Robert Paterson's Weblog

True Health - Part 4 - The Push Back to Paleo and what it means

First they ignore you - then they laugh at you - then they fight you - then you win.

Today I am going to explore how we are about to experience all of this as we see the power of the Corporate World - more powerful than the Empire in India - go down. We see it now in media but we will see the final battle in the arena of health and food.

It is going to be in this area where the public will awake and discover how they and their children have been betrayed. I will show you today how betrayal is the key flash point of revolution that spreads the meme beyond the initiating cadre to the mass. 

All Imperialists from Rome to Britain and the Institutional/Corporate World have had the best of intentions. For after all Rome did actually do a lot good things. But the price of Empire is loss of freedom. And in the end this is what we all want. Espcially if Empire can no longer offer good roads, peace and justice etc.

The road to Freedom often starts with a funny man in a dhoti. How the Titans of the Empire laughed at Gandhi then. 

This process of ignoring - laughing - fighting and losing is what happens to the establishment in any paradigm shift. Who in 1935 could imagine the British Empire leaving India?

Who can imagine the Corporate Titans of our own time losing control of us?

Today time speeds by - what took decades now takes years. The Mad idea of working with nature and using her models, is very new. Maybe only 20 years old. In terms of a coherent way of eating and its relation to food maybe a decade. Blogging about this began in 2005!

In less than 6 years, millions are involved. The time of "Ignoring" has past.

The old system's immune system has been alerted. And the laughing and the attacks have begun.

"Paleo" is being talked about by the mainstream media as a joke - the Caveman Diet. Just another fad. Ignoring the point that this is not a diet but part of a larger context of health - that of aligning how we live to our evolutionary past.

Expect more "Jokes".

The "Attack" is all about Food Safety.

We are seeing concerted attacks on people who raise animals in a truly safe way - small egg flocks - people growing veggies in their front yard. They tell the mainstream that this food is not safe. Ignoring that the factory systems food is at the centre of our long term chronic health crisis.

Expect more attacks designed to raise the fear of the public and fear among the pioneers.

They will "burn" them as heretics. In modern terms they will humiliate us and take away our livliehood. And do it all in the context of keeping the rest of us safe from heresy. 

The establishment are powerful not just because they have a few Titans at the top but because there are so many functionaries below them. People who make their living and have their power as a result of being in the system. 

But the smart revolutionary does not attack this group. They depend utterly on the Titan. When he goes they go too. The News of the World staff get fired and cannot be rehired. The Mubarak inner circle and support melt away when their man falls.

But they cannot be ignored - they will be the ones who attack the new. Not the Titan himself.

You cannot win by attacking this system directly. They will crush you.

You win by allowing them to commit an outrage on you! It's very Zen!

The Titans destroy themselves by going too far in their attacks. At some point they outrage the sleeping people. 

In India, the innocents were killed at Armritsar. 

Look at what is going on in England now. The entire political class in the UK now has to step back from Murdoch. His henchmen/women have gone too far.

The people did not mind the Hugh Grants of the world or the Royals being hacked. But they cannot tolerate the families of war dead, of murdered children being the targets. And now that Gordon Brown has been seen as being defiled by the Titan, all can see that the only way ahead now to to sweep Murdoch away.

The people move when THEY feel the injustice and the betrayal.

So now to us. What will be the moment?

I see two tracks tnat interact. The power of social media and the increase in awareness that we are all being betrayed by the system.

The power of social media means that the secrets of the Titans can no longer be hidden. The big betrayals are amplified by social media. The power of social media means that dictators can no longer oppress their people without the world looking on. The more they assault their own people - such as in Libya and Syria - the more inevitable it is that they lose.

So what about us in the west. The scale of the deception and so betrayal builds every day.

• The War in Iraq was based on a lie
• We have also lost in Afghanistan trying to support the unsupportable
• The press is being shown to be mainly in the pockets of its owners - it has done its best to hide the truth
• Wall Street owns the recovery and the people are bereft - there is no growth in employment
• The young in Europe and the old are shut out
• The Euro zone and America's credit are on the knife edge but we were told that we have to pay back the bankers

Meanwhile the old contract is being destroyed

• The pensions that boughtv our obediance when we worked for them are going
• The schools and roads that we paid for are in ruins
• The justice system is being gamed
• Even our water system is for sale
• We don't own our homes annymore
• Our children did all we asked and there are no jobs
• We are told that we are not safe and our liberties are removed

You can add to this list - the reasons for consent are melting.

