After the Second World War, improvements in housing and nutrition led to a marked decrease in the incidence of the very diseases which sunlight had been used to treat. When antibacterial drugs such as penicillin and streptomycin became widely available in the 1950s medical practice changed out of all recognition. These new drugs offered the prospect of rapid cures for a wide range of infections, and so the hygienic and medicinal properties of sunlight were no longer considered to be as important as they had been. Sunlight therapy became unfashionable, and was soon relegated to the position of historical curiosity.
More recently there has been a great deal of emphasis on the harmful effects of sunlight. There is now a 'hole' in the ozone layer to worry about, as well as a year-on-year increase in the incidence of skin cancer. Sunlight is undoubtedly a powerful accelerator of skin aging, and can trigger cancer in susceptible individuals but, paradoxically, it is essential to our health. The human body needs sunlight to manufacture vitamin D by synthesizing it in the skin.
The optimal level of vitamin D for health is not known, and so the amount of sunlight exposure needed to perform this vital function is still very much open to question. What this means is that warnings about sunlight being essentially harmful need to be treated with caution. Sunlight may cause skin cancer but, there is evidence that the sunlight could be crucial in preventing a number of diseases that are associated with low levels of vitamin D. Also, relatively little importance has been attached to the influence of nutrition in the genesis of skin cancer. Yet the limited amount of research carried out on the subject shows that what you eat determines how your skin responds to sunlight. The proportion of fat in your diet, together with the vitamin and mineral content of your food, could decide how likely you are to sustain skin damage in the sun.
The medical literature on sunbathing is contradictory: one field of investigation highlights the benefits while another stresses the dangers. One of the more unfortunate developments in modern medicine is a trend towards specialization. In these circumstances it is difficult not to be unduly influenced by the views of experts in one field or another and miss the wider picture. It becomes much more difficult to see the wood for the trees or, rather, the sunlight through the trees.
Indeed, to fully appreciate the beneficial effects of sunlight it is sometimes advantageous to put aside conventional medical thinking altogether and look to other traditions of healing. Sunlight, when used as a medicine, does not lend itself to the western reductionist method of analysis: trying to fathom its therapeutic effects at a molecular level, to the exclusion of all else, may not be the best way to unlock its secrets.
When sunlight has been valued as a medicine, architects have often produced buildings which admitted the sun's rays. But when sunlight is out of favor with doctors, as is the case at present, there is little incentive for architects to make provision for it in their buildings. There has been a tendency for therapeutic properties of sunlight to be held in much higher regard during periods when prevention was considered to be as important as cure. In these circumstances the demarcation between physician and architect was often much less marked than is the case today. In the past, architects were encouraged to have some knowledge of medicine.
During the last thirty years the hygienic and medicinal properties of sunlight have had little influence on the building professions. Where solar architecture has been adopted it has been for the purposes of energy conservation rather than health; even though it has long been recognized that getting sunlight into buildings has a favorable impact on the well-being of occupants.
Sunlight penetration into buildings is now regarded as 'beneficial' or 'desirable' but this aspect of design still receives a relatively low priority. Indeed, the benefits of getting sunlight into buildings, other than psychological, would not be obvious to anyone reading the current literature on building design. As we now spend so much of our time indoors, I believe the advantages of living or working in a sunlit space need to be more widely studied and appreciated than is the case at present.
Sunlight therapy was a medicine of the pre-antibiotic era, when infectious diseases were commonplace and the only defense against them was a strong immune system. Since then, for about fifty years, tuberculosis, pneumonia, septicemia and a host of other potentially fatal illnesses have been kept under control by antibiotics. Unfortunately an increasing number of bacteria are becoming resistant to drugs and there are signs that the development of new antibiotics is falling behind the ability of organisms to adapt and acquire resistance. If matters do not improve, then therapies which increase our natural resistance to disease may receive rather more attention than they have in recent years. The emergence of resistant bacteria may also come to have an influence on building design.
Please note: There are medical conditions which are made worse by exposure to sunlight, and some drugs, such as antihistamines, oral contraceptives, antidiabetic agents, tranquilizers, diuretics and a number of antibiotics, increase sensitivity to the sun. Anyone about to embark on a program of sunbathing should check with their doctor if they are in any doubt about their health or any medicines which they are taking.
Monday, April 28, 2008
What effects can the Environment have on Health?
Introduction.This brief account can address only a small part of a vast and expanding subject. The environment in which we live can be considered as having three fundamental sets of components:
Physical [energy of one form or another]
Chemical [matter i.e. substances whether natural or man-made]
Biological [living things]. Hazards can present themselves to us in various media e.g. air, water. The influence they can exert on our health is very complex and may be modulated by our genetic make up, psychological factors and by our perceptions of the risks that they present. The following deals with general environmental health hazards, and not extremes of climate, occupational hazards, hazards associated with food, most "accidents" or sexually transmitted disease. Health effects from economic and social consequences of environmental change are also not considered here.
Associations between an exposure and an adverse health effect do not, on their own, prove that the former is the cause of the latter. Many other non-causal associations could explain the findings. These concerns explain why the language in this context may well be "hedged" even though you might have formed impressions from other sources that some postulated causal associations had been proven.
Physical Hazards, and their Adverse Health EffectsAlthough you will have heard or read a great deal about the environmental consequences of global warming, man will probably be affected through famine, or war long before the health of the population as a whole is harmed to a serious degree by the temperature change. However increasing extremes of temperature, as a result of climatic change, could result in increased mortality even in temperate climates.
Important issues concerning physical hazards include those relating to health effects of electromagnetic radiation and ionising radiation. If one excludes the occupational environment, then noise and other physical hazards may present a nuisance to many inhabitants, and impair general well being. Environmental noise does not usually contribute to deafness but notable exceptions may include noisy discotheques and "personal stereos".
Electromagnetic radiation ranges from low frequency,relatively low energy, radiation such as radio and microwaves through to infra red, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. These last as well as other forms of radioactivity such as high energy subatomic particles (e.g. electrons - Beta rays) can cause intracellular ionisation and are therefore called ionising radiation. Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation carries a increased risk of skin cancer such as melanoma, and of cataracts which are to an extent exposure related. Some pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used as refrigerants or in aerosol propellants or in the manufacture of certain plastics can damage the "ozone layer" in the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) and thus allow more UV light to reach us, and harm us directly. Ultraviolet light may also cause harm indirectly by contributing to an increase in ozone in the troposphere (the air we breathe) - see below under chemical hazards, or elsewhere in connection with air quality.
Radioactivity is associated with an exposure dependent risk of some cancers notably leukaemia. Contrary to popular belief however, most radiation to which the average person is exposed is natural in origin, and, of the man made sources, medical diagnosis and treatment is on average the largest source to the individual. A very important issue is the extent to which radon gas arising from certain rock types beneath dwellings can contribute to cancer risk. According to some estimates it could result in a few thousand cancer deaths per year in the U.K. (but still probably less than one twentieth of the cancer deaths alone caused by tobacco smoking).
Ionising radiation from the nuclear industry and from fallout from detonations contributes less than 1% of the annual average dose to inhabitants of the U.K. The explanation for leukaemia clusters around nuclear power plants is not yet resolved. Similar clustering can occur in other parts of the country. The effect of viral infections associated with population shifts may be important but requires further study.
Non ionising electrical, magnetic or electromagnetic fields are an increasing focus of attention. The scientific evidence of adverse health effects from general environmental exposure to these fields is "not proven". If there are adverse effects yet to be proven, the risk is probably likely to be very small.
Physical [energy of one form or another]
Chemical [matter i.e. substances whether natural or man-made]
Biological [living things]. Hazards can present themselves to us in various media e.g. air, water. The influence they can exert on our health is very complex and may be modulated by our genetic make up, psychological factors and by our perceptions of the risks that they present. The following deals with general environmental health hazards, and not extremes of climate, occupational hazards, hazards associated with food, most "accidents" or sexually transmitted disease. Health effects from economic and social consequences of environmental change are also not considered here.
Associations between an exposure and an adverse health effect do not, on their own, prove that the former is the cause of the latter. Many other non-causal associations could explain the findings. These concerns explain why the language in this context may well be "hedged" even though you might have formed impressions from other sources that some postulated causal associations had been proven.
Physical Hazards, and their Adverse Health EffectsAlthough you will have heard or read a great deal about the environmental consequences of global warming, man will probably be affected through famine, or war long before the health of the population as a whole is harmed to a serious degree by the temperature change. However increasing extremes of temperature, as a result of climatic change, could result in increased mortality even in temperate climates.
Important issues concerning physical hazards include those relating to health effects of electromagnetic radiation and ionising radiation. If one excludes the occupational environment, then noise and other physical hazards may present a nuisance to many inhabitants, and impair general well being. Environmental noise does not usually contribute to deafness but notable exceptions may include noisy discotheques and "personal stereos".
Electromagnetic radiation ranges from low frequency,relatively low energy, radiation such as radio and microwaves through to infra red, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. These last as well as other forms of radioactivity such as high energy subatomic particles (e.g. electrons - Beta rays) can cause intracellular ionisation and are therefore called ionising radiation. Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation carries a increased risk of skin cancer such as melanoma, and of cataracts which are to an extent exposure related. Some pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used as refrigerants or in aerosol propellants or in the manufacture of certain plastics can damage the "ozone layer" in the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) and thus allow more UV light to reach us, and harm us directly. Ultraviolet light may also cause harm indirectly by contributing to an increase in ozone in the troposphere (the air we breathe) - see below under chemical hazards, or elsewhere in connection with air quality.
Radioactivity is associated with an exposure dependent risk of some cancers notably leukaemia. Contrary to popular belief however, most radiation to which the average person is exposed is natural in origin, and, of the man made sources, medical diagnosis and treatment is on average the largest source to the individual. A very important issue is the extent to which radon gas arising from certain rock types beneath dwellings can contribute to cancer risk. According to some estimates it could result in a few thousand cancer deaths per year in the U.K. (but still probably less than one twentieth of the cancer deaths alone caused by tobacco smoking).
Ionising radiation from the nuclear industry and from fallout from detonations contributes less than 1% of the annual average dose to inhabitants of the U.K. The explanation for leukaemia clusters around nuclear power plants is not yet resolved. Similar clustering can occur in other parts of the country. The effect of viral infections associated with population shifts may be important but requires further study.
Non ionising electrical, magnetic or electromagnetic fields are an increasing focus of attention. The scientific evidence of adverse health effects from general environmental exposure to these fields is "not proven". If there are adverse effects yet to be proven, the risk is probably likely to be very small.
What effects can the Environment have on Health?
Introduction.This brief account can address only a small part of a vast and expanding subject. The environment in which we live can be considered as having three fundamental sets of components:
Physical [energy of one form or another]
Chemical [matter i.e. substances whether natural or man-made]
Biological [living things]. Hazards can present themselves to us in various media e.g. air, water. The influence they can exert on our health is very complex and may be modulated by our genetic make up, psychological factors and by our perceptions of the risks that they present. The following deals with general environmental health hazards, and not extremes of climate, occupational hazards, hazards associated with food, most "accidents" or sexually transmitted disease. Health effects from economic and social consequences of environmental change are also not considered here.
Associations between an exposure and an adverse health effect do not, on their own, prove that the former is the cause of the latter. Many other non-causal associations could explain the findings. These concerns explain why the language in this context may well be "hedged" even though you might have formed impressions from other sources that some postulated causal associations had been proven.
Physical Hazards, and their Adverse Health EffectsAlthough you will have heard or read a great deal about the environmental consequences of global warming, man will probably be affected through famine, or war long before the health of the population as a whole is harmed to a serious degree by the temperature change. However increasing extremes of temperature, as a result of climatic change, could result in increased mortality even in temperate climates.
Important issues concerning physical hazards include those relating to health effects of electromagnetic radiation and ionising radiation. If one excludes the occupational environment, then noise and other physical hazards may present a nuisance to many inhabitants, and impair general well being. Environmental noise does not usually contribute to deafness but notable exceptions may include noisy discotheques and "personal stereos".
Electromagnetic radiation ranges from low frequency,relatively low energy, radiation such as radio and microwaves through to infra red, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. These last as well as other forms of radioactivity such as high energy subatomic particles (e.g. electrons - Beta rays) can cause intracellular ionisation and are therefore called ionising radiation. Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation carries a increased risk of skin cancer such as melanoma, and of cataracts which are to an extent exposure related. Some pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used as refrigerants or in aerosol propellants or in the manufacture of certain plastics can damage the "ozone layer" in the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) and thus allow more UV light to reach us, and harm us directly. Ultraviolet light may also cause harm indirectly by contributing to an increase in ozone in the troposphere (the air we breathe) - see below under chemical hazards, or elsewhere in connection with air quality.
Radioactivity is associated with an exposure dependent risk of some cancers notably leukaemia. Contrary to popular belief however, most radiation to which the average person is exposed is natural in origin, and, of the man made sources, medical diagnosis and treatment is on average the largest source to the individual. A very important issue is the extent to which radon gas arising from certain rock types beneath dwellings can contribute to cancer risk. According to some estimates it could result in a few thousand cancer deaths per year in the U.K. (but still probably less than one twentieth of the cancer deaths alone caused by tobacco smoking).