All of this is coming out of the New Media and the stories get bigger and get more traction every day - the Titans are shown not to care about us. They are shown to be cynical manipluators.

And now we come to the big lie - that our health and old age will be looked after by a Ponzi scheme of the transfer payments. 

This demographic and fiscal crisis will be the battle ground where the revolt will take place.

Rising oil and food prices and the debt crisis will all come together and the people will have nothing to lose by taking the risk of leaving the system. 

The entire basis of the western deal with its people will unravel and the people will be betrayed just when they are the most vulnerable.

So what to do? What do you and I do? Not easy question to answer but just as there are patterns of history that show us how true paradigm revolts take place, there are patterns that can help us see our best choices and what will happen in a pattern sense as the revolt gets under way.

Check back in a couple of days.

 

True Health - Part 3 - The Rules of the New World#2 - The revolution of our time

This post is written in July of 2011 - The Murdoch New Empire, the Police in the UK and the Tories in the UK are being rocked.

I think that we are living through a period where the Network is destroying the Hierarchical power of the establishment.

We can see now that this revolution began in the Arab world but now, this July, we are seeing that the Network is a real threat to the most powerful in the west as well.

I think that history will show that power is shifting from the Machine Institution to the Network.

This will be a real revolution unlike 1917 that merely replaced one top down regime for another. 

This is more like 10,000 years ago when a new food system changed everything about how humans lived and their place in the world. 

I think that the forces that will take us there are now in motion. Not the least that millions of people have been cast out by the old system. That many of these millions are well educated and have the personal power to act. These are the kind of people that drove the French and the American Revolutions that in their own day also cast down the old power system.

They are likely people just like you my dear readers. We are the immigrants in the brand new world that we will make for ourselves  - not in a new place but in a new "Space" that we create ourselves.

Without knowing it, you have just left Ellis Island and you are in this strange New World.

How strange this all is. 

Fortunately the pioneers have been here for some time and this post will show you what the new rules are and how best to get around in this new place and to realize its potential. 

In essence - people here in the New New World - or New World#2 - live the lives of the Hunter Gatherers - they live lives much like all hominids and Humans have lived for millions of years. But with a difference, now we know how all of this works. We know the science and we have tools that empower us to be this old way anew.

So let's wander around NW#2 and see how they live and work. Let's see the models they use. 

And by the way - all of this exists for real today - just in a very small and scattered form. It just needs organization to come to life.

Home and Work - Home is that old fashioned Home where we all live and work.

For in NW#2 we mainly work from home for ourselves or in tribal groups - some partners are next door but some are the other side of the world. 

We don't just do one thing either - the bigger cash generating deals are like a hunter bringing home an elk and get paid in cash by the larger system. But we do a lot of gathering for no money. We trade services with each other - I do some work on your site, you give me veggies. We offer up our place for rent and move in with our sister who lives down the road and we split the money.  

We don't just sell services either. With our network of 3D printers and jigs we can make almost anything locally. Hey we even make cars using the Wiki Car Company - an open source design for cars that uses a series of chassis's that we then adapt to create unique one off cars. For less cost than a mega car plant - we don't have their fixed costs.

More than 50% of the things we need - we make locally. All are built using Open Source designs.

The result is that there is work here for all. 

What were hobbies become "Livings". Your weaving, your knitting, your soap making, your talent for music or knowledge of astronomy, your mechanical genius, your coding, your cooking, your green thumb, your strong back, your relationship with children - your real skills - the real you.

No one gets super rich but all can be very comfortable and secure. Secure because no outsider can take away your living. For we are so interconnected. The gap between producer and consumer has been closed. We are always both.

Our children grow up in the middle of all of this. They see what their parents do to make a Living. They participate early too - either to help the family or to play their own role. Many children have their own Living. The gap between helpless child hood and being a participant is tiny. 

For the kids too are not shunted off into a world separate from life called school or youth.