Ionising radiation from the nuclear industry and from fallout from detonations contributes less than 1% of the annual average dose to inhabitants of the U.K. The explanation for leukaemia clusters around nuclear power plants is not yet resolved. Similar clustering can occur in other parts of the country. The effect of viral infections associated with population shifts may be important but requires further study.
Non ionising electrical, magnetic or electromagnetic fields are an increasing focus of attention. The scientific evidence of adverse health effects from general environmental exposure to these fields is "not proven". If there are adverse effects yet to be proven, the risk is probably likely to be very small.
Physical [energy of one form or another]
Chemical [matter i.e. substances whether natural or man-made]
Biological [living things]. Hazards can present themselves to us in various media e.g. air, water. The influence they can exert on our health is very complex and may be modulated by our genetic make up, psychological factors and by our perceptions of the risks that they present. The following deals with general environmental health hazards, and not extremes of climate, occupational hazards, hazards associated with food, most "accidents" or sexually transmitted disease. Health effects from economic and social consequences of environmental change are also not considered here.
Associations between an exposure and an adverse health effect do not, on their own, prove that the former is the cause of the latter. Many other non-causal associations could explain the findings. These concerns explain why the language in this context may well be "hedged" even though you might have formed impressions from other sources that some postulated causal associations had been proven.
Physical Hazards, and their Adverse Health EffectsAlthough you will have heard or read a great deal about the environmental consequences of global warming, man will probably be affected through famine, or war long before the health of the population as a whole is harmed to a serious degree by the temperature change. However increasing extremes of temperature, as a result of climatic change, could result in increased mortality even in temperate climates.
Important issues concerning physical hazards include those relating to health effects of electromagnetic radiation and ionising radiation. If one excludes the occupational environment, then noise and other physical hazards may present a nuisance to many inhabitants, and impair general well being. Environmental noise does not usually contribute to deafness but notable exceptions may include noisy discotheques and "personal stereos".
Electromagnetic radiation ranges from low frequency,relatively low energy, radiation such as radio and microwaves through to infra red, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. These last as well as other forms of radioactivity such as high energy subatomic particles (e.g. electrons - Beta rays) can cause intracellular ionisation and are therefore called ionising radiation. Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation carries a increased risk of skin cancer such as melanoma, and of cataracts which are to an extent exposure related. Some pollutants such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used as refrigerants or in aerosol propellants or in the manufacture of certain plastics can damage the "ozone layer" in the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) and thus allow more UV light to reach us, and harm us directly. Ultraviolet light may also cause harm indirectly by contributing to an increase in ozone in the troposphere (the air we breathe) - see below under chemical hazards, or elsewhere in connection with air quality.
Radioactivity is associated with an exposure dependent risk of some cancers notably leukaemia. Contrary to popular belief however, most radiation to which the average person is exposed is natural in origin, and, of the man made sources, medical diagnosis and treatment is on average the largest source to the individual. A very important issue is the extent to which radon gas arising from certain rock types beneath dwellings can contribute to cancer risk. According to some estimates it could result in a few thousand cancer deaths per year in the U.K. (but still probably less than one twentieth of the cancer deaths alone caused by tobacco smoking).
Ionising radiation from the nuclear industry and from fallout from detonations contributes less than 1% of the annual average dose to inhabitants of the U.K. The explanation for leukaemia clusters around nuclear power plants is not yet resolved. Similar clustering can occur in other parts of the country. The effect of viral infections associated with population shifts may be important but requires further study.
Non ionising electrical, magnetic or electromagnetic fields are an increasing focus of attention. The scientific evidence of adverse health effects from general environmental exposure to these fields is "not proven". If there are adverse effects yet to be proven, the risk is probably likely to be very small.
Plasma Effect within the solar system
The Solar PlasmaThe space surrounding the Sun, its corona and beyond, is a plasma. Indeed, much of all space is occupied by plasma - mostly in the dark current mode. The planets and their moons each carry an electric charge as they travel through this plasma.The plasma sea in which the solar system floats extends out to what is called the heliopause - where there is probably a double layer that separates our Sun's plasma from the lower voltage plasma that fills our arm of the Milky Way galaxy. In solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME's), charged particles are thrown outward from the Sun. These flows constitute electrical currents. And what form do (Birkeland) currents take in plasmas? - They twist!
Planetary MagnetotailsEach planet has a 'plasma sheath' - a well known electrical phenomenon - the size and shape of which is determined by the difference between the electrical potential (voltage) of the planet and that of the nearby solar plasma. The shape of this plasma sheath is usually a tear-drop or wind-sock shape, the pointed end facing away from the sun. The boundary of this sheath is a double layer that separates the planet's surrounding plasma from the solar plasma.
Interactions of MagnetotailsThe plasma sheath of Venus is extremely long, almost touching the Earth when the two planets are at their closest approach. Jupiter's plasma sheath has the same relationship with Saturn. Recently NASA astronomers have discovered what they call 'stringy things' in the long plasma tail of Venus. Such twisted (stringy) filaments are exactly the paths Birkeland currents take in plasmas. Apparently Venus is discharging an electrical current. The plasma tails of all the planets today are in the dark current mode of operation. But were they always thus? The ancients reported that Venus once was seen to have a firey tail and 'twisted hair'. Could it have been that her plasma tail was then in the normal glow or even the arc mode of operation?
Consider for a moment what the shape of Venus' plasma tail would look like if it were visible. The diameter of the plasma sheath around Venus is, at most, possibly two or three times the planet's diameter - say about 20,000 miles. But the distance from Venus to Earth during their closest approaches is in the order of 26 million miles. So the Venusian tail is approximately a thousand times as long as it is broad at its thickest point. That is a very long, thin, twisting snakelike shape. If, at some time in the past, this plasma tail were in the normal glow mode, it would have been visible from Earth! How would the ancients have described it?
Intersecting Plasma SheathsWhen a planet is surrounded by a double layer sheath, it is protected from direct electrical interaction with any outside body. Two electrically charged planets, each surrounded by such a plasma sheath cannot see each other electrostatically. However, if a body having a different electrical charge, penetrates the double layer, moving into the plasmasphere surrounding a planet, electrical interactions (current discharges) can and will occur. Thus, if any other body such as a large meteor (or asteroid, comet, etc.) should come close enough to Earth to penetrate our plasma sheath, violent electric discharges would occur between the two bodies. It would, of course, be unfortunate to be standing at the point of origin of such a discharge. But the discharge itself might destroy the intruder and thus protect the Earth from an otherwise disastrous collision.
Physicist Wal Thornhill states that Io, the innermost of the four large moons of Jupiter, is presently experiencing electric discharges from Jupiter and is being electrically machined as a result. He points out that Io is a living laboratory of electric plasma discharges sitting right in front of us, if we are only willing to see it for what it is. NASA released the photo of Io shown below. Io is pretty much aglow. Note the heaviest glows on Io are on the sides directly toward and directly away from Jupiter. The famous 'volcanos' on Io cannot be true volcanos because they have moved around a distance of many miles since their discovery. Also the material ejected from the site of these phenomena is not disbursed over a circular area as volcanic ejecta would be. It all lands in a thin ring - just as the output of a plasma gun does. These are clearly electric discharges, not volcanos.
Original Caption Released with Image: This eerie view of Jupiter's moon Io in eclipse (left) was acquired by NASA's Galileo spacecraft while the moon was in Jupiter's shadow. Gases above the satellite's surface produced a ghostly glow that could be seen at visible wavelengths (red, green, and violet). The vivid colors, caused by collisions between Io's atmospheric gases and energetic charged particles trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, had not previously been observed. The green and red emissions are probably produced by mechanisms similar to those in Earth's polar regions that produce the aurora, or northern and southern lights. Bright blue glows mark the sites of dense plumes of volcanic vapor, and may be places where Io is electrically connected to Jupiter. The viewing geometry is shown in the image on the right. North is to the top of the picture, and Jupiter is towards the right. The resolution is 13.5 kilometers (8 miles) per picture element. The images were taken on May 31, 1998 at a range of 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) by Galileo's onboard solid state imaging camera system during the spacecraft's 15th orbit of Jupiter. JPL manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web on the Galileo mission home page at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo. (Underlining added for emphasis.)NASA recently directed the Galileo space probe to pass very close to one of the "volcanos" (electric arc discharges) on Io - with the following result (New Scientist October 30, 1999):
"On October 10 Galileo passed within 611 kilometers of Io, using its solid state imager to reveal features as small as 9 meters across near the volcano Pillan. But radiation took its toll, zapping a critical bit in Galileo's computer memory and blurring many images."
Flying a computer through a high intensity electric field is much more likely to "zap" its electronics than simply passing it no nearer than 380 miles distant from some smoke and molten rock.
Planetary Scars
Thornhill and other like minded investigators also believe that the monstrous scar across the face of Mars(the canyon called Valles Marineris) was produced by electric arc machining. The rocks and rubble that are found strewn everywhere across the landscape of Mars are most probably the detritus from this huge excavation. Just look at the size of that scar! The Grand Canyon of Arizona would be lost in one small section of it.
There are many visible examples of electrical scarring on Mars. Electrical scars have characteristics that enable us to distinguish between them and water erosion and/or impact cratering. Venus also exhibits evidence of having been electrically machined.
Presently a debate is occurring among some geologists as to exactly what process formed the Grand Canyon of Arizona. There is no evidence of where the soil that was removed went! There is no river delta. It has all disappeared. And the Colorado River would have had to flow uphill in order to create the Canyon. Also, no evidence of the "meteor" that formed Arizona's "Meteor Crater" has ever been found. Were both these scars also formed by electric arc machining? It is highly likely. For a detailed description of the problems associated with the accepted explanation of how the Grand Canyon was formed see Wal Thornhill's page.
MarsA full disk image of Mars is on the right. Notice that the southern hemisphere is covered with craters. The northern hemisphere is, for the most part, smooth and has many fewer craters.Below is an image of Martian "Sinuous rilles". They are made up of chains of craterlets. This too is characteristic of electric arc machining (certainly not water flow). Notice the faint horizontal rilles crossing the large one. The horizontal rilles obviously were made later than the large rille. Notice too that the horizontal rille goes up hill and down hill, cutting right across the earlier structure.
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Terraced crater walls and small secondary craters sitting on the edge of larger craters are characteristic of electric arc machining. Also notice the flat floors and almost perfect circularity of the craters. If the twisting arc that creates an electrically formed crater stops on the rim and does not extinguish, it will form a secondary crater. This effect is clearly demonstrated in a laboratory experiment shown on physicist Wal Thornhill's CD "The ElectricUniverse."
VenusOn the right is a closeup of the upper left region of Venus' crater Buck. It is a classic example of when the arc is extinguished before it can make a complete circular rotation. The fact that the sinuous rilles are made up of strings of small craters is obvious in this image. There are two straight rills to the left of the crater (as well as the curving ones leading down into it from the top of the photo). Sinuous rilles are one of the typical characteristics of electric arc machining. The standard mainstream explanation for these horseshoe shaped craters is that one side of the crater wall has collapsed. What do you think?
If all the "impact" craters on Mars, Venus, and our Moon were really formed by impacts, then probability would dictate that most (or at least a significant fraction) of them should be elliptical. Meteors very rarely come straight down. On the other hand, electric fields always impinge on conducting spheres at right angles to their surfaces (i.e., vertically) and that is why all these so-called circular "impact" craters are round. They were not made by impacts. They were caused by electric anode scarring.
Saturn's RingsAn interesting phenomenon (called "mysterious" by those in the mainstream) is the fact that the planet Saturn has radial "spokes" in its ring system. The radial nature of these almost screams ELECTRIC FIELD at us! But one of the official explanations is that "they are thought to be microscopic grains that have become charged and are levitatingaway from the ring plane." Levitating??
And yet another property of Saturn's rings is that some of them are braided! They twist! The following is a quote from Science, Vol. 210, 5 Dec 1980, p. 1108: "There was the F ring, revealed in Voyager's narrow-angle camera to be kinked and triply stranded - and, perhaps, in defiance of all commonsense celestial mechanics, braided." (Emphasis added.)
Are the "braids" in Saturn's F ring due to just the kind of twisting currents that Birkeland observed?
Planetary MagnetotailsEach planet has a 'plasma sheath' - a well known electrical phenomenon - the size and shape of which is determined by the difference between the electrical potential (voltage) of the planet and that of the nearby solar plasma. The shape of this plasma sheath is usually a tear-drop or wind-sock shape, the pointed end facing away from the sun. The boundary of this sheath is a double layer that separates the planet's surrounding plasma from the solar plasma.
Interactions of MagnetotailsThe plasma sheath of Venus is extremely long, almost touching the Earth when the two planets are at their closest approach. Jupiter's plasma sheath has the same relationship with Saturn. Recently NASA astronomers have discovered what they call 'stringy things' in the long plasma tail of Venus. Such twisted (stringy) filaments are exactly the paths Birkeland currents take in plasmas. Apparently Venus is discharging an electrical current. The plasma tails of all the planets today are in the dark current mode of operation. But were they always thus? The ancients reported that Venus once was seen to have a firey tail and 'twisted hair'. Could it have been that her plasma tail was then in the normal glow or even the arc mode of operation?
Consider for a moment what the shape of Venus' plasma tail would look like if it were visible. The diameter of the plasma sheath around Venus is, at most, possibly two or three times the planet's diameter - say about 20,000 miles. But the distance from Venus to Earth during their closest approaches is in the order of 26 million miles. So the Venusian tail is approximately a thousand times as long as it is broad at its thickest point. That is a very long, thin, twisting snakelike shape. If, at some time in the past, this plasma tail were in the normal glow mode, it would have been visible from Earth! How would the ancients have described it?
Intersecting Plasma SheathsWhen a planet is surrounded by a double layer sheath, it is protected from direct electrical interaction with any outside body. Two electrically charged planets, each surrounded by such a plasma sheath cannot see each other electrostatically. However, if a body having a different electrical charge, penetrates the double layer, moving into the plasmasphere surrounding a planet, electrical interactions (current discharges) can and will occur. Thus, if any other body such as a large meteor (or asteroid, comet, etc.) should come close enough to Earth to penetrate our plasma sheath, violent electric discharges would occur between the two bodies. It would, of course, be unfortunate to be standing at the point of origin of such a discharge. But the discharge itself might destroy the intruder and thus protect the Earth from an otherwise disastrous collision.
Physicist Wal Thornhill states that Io, the innermost of the four large moons of Jupiter, is presently experiencing electric discharges from Jupiter and is being electrically machined as a result. He points out that Io is a living laboratory of electric plasma discharges sitting right in front of us, if we are only willing to see it for what it is. NASA released the photo of Io shown below. Io is pretty much aglow. Note the heaviest glows on Io are on the sides directly toward and directly away from Jupiter. The famous 'volcanos' on Io cannot be true volcanos because they have moved around a distance of many miles since their discovery. Also the material ejected from the site of these phenomena is not disbursed over a circular area as volcanic ejecta would be. It all lands in a thin ring - just as the output of a plasma gun does. These are clearly electric discharges, not volcanos.
Original Caption Released with Image: This eerie view of Jupiter's moon Io in eclipse (left) was acquired by NASA's Galileo spacecraft while the moon was in Jupiter's shadow. Gases above the satellite's surface produced a ghostly glow that could be seen at visible wavelengths (red, green, and violet). The vivid colors, caused by collisions between Io's atmospheric gases and energetic charged particles trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, had not previously been observed. The green and red emissions are probably produced by mechanisms similar to those in Earth's polar regions that produce the aurora, or northern and southern lights. Bright blue glows mark the sites of dense plumes of volcanic vapor, and may be places where Io is electrically connected to Jupiter. The viewing geometry is shown in the image on the right. North is to the top of the picture, and Jupiter is towards the right. The resolution is 13.5 kilometers (8 miles) per picture element. The images were taken on May 31, 1998 at a range of 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) by Galileo's onboard solid state imaging camera system during the spacecraft's 15th orbit of Jupiter. JPL manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web on the Galileo mission home page at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo. (Underlining added for emphasis.)NASA recently directed the Galileo space probe to pass very close to one of the "volcanos" (electric arc discharges) on Io - with the following result (New Scientist October 30, 1999):
"On October 10 Galileo passed within 611 kilometers of Io, using its solid state imager to reveal features as small as 9 meters across near the volcano Pillan. But radiation took its toll, zapping a critical bit in Galileo's computer memory and blurring many images."
Flying a computer through a high intensity electric field is much more likely to "zap" its electronics than simply passing it no nearer than 380 miles distant from some smoke and molten rock.
Planetary Scars
Thornhill and other like minded investigators also believe that the monstrous scar across the face of Mars(the canyon called Valles Marineris) was produced by electric arc machining. The rocks and rubble that are found strewn everywhere across the landscape of Mars are most probably the detritus from this huge excavation. Just look at the size of that scar! The Grand Canyon of Arizona would be lost in one small section of it.
There are many visible examples of electrical scarring on Mars. Electrical scars have characteristics that enable us to distinguish between them and water erosion and/or impact cratering. Venus also exhibits evidence of having been electrically machined.
Presently a debate is occurring among some geologists as to exactly what process formed the Grand Canyon of Arizona. There is no evidence of where the soil that was removed went! There is no river delta. It has all disappeared. And the Colorado River would have had to flow uphill in order to create the Canyon. Also, no evidence of the "meteor" that formed Arizona's "Meteor Crater" has ever been found. Were both these scars also formed by electric arc machining? It is highly likely. For a detailed description of the problems associated with the accepted explanation of how the Grand Canyon was formed see Wal Thornhill's page.
MarsA full disk image of Mars is on the right. Notice that the southern hemisphere is covered with craters. The northern hemisphere is, for the most part, smooth and has many fewer craters.Below is an image of Martian "Sinuous rilles". They are made up of chains of craterlets. This too is characteristic of electric arc machining (certainly not water flow). Notice the faint horizontal rilles crossing the large one. The horizontal rilles obviously were made later than the large rille. Notice too that the horizontal rille goes up hill and down hill, cutting right across the earlier structure.
.
Terraced crater walls and small secondary craters sitting on the edge of larger craters are characteristic of electric arc machining. Also notice the flat floors and almost perfect circularity of the craters. If the twisting arc that creates an electrically formed crater stops on the rim and does not extinguish, it will form a secondary crater. This effect is clearly demonstrated in a laboratory experiment shown on physicist Wal Thornhill's CD "The ElectricUniverse."
VenusOn the right is a closeup of the upper left region of Venus' crater Buck. It is a classic example of when the arc is extinguished before it can make a complete circular rotation. The fact that the sinuous rilles are made up of strings of small craters is obvious in this image. There are two straight rills to the left of the crater (as well as the curving ones leading down into it from the top of the photo). Sinuous rilles are one of the typical characteristics of electric arc machining. The standard mainstream explanation for these horseshoe shaped craters is that one side of the crater wall has collapsed. What do you think?
If all the "impact" craters on Mars, Venus, and our Moon were really formed by impacts, then probability would dictate that most (or at least a significant fraction) of them should be elliptical. Meteors very rarely come straight down. On the other hand, electric fields always impinge on conducting spheres at right angles to their surfaces (i.e., vertically) and that is why all these so-called circular "impact" craters are round. They were not made by impacts. They were caused by electric anode scarring.
Saturn's RingsAn interesting phenomenon (called "mysterious" by those in the mainstream) is the fact that the planet Saturn has radial "spokes" in its ring system. The radial nature of these almost screams ELECTRIC FIELD at us! But one of the official explanations is that "they are thought to be microscopic grains that have become charged and are levitatingaway from the ring plane." Levitating??
And yet another property of Saturn's rings is that some of them are braided! They twist! The following is a quote from Science, Vol. 210, 5 Dec 1980, p. 1108: "There was the F ring, revealed in Voyager's narrow-angle camera to be kinked and triply stranded - and, perhaps, in defiance of all commonsense celestial mechanics, braided." (Emphasis added.)
Are the "braids" in Saturn's F ring due to just the kind of twisting currents that Birkeland observed?
Source Of Energy
Energy is one of the most fundamental parts of our universe.
We use energy to do work. Energy lights our cities. Energy powers our vehicles, trains, planes and rockets. Energy warms our homes, cooks our food, plays our music, gives us pictures on television. Energy powers machinery in factories and tractors on a farm.
Energy from the sun gives us light during the day. It dries our clothes when they're hanging outside on a clothes line. It helps plants grow. Energy stored in plants is eaten by animals, giving them energy. And predator animals eat their prey, which gives the predator animal energy.
Everything we do is connected to energy in one form or another.
Energy is defined as:
"the ability to do work."
When we eat, our bodies transform the energy stored in the food into energy to do work. When we run or walk, we "burn" food energy in our bodies. When we think or read or write, we are also doing work. Many times it's really hard work!
Cars, planes, light bulbs, boats and machinery also transform energy into work.
Work means moving something, lifting something, warming something, lighting something. All these are a few of the various types of work. But where does energy come from?
There are many sources of energy. In The Energy Story, we will look at the energy that makes our world work. Energy is an important part of our daily lives.
The forms of energy we will look at include:
Electricity
Biomass Energy - energy from plants
Geothermal Energy
Fossil Fuels - Coal, Oil and Natural Gas
Hydro Power and Ocean Energy
Nuclear Energy
Solar Energy
Wind Energy
Transportation Energy
We use energy to do work. Energy lights our cities. Energy powers our vehicles, trains, planes and rockets. Energy warms our homes, cooks our food, plays our music, gives us pictures on television. Energy powers machinery in factories and tractors on a farm.
Energy from the sun gives us light during the day. It dries our clothes when they're hanging outside on a clothes line. It helps plants grow. Energy stored in plants is eaten by animals, giving them energy. And predator animals eat their prey, which gives the predator animal energy.
Everything we do is connected to energy in one form or another.
Energy is defined as:
"the ability to do work."
When we eat, our bodies transform the energy stored in the food into energy to do work. When we run or walk, we "burn" food energy in our bodies. When we think or read or write, we are also doing work. Many times it's really hard work!
Cars, planes, light bulbs, boats and machinery also transform energy into work.
Work means moving something, lifting something, warming something, lighting something. All these are a few of the various types of work. But where does energy come from?
There are many sources of energy. In The Energy Story, we will look at the energy that makes our world work. Energy is an important part of our daily lives.
The forms of energy we will look at include:
Electricity
Biomass Energy - energy from plants
Geothermal Energy
Fossil Fuels - Coal, Oil and Natural Gas
Hydro Power and Ocean Energy
Nuclear Energy
Solar Energy
Wind Energy
Transportation Energy
Monday, April 14, 2008
'Financial warfare' triggers global economic crisis
As financial markets continue to tumble and as national economies sink deeper into recession, it is clear that the East Asian crisis has developed into a global economic crisis. The international money managers whose speculative activities have heavily contributed to this development, have been abetted by the IMF with its push for the deregulation of international capital flows. After having whittled away the capacity of national governments to effectively respond to such 'financial warfare', these powerful forces are working to secure even greater control of the Bretton Woods institutions and a more direct role in the shaping of the international financial and economic environment.
by Michel Chossudovsky
'PRACTICES of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.' (Franklin D Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address, 1933)
Humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an economic crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of large sectors of the world population. The plunge of national currencies in virtually all major regions of the world has contributed to destabilising national economies while precipitating entire countries into abysmal poverty.
The crisis is not limited to South-East Asia or the former Soviet Union. The collapse in the standard of living is taking place abruptly and simultaneously in a large number of countries. This worldwide crisis of the late 20th century is more devastating than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has far-reaching geo-political implications; economic dislocation has also been accompanied by the outbreak of regional conflicts, the fracturing of national societies and in some cases the destruction of entire countries. This is by far the most serious economic crisis in modern history.
The existence of a 'global financial crisis' is casually denied by the Western media, its social impacts are downplayed or distorted; international institutions, including the United Nations, deny the mounting tide of world poverty: 'The progress in reducing poverty over the [late] 20th century is remarkable and unprecedented....'1 The 'consensus' is that the Western economy is 'healthy' and that 'market corrections' on Wall Street are largely attributable to the 'Asian flu' and to Russia's troubled 'transition to a free- market economy'.
Evolution of the global financial crisis
The plunge of Asia's currency markets (initiated in mid- 1997) was followed in October 1997 by the dramatic meltdown of major bourses around the world.
In the uncertain wake of Wall Street's temporary recovery in early 1998 - largely spurred by panic flight out of Japanese stocks - financial markets back-slided a few months later to reach a new dramatic turning point in August with the spectacular nose-dive of the Russian ruble. The Dow Jones plunged by 554 points on 31 August (its second largest decline in the history of the New York Stock Exchange) leading in the course of September to the dramatic meltdown of stock markets around the world. In a matter of a few weeks (from the Dow's 9,337 peak in mid-July), $2,300 billion of 'paper profits' had evaporated from the US stock market.2
The ruble's free-fall had spurred Moscow's largest commercial banks into bankruptcy, leading to the potential takeover of Russia's financial system by a handful of Western banks and brokerage houses. In turn, the crisis has created the danger of massive debt default to Moscow's Western creditors, including the Deutsche and Dresdner banks. Since the outset of Russia's macroeconomic reforms, following the first injection of IMF 'shock therapy' in 1992, some $500 billion worth of Russian assets - including plants of the military industrial complex, infrastructure and natural resources - have been confiscated (through the privatisation programmes and forced bankruptcies) and transferred into the hands of Western capitalists.3 In the brutal aftermath of the Cold War, an entire economic and social system is being dismantled.