Nor are our babies and infants given away to strangers. In our physical community we help each other a lot with the little kids. We spend very little money on daycare or nannies. We have family close, we have other families in the same boat - we have a good system. The kids also have access to tremendous resources from all over the world. They have lots of mums and dads - as kids always used to have. There are lots of Eyes on the Street in our place.

Our teachers are very different too. They are not "professionals". They are largely us.

Our older kids meet in study groups and use materials from the web. If they have a question that they cannot solve themselves - they can access the local learning network for advice. This local Network extends all over the world. Our kids can talk to the best teachers in the world and they do. 

We used to pay a lot of money to educate our kids for not very good results. We now pay a fraction of this and our kids have learned to learn and they mix with really talented people. They don't need a piece of paper to show what they have learned. They have a reputation that has been earned.

Food

So where did all the teachers go? Where did all the people with non jobs go?

In the old country almost no one did any work to get or prepare food. In the NW#2 food and energy is where most of the work is done. Everybody contributes here. In 2000, less than 5% of people worked to produce food and most of them were no more than slaves.

Now 85% of us participate in one way or another in food and energy.

About 30% of the food we eat is grown locally - and we are in Montreal. There are gardens on roofs - front yards - back yards in public spaces. Small animals too - chickens are everywhere and there are goats and sheep in town.

Nearly everyone spends time on growing and preparing food - we grow a lot on our own or in local groups in the community and we also help out in the country.

The rail service to the surrounding farm land is working well again and 50% of our food comes in from the direct hinterland. Many also go out there and help work for food. We help with the cultivating and harvest - for the Community Ag Model that we use, integrates the customer into the producer. That way we we keep the costs down for all. No immigrant slaves here - we belong to farm groups as helper/consumers. CSA on steroids.

Consequently, we pay very little money for food. But food growers do well. We all benefit from the Network Effect.

Farming itself is very different too. We also work WITH nature and not against her. She does more and more of the work as a result.

Farms tend to be small - about 100 acres and worked by a family and by the neigbours.

Those growing veggies mainly use Permaculture that needs no external inputs and that has yields that rise every year and where the work also falls. In many of these mini farms, the main work of the year is harvest.

Almost no machines are required. Almost no external inputs and certainly no agri chemicals.

Those with animals use a pasture system made famous by Polyface farms where grass and woodland provide the base and we rotate animals on the grass thus building up the base year by year.

In our food system, vitality grows every year. The natural capital increases and our need for external energy reduces.

We used to have no time and so had to pay cash for everything - now we have time we don't need as much cash. THIS is the central big idea in New World#2.

Like Open Source Software we trade goods and services a lot for no money - we do have an exchange now - so the Ledger can be converted into currency of needed. This was how the old country store used to operate. 

Energy/Travel - You cannot replace oil as a convenient source of energy - but oil is very expensive in the New World#2. So how do we still have a great life? We have redesigned how we live to reduce the need for oil.

This is why the home and the local community has become the centre. We had to go far away every day to work and school and to get anything. Now most of those routine trips in the car are not essential any more. The need to drive everywhere has been designed out of the system.

Some of us do go to face to face distant meetings now and then - it is always vital to meet face to face. But these occasions tend to be rare and are often largely social - the point is to bond again.

When we travel we mainly take some time and we tend to stay with each other or rent a place from a person. Co Working places are ubiquitous. Few have offices that are exclusively theirs except at home. Why would you pay to have an office all for yourself?

The Global Co Working Network also allows you to have an office in any town, city our country. 

Energy/Climate

Heat in the winter up north and cooling in the summer in the south demand significant energy. Here design has helped too.

Much of the sunbelt, short of water and boiling hot has lost much of its population. Those that remain have gone back to building design that fits this climate. Adobe is common again. Even here permaculture works and, as was tested in the desert in Israel, is able to produce food and this practice is gaining ground on the desert itself.

Here up north in Montreal, the typical co-housing of Montreal East was designed with winter in mind. With neighbours alongside and above and below, heating demand has been reduced further by insulation.

Community heat and stoves using waste fibre are common.

Large scale and long Distance Energy

The truck is no longer the centre of the system. Most things are made locally - much is recycled locally - even steel. We trade things we can't grow or make.

As back in time - water is the way that really heavy goods are carried. The seaboards and river and canal systems are the new/old highways for heavy goods. 