'Financial warfare'
The worldwide scramble to appropriate wealth through 'financial manipulation' is the driving force behind this crisis. It is also the source of economic turmoil and social devastation. In the words of renowned currency speculator and billionaire George Soros (who made $1.6 billion of speculative gains in the dramatic crash of the British pound in 1992), 'extending the market mechanism to all domains has the potential of destroying society'.4
This manipulation of market forces by powerful actors constitutes a form of financial and economic warfare. No need to recolonise lost territory or send in invading armies. In the late 20th century, the outright 'conquest of nations', meaning the control over productive assets, labour, natural resources and institutions, can be carried out in an impersonal fashion from the corporate boardroom: commands are dispatched from a computer terminal, or a cellphone. The relevant data are instantly relayed to major financial markets - often resulting in immediate disruptions in the functioning of national economies. 'Financial warfare' also applies to complex speculative instruments, including the gamut of derivative trade, forward foreign exchange transactions, currency options, hedge funds, index funds, etc. Speculative instruments have been used with the ultimate purpose of capturing financial wealth and acquiring control over productive assets. In the words of Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad: 'This deliberate devaluation of the currency of a country by currency traders purely for profit is a serious denial of the rights of independent nations.'5
The appropriation of global wealth through this manipulation of market forces is routinely supported by the IMF's lethal macro-economic interventions which act almost concurrently in ruthlessly disrupting national economies all over the world. 'Financial warfare' knows no territorial boundaries; it does not limit its actions to besieging former enemies of the Cold War era. In Korea, Indonesia and Thailand, the vaults of the central banks were pillaged by institutional speculators while the monetary authorities sought in vain to prop up their ailing currencies. In 1997, more than $100 billion of Asia's hard currency reserves had been confiscated and transferred (in a matter of months) into private financial hands. In the wake of the currency devaluations, real earnings and employment plummeted virtually overnight, leading to mass poverty in countries which had in the post-war period registered significant economic and social progress.
The financial scam in the foreign exchange market had destabilised national economies, thereby creating the preconditions for the subsequent plunder of the Asian countries' productive assets by so-called 'vulture foreign investors'.6 In Thailand, 56 domestic banks and financial institutions were closed down on the orders of the IMF, and unemployment virtually doubled overnight.7 Similarly in Korea, the IMF 'rescue operation' has unleashed a lethal chain of bankruptcies, leading to the outright liquidation of so-called 'troubled merchant banks'. In the wake of the IMF's 'mediation' (put in place in December 1997 after high-level consultations with the World's largest commercial and merchant banks), 'an average of more than 200 companies [were] shut down per day (...) 4,000 workers every day were driven out onto [the] streets as unemployed'.8 Resulting from the credit freeze and 'the instantaneous bank shut-down', some 15,000 bankruptcies are expected in 1998, including 90% of Korea's construction companies (with combined debts of $20 billion to domestic financial institutions).9 South Korea's Parliament has been transformed into a 'rubber stamp'. Enabling legislation is enforced through 'financial blackmail': if the legislation is not speedily enacted according to the IMF's deadlines, the disbursements under the bailout will be suspended, with the danger of renewed currency speculation looming.
In turn, the IMF-sponsored 'exit programme' (i.e., forced bankruptcy) has deliberately contributed to fracturing the chaebols, which are now invited to establish 'strategic alliances with foreign firms' (meaning their eventual control by Western capital). With the devaluation, the cost of Korean labour had also tumbled: 'It's now cheaper to buy one of these [high- tech] companies than [to] buy a factory - and you get all the distribution, brand-name recognition and trained labour force free in the bargain....'10
The demise of central banking
In many regards, this worldwide crisis marks the demise of central banking, meaning the derogation of national economic sovereignty and the inability of the national State to control money creation on behalf of society. In other words, privately held money reserves in the hands of 'institutional speculators' far exceed the limited capabilities of the world's central banks. The latter acting individually or collectively are no longer able to fight the tide of speculative activity. Monetary policy is in the hands of private creditors who have the ability to freeze State budgets, paralyse the payments process, thwart the regular disbursement of wages to millions of workers (as in the former Soviet Union) and precipitate the collapse of production and social programmes. As the crisis deepens, speculative raids on central banks are extending into China, Latin America and the Middle East with devastating economic and social consequences.
This ongoing pillage of central bank reserves, however, is by no means limited to developing countries. It has also hit several Western countries including Canada and Australia where the monetary authorities have been incapable of stemming the slide of their national currencies. In Canada, billions of dollars were borrowed from private financiers to prop up central bank reserves in the wake of speculative assaults. In Japan - where the yen has tumbled to new lows - 'the Korean scenario' is viewed (according to economist Michael Hudson) as a 'dress rehearsal' for the takeover of Japan's financial sector by a handful of Western investment banks. The big players are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, among others, who are buying up Japan's bad bank loans at less than 10% of their face value. In recent months, both US Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine K Albright have exerted political pressure on Tokyo, insisting 'on nothing less than an immediate disposal of Japan's bad bank loans - preferably to US and other foreign "vulture investors" at distress prices. To achieve their objectives, they are even pressuring Japan to rewrite its constitution, restructure its political system and cabinet and redesign its financial system.... Once foreign investors gain control of Japanese banks, these banks will move to take over Japanese industry...'11
Creditors and speculators
The world's largest banks and brokerage houses are both creditors and institutional speculators. In the present context, they contribute (through their speculative assaults) to destabilising national currencies, thereby boosting the volume of dollar denominated debts. They then reappear as creditors with a view to collecting these debts. Finally, they are called in as 'policy advisers' or consultants in the IMF- World Bank-sponsored 'bankruptcy programmes' of which they are the ultimate beneficiaries. In Indonesia, for instance, amidst street rioting and in the wake of Suharto's resignation, the privatisation of key sectors of the Indonesian economy ordered by the IMF was entrusted to eight of the world's largest merchant banks, including Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse-First Boston, Goldman Sachs and UBS/SBC Warburg Dillon Read.12 The world's largest money managers set countries on fire and are then called in as firemen (under the IMF 'rescue plan') to extinguish the blaze. They ultimately decide which enterprises are to be closed down and which are to be auctioned off to foreign investors at bargain prices.
Who funds the IMF bailouts?
Under repeated speculative assaults, Asian central banks had entered into multi-billion-dollar contracts (in the forward foreign exchange market) in a vain attempt to protect their currency. With the total depletion of their hard currency reserves, the monetary authorities were forced to borrow large amounts of money under the IMF bailout agreement. Following a scheme devised during the Mexican crisis of 1994- 95, the bailout money, however, is not intended 'to rescue the country '; in fact the money never entered Korea, Thailand or Indonesia; it was earmarked to reimburse the 'institutional speculators', to ensure that they would be able to collect their multi-billion-dollar loot. In turn, the Asian tigers have been tamed by their financial masters. Transformed into lame ducks, they have been 'locked up' into servicing these massive dollar-denominated debts well into the third millennium.
But 'where did the money come from' to finance these multi- billion-dollar operations? Only a small portion of the money comes from IMF resources: starting with the 1995 Mexican bailout, G7 countries, including the US Treasury, were called upon to make large lump-sum contributions to these IMF- sponsored rescue operations, leading to significant hikes in the levels of public debt.13 Yet in an ironic twist, the issuing of US public debt to finance the bailouts is underwritten and guaranteed by the same group of Wall Street merchant banks involved in the speculative assaults.
In other words, those who guarantee the issuing of public debt (to finance the bailout) are those who will ultimately appropriate the loot (e.g., as creditors of Korea or Thailand) - i.e., they are the ultimate recipients of the bailout money (which essentially constitutes a 'safety net' for the institutional speculator). The vast amounts of money granted under the rescue packages are intended to enable the Asian countries to meet their debt obligations with those same financial institutions which contributed to precipitating the breakdown of their national currencies in the first place. As a result of this vicious circle, a handful of commercial banks and brokerage houses have enriched themselves beyond bounds; they have also increased their stranglehold over governments and politicians around the world.
Strong economic medicine
Since the 1994-95 Mexican crisis, the IMF has played a crucial role in shaping the 'financial environment' in which the global banks and money managers wage their speculative raids. The global banks are craving for access to inside information. Successful speculative attacks require the concurrent implementation on their behalf of 'strong economic medicine' under the IMF bailout agreements. The 'big six' Wall Street commercial banks (including Chase, Bank America, Citicorp and J P Morgan) and the 'big five' merchant banks (including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney) were consulted on the clauses to be included in the bailout agreements. In the case of Korea's short-term debt, Wall Street's largest financial institutions were called in on Christmas Eve (24 December 1997) for high-level talks at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.14
The global banks have a direct stake in the decline of national currencies.
In April 1997, barely two months before the onslaught of the Asian currency crisis, the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a Washington-based think-tank representing the interests of some 290 global banks and brokerage houses, had 'urged authorities in emerging markets to counter upward exchange rate pressures where needed...'15 This request (communicated in a formal letter to the IMF) hints in no uncertain terms that the IMF should advocate an environment in which national currencies are allowed to slide.16
Indonesia was ordered by the IMF to unpeg its currency barely three months before the rupiah's dramatic plunge. In the words of American billionaire and presidential candidate Steve Forbes: 'Did the IMF help precipitate the crisis? This agency advocates openness and transparency for national economies, yet it rivals the CIA in cloaking its own operations. Did it, for instance, have secret conversations with Thailand, advocating the devaluation that instantly set off the catastrophic chain of events? Did IMF prescriptions exacerbate the illness? These countries' moneys were knocked down to absurdly low levels.'17
Deregulating capital movements
The international rules regulating the movements of money and capital (across international borders) contribute to shaping the 'financial battlefields' on which banks and speculators wage their deadly assaults. In their worldwide quest to appropriate economic and financial wealth, global banks and multinational corporations have actively pressured for the outright deregulation of international capital flows, including the movement of 'hot' and 'dirty' money.18 Caving in to these demands (after hasty consultations with G7 finance ministers), a formal verdict to deregulate capital movements was taken by the IMF Interim Committee in Washington in April 1998. The official communique stated that the IMF will proceed with the amendment of its Articles with a view to 'making the liberalisation of capital movements one of the purposes of the Fund and extending, as needed, the Fund's jurisdiction for this purpose'.19 The IMF managing director, Mr Michel Camdessus, nonetheless conceded in a dispassionate tone that 'a number of developing countries may come under speculative attacks after opening their capital account' while reiterating (ad nauseam) that this can be avoided by the adoption of 'sound macroeconomic policies and strong financial systems in member countries' (ie. the IMF's standard 'economic cure for disaster').20
The IMF's resolve to deregulate capital movements was taken behind closed doors (conveniently removed from the public eye and with very little press coverage) barely two weeks before citizens' groups from around the world gathered in late April 1998 in mass demonstrations in Paris opposing the controversial Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) under Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) auspices. This agreement would have granted entrenched rights to banks and multinational corporations overriding national laws on foreign investment as well as derogating the fundamental rights of citizens. The MAI constitutes an act of capitulation by democratic government to banks and multinational corporations.
The timing was right on course: while the approval of the MAI had been temporarily stalled, the proposed deregulation of foreign investment through a more expedient avenue had been officially launched: the amendment of the Articles would for all practical purposes derogate the powers of national governments to regulate foreign investment. It would also nullify the efforts of the worldwide citizens' campaign against the MAI: the deregulation of foreign investment would be achieved ('with a stroke of a pen') without the need for a cumbersome multilateral agreement under OECD or World Trade Organisation (WTO) auspices and without the legal hassle of a global investment treaty entrenched in international law.
Creating a global financial watchdog
As the aggressive scramble for global wealth unfolds and the financial crisis reaches dangerous heights, international banks and speculators are anxious to play a more direct role in shaping financial structures to their advantage as well as 'policing' country-level economic reforms. Free-market conservatives in the United States (associated with the Republican Party) have blamed the IMF for its reckless behaviour. Disregarding the IMF's intergovernmental status, they are demanding greater US control over the IMF. They have also hinted that the IMF should henceforth perform a more placid role (similar to that of the bond-rating agencies such as Moody's or Standard and Poor's) while consigning the financing of the multi-billion-dollar bailouts to the private banking sector.21
Discussed behind closed doors in April 1998, a more perceptive initiative (couched in softer language) was put forth by the world's largest banks and investment houses through their Washington mouthpiece (the Institute of International Finance). The banks' proposal consists in the creation of a 'Financial Watchdog' - a so-called 'Private Sector Advisory Council'- with a view to routinely supervising the activities of the IMF. 'The Institute [of International Finance], with its nearly universal membership of leading private financial firms, stands ready to work with the official community to advance this process.'22 Responding to the global banks' initiative, the IMF has called for concrete 'steps to strengthen private sector involvement' in crisis management - what might be interpreted as a 'power-sharing arrangement' between the IMF and the global banks.23
The international banking community has also set up its own high-level 'Steering Committee on Emerging Markets Finance' integrated by some of the World's most powerful financiers, including William Rhodes, Vice Chairman of Citibank, and Sir David Walker, Chairman of Morgan Stanley. The hidden agenda behind these various initiatives is to gradually transform the IMF from its present status as an intergovernmental body into a full-fledged bureaucracy which more effectively serves the interests of the global banks. More importantly, the banks and speculators want access to the details of IMF negotiations with member governments, which will enable them to carefully position their assaults in financial markets both prior to and in the wake of an IMF bailout agreement.
The global banks (pointing to the need for 'transparency') have called upon 'the IMF to provide valuable insights [on its dealings with national governments] without revealing confidential information...' But what they really want is privileged inside information.24
The ongoing financial crisis is not only conducive to the demise of national State institutions all over the world, it also consists in the step-by-step dismantling (and possible privatisation) of the post-war institutions established by the founding fathers at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. In striking contrast with the IMF's present-day destructive role, these institutions were intended by their architects to safeguard the stability of national economies. In the words of Henry Morgenthau, US Secretary of the Treasury, in his closing statement to the Conference (22 July 1944): 'We came here to work out methods which would do away with economic evils - the competitive currency devaluation and destructive impediments to trade - which preceded the present war. We have succeeded in this effort.'25
by Michel Chossudovsky
'PRACTICES of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.' (Franklin D Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address, 1933)
Humanity is undergoing in the post-Cold War era an economic crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of large sectors of the world population. The plunge of national currencies in virtually all major regions of the world has contributed to destabilising national economies while precipitating entire countries into abysmal poverty.
The crisis is not limited to South-East Asia or the former Soviet Union. The collapse in the standard of living is taking place abruptly and simultaneously in a large number of countries. This worldwide crisis of the late 20th century is more devastating than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has far-reaching geo-political implications; economic dislocation has also been accompanied by the outbreak of regional conflicts, the fracturing of national societies and in some cases the destruction of entire countries. This is by far the most serious economic crisis in modern history.
The existence of a 'global financial crisis' is casually denied by the Western media, its social impacts are downplayed or distorted; international institutions, including the United Nations, deny the mounting tide of world poverty: 'The progress in reducing poverty over the [late] 20th century is remarkable and unprecedented....'1 The 'consensus' is that the Western economy is 'healthy' and that 'market corrections' on Wall Street are largely attributable to the 'Asian flu' and to Russia's troubled 'transition to a free- market economy'.
Evolution of the global financial crisis
The plunge of Asia's currency markets (initiated in mid- 1997) was followed in October 1997 by the dramatic meltdown of major bourses around the world.
In the uncertain wake of Wall Street's temporary recovery in early 1998 - largely spurred by panic flight out of Japanese stocks - financial markets back-slided a few months later to reach a new dramatic turning point in August with the spectacular nose-dive of the Russian ruble. The Dow Jones plunged by 554 points on 31 August (its second largest decline in the history of the New York Stock Exchange) leading in the course of September to the dramatic meltdown of stock markets around the world. In a matter of a few weeks (from the Dow's 9,337 peak in mid-July), $2,300 billion of 'paper profits' had evaporated from the US stock market.2
The ruble's free-fall had spurred Moscow's largest commercial banks into bankruptcy, leading to the potential takeover of Russia's financial system by a handful of Western banks and brokerage houses. In turn, the crisis has created the danger of massive debt default to Moscow's Western creditors, including the Deutsche and Dresdner banks. Since the outset of Russia's macroeconomic reforms, following the first injection of IMF 'shock therapy' in 1992, some $500 billion worth of Russian assets - including plants of the military industrial complex, infrastructure and natural resources - have been confiscated (through the privatisation programmes and forced bankruptcies) and transferred into the hands of Western capitalists.3 In the brutal aftermath of the Cold War, an entire economic and social system is being dismantled.
'Financial warfare'
The worldwide scramble to appropriate wealth through 'financial manipulation' is the driving force behind this crisis. It is also the source of economic turmoil and social devastation. In the words of renowned currency speculator and billionaire George Soros (who made $1.6 billion of speculative gains in the dramatic crash of the British pound in 1992), 'extending the market mechanism to all domains has the potential of destroying society'.4
This manipulation of market forces by powerful actors constitutes a form of financial and economic warfare. No need to recolonise lost territory or send in invading armies. In the late 20th century, the outright 'conquest of nations', meaning the control over productive assets, labour, natural resources and institutions, can be carried out in an impersonal fashion from the corporate boardroom: commands are dispatched from a computer terminal, or a cellphone. The relevant data are instantly relayed to major financial markets - often resulting in immediate disruptions in the functioning of national economies. 'Financial warfare' also applies to complex speculative instruments, including the gamut of derivative trade, forward foreign exchange transactions, currency options, hedge funds, index funds, etc. Speculative instruments have been used with the ultimate purpose of capturing financial wealth and acquiring control over productive assets. In the words of Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad: 'This deliberate devaluation of the currency of a country by currency traders purely for profit is a serious denial of the rights of independent nations.'5
The appropriation of global wealth through this manipulation of market forces is routinely supported by the IMF's lethal macro-economic interventions which act almost concurrently in ruthlessly disrupting national economies all over the world. 'Financial warfare' knows no territorial boundaries; it does not limit its actions to besieging former enemies of the Cold War era. In Korea, Indonesia and Thailand, the vaults of the central banks were pillaged by institutional speculators while the monetary authorities sought in vain to prop up their ailing currencies. In 1997, more than $100 billion of Asia's hard currency reserves had been confiscated and transferred (in a matter of months) into private financial hands. In the wake of the currency devaluations, real earnings and employment plummeted virtually overnight, leading to mass poverty in countries which had in the post-war period registered significant economic and social progress.
The financial scam in the foreign exchange market had destabilised national economies, thereby creating the preconditions for the subsequent plunder of the Asian countries' productive assets by so-called 'vulture foreign investors'.6 In Thailand, 56 domestic banks and financial institutions were closed down on the orders of the IMF, and unemployment virtually doubled overnight.7 Similarly in Korea, the IMF 'rescue operation' has unleashed a lethal chain of bankruptcies, leading to the outright liquidation of so-called 'troubled merchant banks'. In the wake of the IMF's 'mediation' (put in place in December 1997 after high-level consultations with the World's largest commercial and merchant banks), 'an average of more than 200 companies [were] shut down per day (...) 4,000 workers every day were driven out onto [the] streets as unemployed'.8 Resulting from the credit freeze and 'the instantaneous bank shut-down', some 15,000 bankruptcies are expected in 1998, including 90% of Korea's construction companies (with combined debts of $20 billion to domestic financial institutions).9 South Korea's Parliament has been transformed into a 'rubber stamp'. Enabling legislation is enforced through 'financial blackmail': if the legislation is not speedily enacted according to the IMF's deadlines, the disbursements under the bailout will be suspended, with the danger of renewed currency speculation looming.
In turn, the IMF-sponsored 'exit programme' (i.e., forced bankruptcy) has deliberately contributed to fracturing the chaebols, which are now invited to establish 'strategic alliances with foreign firms' (meaning their eventual control by Western capital). With the devaluation, the cost of Korean labour had also tumbled: 'It's now cheaper to buy one of these [high- tech] companies than [to] buy a factory - and you get all the distribution, brand-name recognition and trained labour force free in the bargain....'10
The demise of central banking
In many regards, this worldwide crisis marks the demise of central banking, meaning the derogation of national economic sovereignty and the inability of the national State to control money creation on behalf of society. In other words, privately held money reserves in the hands of 'institutional speculators' far exceed the limited capabilities of the world's central banks. The latter acting individually or collectively are no longer able to fight the tide of speculative activity. Monetary policy is in the hands of private creditors who have the ability to freeze State budgets, paralyse the payments process, thwart the regular disbursement of wages to millions of workers (as in the former Soviet Union) and precipitate the collapse of production and social programmes. As the crisis deepens, speculative raids on central banks are extending into China, Latin America and the Middle East with devastating economic and social consequences.
This ongoing pillage of central bank reserves, however, is by no means limited to developing countries. It has also hit several Western countries including Canada and Australia where the monetary authorities have been incapable of stemming the slide of their national currencies. In Canada, billions of dollars were borrowed from private financiers to prop up central bank reserves in the wake of speculative assaults. In Japan - where the yen has tumbled to new lows - 'the Korean scenario' is viewed (according to economist Michael Hudson) as a 'dress rehearsal' for the takeover of Japan's financial sector by a handful of Western investment banks. The big players are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, among others, who are buying up Japan's bad bank loans at less than 10% of their face value. In recent months, both US Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine K Albright have exerted political pressure on Tokyo, insisting 'on nothing less than an immediate disposal of Japan's bad bank loans - preferably to US and other foreign "vulture investors" at distress prices. To achieve their objectives, they are even pressuring Japan to rewrite its constitution, restructure its political system and cabinet and redesign its financial system.... Once foreign investors gain control of Japanese banks, these banks will move to take over Japanese industry...'11
Creditors and speculators
The world's largest banks and brokerage houses are both creditors and institutional speculators. In the present context, they contribute (through their speculative assaults) to destabilising national currencies, thereby boosting the volume of dollar denominated debts. They then reappear as creditors with a view to collecting these debts. Finally, they are called in as 'policy advisers' or consultants in the IMF- World Bank-sponsored 'bankruptcy programmes' of which they are the ultimate beneficiaries. In Indonesia, for instance, amidst street rioting and in the wake of Suharto's resignation, the privatisation of key sectors of the Indonesian economy ordered by the IMF was entrusted to eight of the world's largest merchant banks, including Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse-First Boston, Goldman Sachs and UBS/SBC Warburg Dillon Read.12 The world's largest money managers set countries on fire and are then called in as firemen (under the IMF 'rescue plan') to extinguish the blaze. They ultimately decide which enterprises are to be closed down and which are to be auctioned off to foreign investors at bargain prices.
Who funds the IMF bailouts?
Under repeated speculative assaults, Asian central banks had entered into multi-billion-dollar contracts (in the forward foreign exchange market) in a vain attempt to protect their currency. With the total depletion of their hard currency reserves, the monetary authorities were forced to borrow large amounts of money under the IMF bailout agreement. Following a scheme devised during the Mexican crisis of 1994- 95, the bailout money, however, is not intended 'to rescue the country '; in fact the money never entered Korea, Thailand or Indonesia; it was earmarked to reimburse the 'institutional speculators', to ensure that they would be able to collect their multi-billion-dollar loot. In turn, the Asian tigers have been tamed by their financial masters. Transformed into lame ducks, they have been 'locked up' into servicing these massive dollar-denominated debts well into the third millennium.
But 'where did the money come from' to finance these multi- billion-dollar operations? Only a small portion of the money comes from IMF resources: starting with the 1995 Mexican bailout, G7 countries, including the US Treasury, were called upon to make large lump-sum contributions to these IMF- sponsored rescue operations, leading to significant hikes in the levels of public debt.13 Yet in an ironic twist, the issuing of US public debt to finance the bailouts is underwritten and guaranteed by the same group of Wall Street merchant banks involved in the speculative assaults.
In other words, those who guarantee the issuing of public debt (to finance the bailout) are those who will ultimately appropriate the loot (e.g., as creditors of Korea or Thailand) - i.e., they are the ultimate recipients of the bailout money (which essentially constitutes a 'safety net' for the institutional speculator). The vast amounts of money granted under the rescue packages are intended to enable the Asian countries to meet their debt obligations with those same financial institutions which contributed to precipitating the breakdown of their national currencies in the first place. As a result of this vicious circle, a handful of commercial banks and brokerage houses have enriched themselves beyond bounds; they have also increased their stranglehold over governments and politicians around the world.
Strong economic medicine
Since the 1994-95 Mexican crisis, the IMF has played a crucial role in shaping the 'financial environment' in which the global banks and money managers wage their speculative raids. The global banks are craving for access to inside information. Successful speculative attacks require the concurrent implementation on their behalf of 'strong economic medicine' under the IMF bailout agreements. The 'big six' Wall Street commercial banks (including Chase, Bank America, Citicorp and J P Morgan) and the 'big five' merchant banks (including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney) were consulted on the clauses to be included in the bailout agreements. In the case of Korea's short-term debt, Wall Street's largest financial institutions were called in on Christmas Eve (24 December 1997) for high-level talks at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.14
The global banks have a direct stake in the decline of national currencies.
In April 1997, barely two months before the onslaught of the Asian currency crisis, the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a Washington-based think-tank representing the interests of some 290 global banks and brokerage houses, had 'urged authorities in emerging markets to counter upward exchange rate pressures where needed...'15 This request (communicated in a formal letter to the IMF) hints in no uncertain terms that the IMF should advocate an environment in which national currencies are allowed to slide.16
Indonesia was ordered by the IMF to unpeg its currency barely three months before the rupiah's dramatic plunge. In the words of American billionaire and presidential candidate Steve Forbes: 'Did the IMF help precipitate the crisis? This agency advocates openness and transparency for national economies, yet it rivals the CIA in cloaking its own operations. Did it, for instance, have secret conversations with Thailand, advocating the devaluation that instantly set off the catastrophic chain of events? Did IMF prescriptions exacerbate the illness? These countries' moneys were knocked down to absurdly low levels.'17
Deregulating capital movements
The international rules regulating the movements of money and capital (across international borders) contribute to shaping the 'financial battlefields' on which banks and speculators wage their deadly assaults. In their worldwide quest to appropriate economic and financial wealth, global banks and multinational corporations have actively pressured for the outright deregulation of international capital flows, including the movement of 'hot' and 'dirty' money.18 Caving in to these demands (after hasty consultations with G7 finance ministers), a formal verdict to deregulate capital movements was taken by the IMF Interim Committee in Washington in April 1998. The official communique stated that the IMF will proceed with the amendment of its Articles with a view to 'making the liberalisation of capital movements one of the purposes of the Fund and extending, as needed, the Fund's jurisdiction for this purpose'.19 The IMF managing director, Mr Michel Camdessus, nonetheless conceded in a dispassionate tone that 'a number of developing countries may come under speculative attacks after opening their capital account' while reiterating (ad nauseam) that this can be avoided by the adoption of 'sound macroeconomic policies and strong financial systems in member countries' (ie. the IMF's standard 'economic cure for disaster').20
The IMF's resolve to deregulate capital movements was taken behind closed doors (conveniently removed from the public eye and with very little press coverage) barely two weeks before citizens' groups from around the world gathered in late April 1998 in mass demonstrations in Paris opposing the controversial Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) under Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) auspices. This agreement would have granted entrenched rights to banks and multinational corporations overriding national laws on foreign investment as well as derogating the fundamental rights of citizens. The MAI constitutes an act of capitulation by democratic government to banks and multinational corporations.
The timing was right on course: while the approval of the MAI had been temporarily stalled, the proposed deregulation of foreign investment through a more expedient avenue had been officially launched: the amendment of the Articles would for all practical purposes derogate the powers of national governments to regulate foreign investment. It would also nullify the efforts of the worldwide citizens' campaign against the MAI: the deregulation of foreign investment would be achieved ('with a stroke of a pen') without the need for a cumbersome multilateral agreement under OECD or World Trade Organisation (WTO) auspices and without the legal hassle of a global investment treaty entrenched in international law.
Creating a global financial watchdog
As the aggressive scramble for global wealth unfolds and the financial crisis reaches dangerous heights, international banks and speculators are anxious to play a more direct role in shaping financial structures to their advantage as well as 'policing' country-level economic reforms. Free-market conservatives in the United States (associated with the Republican Party) have blamed the IMF for its reckless behaviour. Disregarding the IMF's intergovernmental status, they are demanding greater US control over the IMF. They have also hinted that the IMF should henceforth perform a more placid role (similar to that of the bond-rating agencies such as Moody's or Standard and Poor's) while consigning the financing of the multi-billion-dollar bailouts to the private banking sector.21
Discussed behind closed doors in April 1998, a more perceptive initiative (couched in softer language) was put forth by the world's largest banks and investment houses through their Washington mouthpiece (the Institute of International Finance). The banks' proposal consists in the creation of a 'Financial Watchdog' - a so-called 'Private Sector Advisory Council'- with a view to routinely supervising the activities of the IMF. 'The Institute [of International Finance], with its nearly universal membership of leading private financial firms, stands ready to work with the official community to advance this process.'22 Responding to the global banks' initiative, the IMF has called for concrete 'steps to strengthen private sector involvement' in crisis management - what might be interpreted as a 'power-sharing arrangement' between the IMF and the global banks.23
The international banking community has also set up its own high-level 'Steering Committee on Emerging Markets Finance' integrated by some of the World's most powerful financiers, including William Rhodes, Vice Chairman of Citibank, and Sir David Walker, Chairman of Morgan Stanley. The hidden agenda behind these various initiatives is to gradually transform the IMF from its present status as an intergovernmental body into a full-fledged bureaucracy which more effectively serves the interests of the global banks. More importantly, the banks and speculators want access to the details of IMF negotiations with member governments, which will enable them to carefully position their assaults in financial markets both prior to and in the wake of an IMF bailout agreement.
The global banks (pointing to the need for 'transparency') have called upon 'the IMF to provide valuable insights [on its dealings with national governments] without revealing confidential information...' But what they really want is privileged inside information.24
The ongoing financial crisis is not only conducive to the demise of national State institutions all over the world, it also consists in the step-by-step dismantling (and possible privatisation) of the post-war institutions established by the founding fathers at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. In striking contrast with the IMF's present-day destructive role, these institutions were intended by their architects to safeguard the stability of national economies. In the words of Henry Morgenthau, US Secretary of the Treasury, in his closing statement to the Conference (22 July 1944): 'We came here to work out methods which would do away with economic evils - the competitive currency devaluation and destructive impediments to trade - which preceded the present war. We have succeeded in this effort.'25
Effects of Media Violence
Research on the Effects of Media Violence
Whether or not exposure to media violence causes increased levels of aggression and violence in young people is the perennial question of media effects research. Some experts, like University of Michigan professor L. Rowell Huesmann, argue that fifty years of evidence show "that exposure to media violence causes children to behave more aggressively and affects them as adults years later." Others, like Jonathan Freedman of the University of Toronto, maintain that "the scientific evidence simply does not show that watching violence either produces violence in people, or desensitizes them to it."
Many Studies, Many Conclusions
Andrea Martinez at the University of Ottawa conducted a comprehensive review of the scientific literature for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in 1994. She concluded that the lack of consensus about media effects reflects three "grey areas" or constraints contained in the research itself.
First, media violence is notoriously hard to define and measure. Some experts who track violence in television programming, such as George Gerbner of Temple University, define violence as the act (or threat) of injuring or killing someone, independent of the method used or the surrounding context. Accordingly, Gerber includes cartoon violence in his data-set. But others, such as University of Laval professors Guy Paquette and Jacques de Guise, specifically exclude cartoon violence from their research because of its comical and unrealistic presentation.
Second, researchers disagree over the type of relationship the data supports. Some argue that exposure to media violence causes aggression. Others say that the two are associated, but that there is no causal connection. (That both, for instance, may be caused by some third factor.) And others say the data supports the conclusion that there is no relationship between the two at all.
Third, even those who agree that there is a connection between media violence and aggression disagree about how the one effects the other. Some say that the mechanism is a psychological one, rooted in the ways we learn. For example, Huesmann argues that children develop "cognitive scripts" that guide their own behaviour by imitating the actions of media heroes. As they watch violent shows, children learn to internalize scripts that use violence as an appropriate method of problem-solving.
Other researchers argue that it is the physiological effects of media violence that cause aggressive behaviour. Exposure to violent imagery is linked to increased heart rate, faster respiration and higher blood pressure. Some think that this simulated "fight-or-flight" response predisposes people to act aggressively in the real world.
Still others focus on the ways in which media violence primes or cues pre-existing aggressive thoughts and feelings. They argue that an individual’s desire to strike out is justified by media images in which both the hero and the villain use violence to seek revenge, often without consequences.
In her final report to the CRTC, Martinez concluded that most studies support "a positive, though weak, relation between exposure to television violence and aggressive behaviour." Although that relationship cannot be "confirmed systematically," she agrees with Dutch researcher Tom Van der Voot who argues that it would be illogical to conclude that "a phenomenon does not exist simply because it is found at times not to occur, or only to occur under certain circumstances."
What the Researchers Are Saying
The lack of consensus about the relationship between media violence and real-world aggression has not impeded ongoing research. Here’s a sampling of conclusions drawn to date, from the various research strands:
Research strand: Children who consume high levels of media violence are more likely to be aggressive in the real world
In 1956, researchers took to the laboratory to compare the behaviour of 24 children watching TV. Half watched a violent episode of the cartoon Woody Woodpecker, and the other 12 watched the non-violent cartoon The Little Red Hen. During play afterwards, the researchers observed that the children who watched the violent cartoon were much more likely to hit other children and break toys.
Six years later, in 1963, professors A. Badura, D. Ross and S.A. Ross studied the effect of exposure to real-world violence, television violence, and cartoon violence. They divided 100 preschool children into four groups. The first group watched a real person shout insults at an inflatable doll while hitting it with a mallet. The second group watched the incident on television. The third watched a cartoon version of the same scene, and the fourth watched nothing.
When all the children were later exposed to a frustrating situation, the first three groups responded with more aggression than the control group. The children who watched the incident on television were just as aggressive as those who had watched the real person use the mallet; and both were more aggressive than those who had only watched the cartoon.
Over the years, laboratory experiments such as these have consistently shown that exposure to violence is associated with increased heartbeat, blood pressure and respiration rate, and a greater willingness to administer electric shocks to inflict pain or punishment on others. However, this line of enquiry has been criticized because of its focus on short term results and the artificial nature of the viewing environment.
Other scientists have sought to establish a connection between media violence and aggression outside the laboratory. For example, a number of surveys indicate that children and young people who report a preference for violent entertainment also score higher on aggression indexes than those who watch less violent shows. L. Rowell Huesmann reviewed studies conducted in Australia, Finland, Poland, Israel, Netherlands and the United States. He reports, "the child most likely to be aggressive would be the one who (a) watches violent television programs most of the time, (b) believes that these shows portray life just as it is, [and] (c) identifies strongly with the aggressive characters in the shows."
A study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2003 found that nearly half (47 per cent) of parents with children between the ages of 4 and 6 report that their children have imitated aggressive behaviours from TV. However, it is interesting to note that children are more likely to mimic positive behaviours — 87 per cent of kids do so.
Recent research is exploring the effect of new media on children’s behaviour. Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman of Iowa State University reviewed dozens of studies of video gamers. In 2001, they reported that children and young people who play violent video games, even for short periods, are more likely to behave aggressively in the real world; and that both aggressive and non-aggressive children are negatively affected by playing.
In 2003, Craig Anderson and Iowa State University colleague Nicholas Carnagey and Janie Eubanks of the Texas Department of Human Services reported that violent music lyrics increased aggressive thoughts and hostile feelings among 500 college students. They concluded, "There are now good theoretical and empirical reasons to expect effects of music lyrics on aggressive behavior to be similar to the well-studied effects of exposure to TV and movie violence and the more recent research efforts on violent video games."
Research Strand: Children who watch high levels of media violence are at increased risk of aggressive behaviour as adults
In 1960, University of Michigan Professor Leonard Eron studied 856 grade three students living in a semi-rural community in Columbia County, New York, and found that the children who watched violent television at home behaved more aggressively in school. Eron wanted to track the effect of this exposure over the years, so he revisited Columbia County in 1971, when the children who participated in the 1960 study were 19 years of age. He found that boys who watched violent TV when they were eight were more likely to get in trouble with the law as teenagers.
When Eron and Huesmann returned to Columbia County in 1982, the subjects were 30 years old. They reported that those participants who had watched more violent TV as eight-year-olds were more likely, as adults, to be convicted of serious crimes, to use violence to discipline their children, and to treat their spouses aggressively.
Professor Monroe Lefkowitz published similar findings in 1971. Lefkowitz interviewed a group of eight-year-olds and found that the boys who watched more violent TV were more likely to act aggressively in the real world. When he interviewed the same boys ten years later, he found that the more violence a boy watched at eight, the more aggressively he would act at age eighteen.
Columbia University professor Jeffrey Johnson has found that the effect is not limited to violent shows. Johnson tracked 707 families in upstate New York for 17 years, starting in 1975. In 2002, Johnson reported that children who watched one to three hours of television each day when they were 14 to 16 years old were 60 per cent more likely to be involved in assaults and fights as adults than those who watched less TV.
Kansas State University professor John Murray concludes, "The most plausible interpretation of this pattern of correlations is that early preference for violent television programming and other media is one factor in the production of aggressive and antisocial behavior when the young boy becomes a young man."
However, this line of research has attracted a great deal of controversy. Pullitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes has attacked Eron’s work, arguing that his conclusions are based on an insignificant amount of data. Rhodes claims that Eron had information about the amount of TV viewed in 1960 for only 3 of the 24 men who committed violent crimes as adults years later. Rhodes concludes that Eron’s work is "poorly conceived, scientifically inadequate, biased and sloppy if not actually fraudulent research."
Guy Cumberbatch, head of the Communications Research Group, a U.K. social policy think tank, has equally harsh words for Johnson’s study. Cumberbatch claims Johnson’s group of 88 under-one-hour TV watchers is "so small, it's aberrant." And, as journalist Ben Shouse points out, other critics say that Johnson’s study "can’t rule out the possibility that television is just a marker for some unmeasured environmental or psychological influence on both aggression and TV habits."
Research Strand: The introduction of television into a community leads to an increase in violent behaviour
Researchers have also pursued the link between media violence and real life aggression by examining communities before and after the introduction of television. In the mid 1970s, University of British Columbia professor Tannis McBeth Williams studied a remote village in British Columbia both before and after television was introduced. She found that two years after TV arrived, violent incidents had increased by 160 per cent.
Researchers Gary Granzberg and Jack Steinbring studied three Cree communities in northern Manitoba during the 1970s and early 1980s. They found that four years after television was introduced into one of the communities, the incidence of fist fights and black eyes among the children had increased significantly. Interestingly, several days after an episode of Happy Days aired, in which one character joined a gang called the Red Demons, children in the community created rival gangs, called the Red Demons and the Green Demons, and the conflict between the two seriously disrupted the local school.
University of Washington Professor Brandon Centerwall noted that the sharp increase in the murder rate in North America in 1955 occurred eight years after television sets began to enter North American homes. To test his hypothesis that the two were related, he examined the murder rate in South Africa where, prior to 1975, television was banned by the government. He found that twelve years after the ban was lifted, murder rates skyrocketed.
University of Toronto Professor Jonathan Freedman has criticized this line of research. He points out that Japanese television has some of the most violent imagery in the world, and yet Japan has a much lower murder rate than other countries, including Canada and the United States, which have comparatively less violence on TV.
Research Strand: Media violence stimulates fear in some children
A number of studies have reported that watching media violence frightens young children, and that the effects of this may be long lasting.
In 1998, Professors Singer, Slovak, Frierson and York surveyed 2,000 Ohio students in grades three through eight. They report that the incidences of psychological trauma (including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress) increased in proportion to the number of hours of television watched each day.
A 1999 survey of 500 Rhode Island parents led by Brown University professor Judith Owens revealed that the presence of a television in a child’s bedroom makes it more likely that the child will suffer from sleep disturbances. Nine per cent of all the parents surveyed reported that their children have nightmares because of a television show at least once a week.
Tom Van der Voort studied 314 children aged nine through twelve in 1986. He found that although children can easily distinguish cartoons, westerns and spy thrillers from reality, they often confuse realistic programmes with the real world. When they are unable to integrate the violence in these shows because they can’t follow the plot, they are much more likely to become anxious. This is particularly problematic because the children reported that they prefer realistic programmes, which they equate with fun and excitement. And, as Jacques de Guise reported in 2002, the younger the child, the less likely he or she will be able to identify violent content as violence.
In 1999, Professors Joanne Cantor and K. Harrison studied 138 university students, and found that memories of frightening media images continued to disturb a significant number of participants years later. Over 90 per cent reported they continued to experience fright effects from images they viewed as children, ranging from sleep disturbances to steadfast avoidance of certain situations.
Research Strand: Media violence desensitizes people to real violence
A number of studies in the 1970’s showed that people who are repeatedly exposed to media violence tend to be less disturbed when they witness real world violence, and have less sympathy for its victims. For example, Professors V.B. Cline, R.G. Croft, and S. Courrier studied young boys over a two-year period. In 1973, they reported that boys who watch more than 25 hours of television per week are significantly less likely to be aroused by real world violence than those boys who watch 4 hours or less per week.
When researchers Fred Molitor and Ken Hirsch revisited this line of investigation in 1994, their work confirmed that children are more likely to tolerate aggressive behaviour in the real world if they first watch TV shows or films that contain violent content.
Research Strand: People who watch a lot of media violence tend to believe that the world is more dangerous than it is in reality
George Gerbner has conducted the longest running study of television violence. His seminal research suggests that heavy TV viewers tend to perceive the world in ways that are consistent with the images on TV. As viewers’ perceptions of the world come to conform with the depictions they see on TV, they become more passive, more anxious, and more fearful. Gerbner calls this the "Mean World Syndrome."
Gerbner’s research found that those who watch greater amounts of television are more likely to:
overestimate their risk of being victimized by crime
believe their neighbourhoods are unsafe
believe "fear of crime is a very serious personal problem"
assume the crime rate is increasing, even when it is not
André Gosselin, Jacques de Guise and Guy Paquette decided to test Gerbner’s theory in the Canadian context in 1997. They surveyed 360 university students, and found that heavy television viewers are more likely to believe the world is a more dangerous place. However, they also found heavy viewers are not more likely to actually feel more fearful.
Research Strand: Family attitudes to violent content are more important than the images themselves
A number of studies suggest that media is only one of a number of variables that put children at risk of aggressive behaviour.
For example, a Norwegian study that included 20 at-risk teenaged boys found that the lack of parental rules regulating what the boys watched was a more significant predictor of aggressive behaviour than the amount of media violence they watched. It also indicated that exposure to real world violence, together with exposure to media violence, created an "overload" of violent events. Boys who experienced this overload were more likely to use violent media images to create and consolidate their identities as members of an anti-social and marginalized group.
On the other hand, researchers report that parental attitudes towards media violence can mitigate the impact it has on children. Huesmann and Bacharach conclude, "Family attitudes and social class are stronger determinants of attitudes toward aggression than is the amount of exposure to TV, which is nevertheless a significant but weaker predictor."
Whether or not exposure to media violence causes increased levels of aggression and violence in young people is the perennial question of media effects research. Some experts, like University of Michigan professor L. Rowell Huesmann, argue that fifty years of evidence show "that exposure to media violence causes children to behave more aggressively and affects them as adults years later." Others, like Jonathan Freedman of the University of Toronto, maintain that "the scientific evidence simply does not show that watching violence either produces violence in people, or desensitizes them to it."
Many Studies, Many Conclusions
Andrea Martinez at the University of Ottawa conducted a comprehensive review of the scientific literature for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in 1994. She concluded that the lack of consensus about media effects reflects three "grey areas" or constraints contained in the research itself.
First, media violence is notoriously hard to define and measure. Some experts who track violence in television programming, such as George Gerbner of Temple University, define violence as the act (or threat) of injuring or killing someone, independent of the method used or the surrounding context. Accordingly, Gerber includes cartoon violence in his data-set. But others, such as University of Laval professors Guy Paquette and Jacques de Guise, specifically exclude cartoon violence from their research because of its comical and unrealistic presentation.
Second, researchers disagree over the type of relationship the data supports. Some argue that exposure to media violence causes aggression. Others say that the two are associated, but that there is no causal connection. (That both, for instance, may be caused by some third factor.) And others say the data supports the conclusion that there is no relationship between the two at all.
Third, even those who agree that there is a connection between media violence and aggression disagree about how the one effects the other. Some say that the mechanism is a psychological one, rooted in the ways we learn. For example, Huesmann argues that children develop "cognitive scripts" that guide their own behaviour by imitating the actions of media heroes. As they watch violent shows, children learn to internalize scripts that use violence as an appropriate method of problem-solving.
Other researchers argue that it is the physiological effects of media violence that cause aggressive behaviour. Exposure to violent imagery is linked to increased heart rate, faster respiration and higher blood pressure. Some think that this simulated "fight-or-flight" response predisposes people to act aggressively in the real world.
Still others focus on the ways in which media violence primes or cues pre-existing aggressive thoughts and feelings. They argue that an individual’s desire to strike out is justified by media images in which both the hero and the villain use violence to seek revenge, often without consequences.
In her final report to the CRTC, Martinez concluded that most studies support "a positive, though weak, relation between exposure to television violence and aggressive behaviour." Although that relationship cannot be "confirmed systematically," she agrees with Dutch researcher Tom Van der Voot who argues that it would be illogical to conclude that "a phenomenon does not exist simply because it is found at times not to occur, or only to occur under certain circumstances."
What the Researchers Are Saying
The lack of consensus about the relationship between media violence and real-world aggression has not impeded ongoing research. Here’s a sampling of conclusions drawn to date, from the various research strands:
Research strand: Children who consume high levels of media violence are more likely to be aggressive in the real world
In 1956, researchers took to the laboratory to compare the behaviour of 24 children watching TV. Half watched a violent episode of the cartoon Woody Woodpecker, and the other 12 watched the non-violent cartoon The Little Red Hen. During play afterwards, the researchers observed that the children who watched the violent cartoon were much more likely to hit other children and break toys.
Six years later, in 1963, professors A. Badura, D. Ross and S.A. Ross studied the effect of exposure to real-world violence, television violence, and cartoon violence. They divided 100 preschool children into four groups. The first group watched a real person shout insults at an inflatable doll while hitting it with a mallet. The second group watched the incident on television. The third watched a cartoon version of the same scene, and the fourth watched nothing.
When all the children were later exposed to a frustrating situation, the first three groups responded with more aggression than the control group. The children who watched the incident on television were just as aggressive as those who had watched the real person use the mallet; and both were more aggressive than those who had only watched the cartoon.
Over the years, laboratory experiments such as these have consistently shown that exposure to violence is associated with increased heartbeat, blood pressure and respiration rate, and a greater willingness to administer electric shocks to inflict pain or punishment on others. However, this line of enquiry has been criticized because of its focus on short term results and the artificial nature of the viewing environment.
Other scientists have sought to establish a connection between media violence and aggression outside the laboratory. For example, a number of surveys indicate that children and young people who report a preference for violent entertainment also score higher on aggression indexes than those who watch less violent shows. L. Rowell Huesmann reviewed studies conducted in Australia, Finland, Poland, Israel, Netherlands and the United States. He reports, "the child most likely to be aggressive would be the one who (a) watches violent television programs most of the time, (b) believes that these shows portray life just as it is, [and] (c) identifies strongly with the aggressive characters in the shows."
A study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2003 found that nearly half (47 per cent) of parents with children between the ages of 4 and 6 report that their children have imitated aggressive behaviours from TV. However, it is interesting to note that children are more likely to mimic positive behaviours — 87 per cent of kids do so.
Recent research is exploring the effect of new media on children’s behaviour. Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman of Iowa State University reviewed dozens of studies of video gamers. In 2001, they reported that children and young people who play violent video games, even for short periods, are more likely to behave aggressively in the real world; and that both aggressive and non-aggressive children are negatively affected by playing.
In 2003, Craig Anderson and Iowa State University colleague Nicholas Carnagey and Janie Eubanks of the Texas Department of Human Services reported that violent music lyrics increased aggressive thoughts and hostile feelings among 500 college students. They concluded, "There are now good theoretical and empirical reasons to expect effects of music lyrics on aggressive behavior to be similar to the well-studied effects of exposure to TV and movie violence and the more recent research efforts on violent video games."
Research Strand: Children who watch high levels of media violence are at increased risk of aggressive behaviour as adults
In 1960, University of Michigan Professor Leonard Eron studied 856 grade three students living in a semi-rural community in Columbia County, New York, and found that the children who watched violent television at home behaved more aggressively in school. Eron wanted to track the effect of this exposure over the years, so he revisited Columbia County in 1971, when the children who participated in the 1960 study were 19 years of age. He found that boys who watched violent TV when they were eight were more likely to get in trouble with the law as teenagers.
When Eron and Huesmann returned to Columbia County in 1982, the subjects were 30 years old. They reported that those participants who had watched more violent TV as eight-year-olds were more likely, as adults, to be convicted of serious crimes, to use violence to discipline their children, and to treat their spouses aggressively.
Professor Monroe Lefkowitz published similar findings in 1971. Lefkowitz interviewed a group of eight-year-olds and found that the boys who watched more violent TV were more likely to act aggressively in the real world. When he interviewed the same boys ten years later, he found that the more violence a boy watched at eight, the more aggressively he would act at age eighteen.
Columbia University professor Jeffrey Johnson has found that the effect is not limited to violent shows. Johnson tracked 707 families in upstate New York for 17 years, starting in 1975. In 2002, Johnson reported that children who watched one to three hours of television each day when they were 14 to 16 years old were 60 per cent more likely to be involved in assaults and fights as adults than those who watched less TV.
Kansas State University professor John Murray concludes, "The most plausible interpretation of this pattern of correlations is that early preference for violent television programming and other media is one factor in the production of aggressive and antisocial behavior when the young boy becomes a young man."
However, this line of research has attracted a great deal of controversy. Pullitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes has attacked Eron’s work, arguing that his conclusions are based on an insignificant amount of data. Rhodes claims that Eron had information about the amount of TV viewed in 1960 for only 3 of the 24 men who committed violent crimes as adults years later. Rhodes concludes that Eron’s work is "poorly conceived, scientifically inadequate, biased and sloppy if not actually fraudulent research."
Guy Cumberbatch, head of the Communications Research Group, a U.K. social policy think tank, has equally harsh words for Johnson’s study. Cumberbatch claims Johnson’s group of 88 under-one-hour TV watchers is "so small, it's aberrant." And, as journalist Ben Shouse points out, other critics say that Johnson’s study "can’t rule out the possibility that television is just a marker for some unmeasured environmental or psychological influence on both aggression and TV habits."
Research Strand: The introduction of television into a community leads to an increase in violent behaviour
Researchers have also pursued the link between media violence and real life aggression by examining communities before and after the introduction of television. In the mid 1970s, University of British Columbia professor Tannis McBeth Williams studied a remote village in British Columbia both before and after television was introduced. She found that two years after TV arrived, violent incidents had increased by 160 per cent.
Researchers Gary Granzberg and Jack Steinbring studied three Cree communities in northern Manitoba during the 1970s and early 1980s. They found that four years after television was introduced into one of the communities, the incidence of fist fights and black eyes among the children had increased significantly. Interestingly, several days after an episode of Happy Days aired, in which one character joined a gang called the Red Demons, children in the community created rival gangs, called the Red Demons and the Green Demons, and the conflict between the two seriously disrupted the local school.
University of Washington Professor Brandon Centerwall noted that the sharp increase in the murder rate in North America in 1955 occurred eight years after television sets began to enter North American homes. To test his hypothesis that the two were related, he examined the murder rate in South Africa where, prior to 1975, television was banned by the government. He found that twelve years after the ban was lifted, murder rates skyrocketed.
University of Toronto Professor Jonathan Freedman has criticized this line of research. He points out that Japanese television has some of the most violent imagery in the world, and yet Japan has a much lower murder rate than other countries, including Canada and the United States, which have comparatively less violence on TV.
Research Strand: Media violence stimulates fear in some children
A number of studies have reported that watching media violence frightens young children, and that the effects of this may be long lasting.
In 1998, Professors Singer, Slovak, Frierson and York surveyed 2,000 Ohio students in grades three through eight. They report that the incidences of psychological trauma (including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress) increased in proportion to the number of hours of television watched each day.
A 1999 survey of 500 Rhode Island parents led by Brown University professor Judith Owens revealed that the presence of a television in a child’s bedroom makes it more likely that the child will suffer from sleep disturbances. Nine per cent of all the parents surveyed reported that their children have nightmares because of a television show at least once a week.
Tom Van der Voort studied 314 children aged nine through twelve in 1986. He found that although children can easily distinguish cartoons, westerns and spy thrillers from reality, they often confuse realistic programmes with the real world. When they are unable to integrate the violence in these shows because they can’t follow the plot, they are much more likely to become anxious. This is particularly problematic because the children reported that they prefer realistic programmes, which they equate with fun and excitement. And, as Jacques de Guise reported in 2002, the younger the child, the less likely he or she will be able to identify violent content as violence.
In 1999, Professors Joanne Cantor and K. Harrison studied 138 university students, and found that memories of frightening media images continued to disturb a significant number of participants years later. Over 90 per cent reported they continued to experience fright effects from images they viewed as children, ranging from sleep disturbances to steadfast avoidance of certain situations.
Research Strand: Media violence desensitizes people to real violence
A number of studies in the 1970’s showed that people who are repeatedly exposed to media violence tend to be less disturbed when they witness real world violence, and have less sympathy for its victims. For example, Professors V.B. Cline, R.G. Croft, and S. Courrier studied young boys over a two-year period. In 1973, they reported that boys who watch more than 25 hours of television per week are significantly less likely to be aroused by real world violence than those boys who watch 4 hours or less per week.
When researchers Fred Molitor and Ken Hirsch revisited this line of investigation in 1994, their work confirmed that children are more likely to tolerate aggressive behaviour in the real world if they first watch TV shows or films that contain violent content.
Research Strand: People who watch a lot of media violence tend to believe that the world is more dangerous than it is in reality
George Gerbner has conducted the longest running study of television violence. His seminal research suggests that heavy TV viewers tend to perceive the world in ways that are consistent with the images on TV. As viewers’ perceptions of the world come to conform with the depictions they see on TV, they become more passive, more anxious, and more fearful. Gerbner calls this the "Mean World Syndrome."
Gerbner’s research found that those who watch greater amounts of television are more likely to:
overestimate their risk of being victimized by crime
believe their neighbourhoods are unsafe
believe "fear of crime is a very serious personal problem"
assume the crime rate is increasing, even when it is not
André Gosselin, Jacques de Guise and Guy Paquette decided to test Gerbner’s theory in the Canadian context in 1997. They surveyed 360 university students, and found that heavy television viewers are more likely to believe the world is a more dangerous place. However, they also found heavy viewers are not more likely to actually feel more fearful.
Research Strand: Family attitudes to violent content are more important than the images themselves
A number of studies suggest that media is only one of a number of variables that put children at risk of aggressive behaviour.
For example, a Norwegian study that included 20 at-risk teenaged boys found that the lack of parental rules regulating what the boys watched was a more significant predictor of aggressive behaviour than the amount of media violence they watched. It also indicated that exposure to real world violence, together with exposure to media violence, created an "overload" of violent events. Boys who experienced this overload were more likely to use violent media images to create and consolidate their identities as members of an anti-social and marginalized group.
On the other hand, researchers report that parental attitudes towards media violence can mitigate the impact it has on children. Huesmann and Bacharach conclude, "Family attitudes and social class are stronger determinants of attitudes toward aggression than is the amount of exposure to TV, which is nevertheless a significant but weaker predictor."
Computer Effect to Teenager
MENTAL EFFECT
On the internet, a child doesn't have to persuade someone that he is 18, doesn't need money, and doesn't have to go through an embarrassing exchange over the counter. The internet has made a profound difference to the ease with which children are exposed to pornography and the kinds of pornography they see.
In using email or visiting websites, children can be coerced into viewing pornography. Most porn sites offer free tours, and any 14 years old can get in by clicking on a button to say he is 18.
Boys that look at violent, raw images often develop a disrespectful attitude towards girls, while girls seem to become accepting of that kind of attitude from boys.
"The internet gives children a very negative message about sex, that it is connected with lewdness, rather than being attached to the human body and with a loving relationship." children and family therapist and author Meri Wallace said.
Beyond the emotional and psychological damage the images might do to youngsters, there is also the threat of physical harm not just from engaging in unprotected sex, but from coming to believe that the abuse shown on some sites or the images of children engaging in sex with adult is normal, the psychologist said.
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On the internet, a child doesn't have to persuade someone that he is 18, doesn't need money, and doesn't have to go through an embarrassing exchange over the counter. The internet has made a profound difference to the ease with which children are exposed to pornography and the kinds of pornography they see.
In using email or visiting websites, children can be coerced into viewing pornography. Most porn sites offer free tours, and any 14 years old can get in by clicking on a button to say he is 18.
Boys that look at violent, raw images often develop a disrespectful attitude towards girls, while girls seem to become accepting of that kind of attitude from boys.
"The internet gives children a very negative message about sex, that it is connected with lewdness, rather than being attached to the human body and with a loving relationship." children and family therapist and author Meri Wallace said.
Beyond the emotional and psychological damage the images might do to youngsters, there is also the threat of physical harm not just from engaging in unprotected sex, but from coming to believe that the abuse shown on some sites or the images of children engaging in sex with adult is normal, the psychologist said.
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
reincarnation
Reincarnation is the belief that when one dies, one's body decomposes, but something of oneself is reborn in another body. It is the belief that one has lived before and will live again in another body after death. The bodies one passes in and out of need not be human. One may have been a Doberman in a past life, and one may be a mite or a carrot in a future life. Some tribes avoid eating certain animals because they believe that the souls of their ancestors dwell in those animals. A man could even become his own daughter by dying before she is born and then entering her body at birth.
The belief in past lives used to be mainly a belief in Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, but now is a central tenet of much woo-woo like dianetics and channeling. In those ancient Eastern religions, reincarnation was not considered a good thing, but a bad thing. To achieve the state of ultimate bliss (nirvana) is to escape from the wheel of rebirth. In most, if not all, ancient religions with a belief in reincarnation, the soul entering a body is seen as a metaphysical demotion, a sullying and impure rite of passage. In New Age religions, however, being born again seems to be a kind of perverse goal. Prepare yourself in this life for who or what you want to come back as in the next life. Belief in past lives also opens the door for New Age therapies such as past life regression therapy, which seeks the causes of today's psychological problems in the experiences of previous lives.
L. Ron Hubbard, author of Dianetics and the founder of Scientology, introduced his own version of reincarnation into his new religion. According to Hubbard, past lives need auditing to get at the root of one's "troubles." He also claims that "Dianetics gave impetus to Bridey Murphy" and that some scientologists have been dogs and other animals in previous lives ("A Note on Past Lives" in The Rediscovery of the Human Soul). According to Hubbard, "It has only been in Scientology that the mechanics of death have been thoroughly understood." What happens in death is this: the Thetan (spirit) finds itself without a body (which has died) and then it goes looking for a new body. Thetans "will hang around people. They will see a woman who is pregnant and follow her down the street." Then, the Thetan will slip into the newborn "usually...two or three minutes after the delivery of a child from the mother. A Thetan usually picks it up about the time the baby takes its first gasp." How Hubbard knows this is never revealed.
Channeling, like past life regression, is distinct from reincarnation, even though it is based on the same essential concept: death does not put an end to the entirety of one's being. In classical reincarnation, something of the consciousness of the deceased somehow enters a new body but as that body grows only one unified consciousness persists through time. Channeling might be called temporary intermittent past life invasion because there is a coming and going of the past life entity, which always remains distinct from the present self-conscious being. For example, JZ Knight claims that in 1977 the spirit of a Cro-Magnon warrior who once lived in Atlantis took over her body in order to pass on bits of wisdom he'd picked up over the centuries. Knight seems to be carrying on the work of Jane Roberts and Robert Butts, who in 1972 hit the market with Seth Speaks. Knight, Roberts, and Butts are indebted to Edgar Cayce, who claimed to be in touch with many of his past lives. One would think that channeling might muck things up a bit. After all, if various spirits from the past can enter any body at any time without destroying the present person, it is possible that when one remembers a past life it is actually someone else's life one is remembering.
From a philosophical point of view, reincarnation poses some interesting problems. What is it that is reincarnated? Presumably, it is the soul that is reincarnated, but what is the soul? A disembodied consciousness?
Reincarnation does seem to offer an explanation for some strange phenomena such as the ability of some people to regress to a past life under hypnosis. Also, we might explain child prodigies by claiming that unlike most cases of reincarnation where the soul has to more or less start from scratch, the child prodigy somehow gets a soul with great carryover from a previous life, giving it a decided advantage over the rest of us. Reincarnation could explain why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people: they are being rewarded or punished for actions in past lives (karma). One could explain déjà vu experiences by claiming that they are memories of past lives. Dreams could be interpreted as a kind of soul travel and soul memory. However, past life regression and déjà vu experiences are best explained as the recalling of events from this life, not some past life. Dreams and child prodigies are best explained in terms of brain structures and genetically inheritable traits and processes. And since bad things also happen to bad people and good things also happen to good people, the most reasonable belief is that there is no design to the distribution of good and bad happening to people.
Finally, since there is no way to tell the difference between a baby with a soul that will go to heaven or hell, a baby with a soul that has been around before in other bodies, and a baby with no soul at all, it follows that the idea of a soul adds nothing to our concept of a human being. Applying Occam's razor, both the idea of reincarnation and the idea of an immortal soul that will go to heaven or hell are equally unnecessary.
See also Bloxham tapes, Bridey Murphy, Edgar Cayce, channeling, dream, dualism, karma, mind, memory, Occam's razor, past life regression, Ian Stevenson, and soul.
Bantayan island
"Pacific island Dream"
Bantayan | Boracay | Catanduanes | Camiguin | Dakak | El Nido | Honda Bay | Malapascua | Pagudpud | Panglao | Pearl Farm | Siargao
Baguio | Intramuros | Banaue Rice Terraces
Bantayan | Boracay | Catanduanes | Camiguin | Dakak | El Nido | Honda Bay | Malapascua | Pagudpud | Panglao | Pearl Farm | Siargao
Baguio | Intramuros | Banaue Rice Terraces
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| Bantayan island, the shining tropical paradise in Asia is commonly known as an island paradise in Philippines. Tourists as far as Europe fall in love with its fine white sand and crystal clear blue waters. Many of these foreigners even settled down on the island to spend the rest of their lives. They build single-cottage beach houses along the shore but as time went by, construct a couple of new cottages instead to accommodate the growing number of tourists who seeks safe haven on the splendid island paradise. Two of the main attraction of the island is its crystal-clear waters and it's long stretch of powdery white sand. The stunning sunset will really spice those romantic walks on the beach. One of the reasons the island is famous is its peacefulness, the way a resort should be. Unsaturated beauty and a combination of sweet smiling natives made the island as it is now. When you get to cool, crystal clear waters, white sandy beaches, pleasant town folk and delicious sea foods ... you're in the island of Bantayan. Coming to Bantayan is like coming out of a time machine. It's like entering the time and place when life was simple and quiet. The island, which is composed of three municipalities, specifically Bantayan, Madridejos & Santa Fe is also generally known as the “Egg Basket” in the neighboring regions because it has been generating over one and a half million eggs a day to supply the growing demand of eggs for mainland Cebu, Negros, Panay and even Leyte. In Bantayan, there are 405-year-old church the one-and-a-half century house of Anun Escario, the Ogtong Cave and the rest of the ancient unarmed caves the old Spanish kota (fort) in Sta. Fe, the beautiful island in the district and the sunset at the pier. But there is also the human aspect. You see kids with even tan running around the beach lines, naked, simple-hearted and friendly. Bantayan Island has a remarkable dialect, mixture of Ilonggo, Waray and Cebuano but one that is Greek to both Cebuanos and Ilonggos. And its tone changes from town to town. The people in every town just have their own of expressing it. Your stay in Bantayan would be a dream come true. |
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