We have time now so we too use the trains and ships. 

Health

Big Industrial food no longer makes sense with very expensive oil. In the old country we used to spend a fortune on health. But now we eat so much better, we are so much more active, so much less stressed, we are naturally mainly very healthy and fit.

Grains depend on factory farms, serfs or slaves. Oil is too expensive and no one wants to be a slave anymore. So very little grain is grown anymore. We eat meat, that is grass fed, veggies fruit and nuts. This was and is our ideal diet.

So Big Pharma has little place here either. We are all working hard at breeding better animals and seeds that fit our local enviroment.  We share this knowledge around the world. Big Ag has no place in this vast cooperative effort - for if we fail here, we starve. The IP issue has gone away for the system that could enforce it has collapsed.

Most research now uses an Open Source Model - for we all benefit.

So what about the  Medical professionals?

Of course, if you have an accident, we use the Dr's. Specialists operate all over the world too. Even a small community hospital can have a world class surgeon operate - for she is in her community and telemedicine is the norm now.

But there are not that many doctors - and the ones we have are oustanding. But we don't need a lot of them, because so few of us are ill. 

The frontline healthcare system is now run by Health Facilitors who help us in groups work out how to get control of our health back. We pay them to keep us healthy. Health is all about matching our lives to our design.

Media

We get our news and information from each other. The old highly centralized media system was show to be what is was a shill for ther old system. They were largely made irrelevant as their role was exposed. And then their costs brought them down.

Most people have a voice now. A profound shift in human consciousness.

There is still an entertainment business but it is more of an aggregator. We don't need as much distraction as we used to. With a more full real life, we need to depend less on a fantasy life.

So how did we get here?

No social engineering brought this about. Much of the pioneer work was done in the 1990's. But it will be desparation that takes us here. Cities that can go no lower such as Detroit are along the path now. 

We will get here because the people who were cleared by the landlords will have no choice. We have to eat. We have to have work. We have to raise our kids. We have to have our health. In the old world all of these things are provided by the institutions. They are shutting us out. We either cannot afford them - such as healthcare or what they offer - such as public school - is rotten.

So we will do what we have to and create an alternative world alongside the old world.

In this new world, by using the network effect and open systems we will dramatically undercut the sunk costs and rigidities of the old world. We will drive them out of existence.

This weekend as I write this - we can see this process in action. The Bastille has been stormed. It's early days but we can feel our power and sense the weakness of the regime.

BUT they will not go quietly and the attacks we see on local food systems and the massive effort to protect IP in things such as seeds is a sign of their fear.

In my next post - The Inquisition and how to defeat it.

True Health - Part 2 - "The Industrial Clearances" & the Birth of the next Hunter Gatherer Economy

Are all of us, who are today unemployed or under employed or never to be employed, failures and misfits?

I think that most of us think that we are in some way bad people. I think that, even as we hang up our Consulting Shingle, or our Craft Shop sign or offer our availability to do free work or volunteer work - or just wonder where the rent cheque will come from - still hope that we will once again get a "real job" that pays enough to give us a life.

I think we want to go home to a nice job.

Well my dear friends, I don't think that is going to happen.

I think we are seeing a return of an early pattern. When the hunters became unemployed when all the big game died off 10,000 years ago. Or more recently when the landowners "Cleared" their agricultural peasants of the land. 

We are the new displaced. 

This is not your grand father's layoff. This is not another downturn or recession. We live today at the turning point when one culture and its power system and economy will be decisively replaced by a new one.

In this context, those jobs are NEVER coming back. But all is not lost. WE have been here before and I think I see how we can see ourselves in a new and more hopeful light. Where we can create an entirely new economy for ourselves with each other. A new economy that will give us the opportunity for a much better life than the one we failed to hold onto or even get a taste of.

There are so many of us now - mainly the young and the middle aged - that we have reached a critical mass. All we have to do is to "SEE" the opportunity.

So this is what really is going on - this is the pattern and this is where I think we might go.

The Industrial Revolution created its workforce by using new methods of agriculture to throw the people off the land. Waves of displaced peasants who had lived and farmed for millennia in rural villages in Europe were literally thrown out. They went to the new cities and their factories or to the New World.

They could never return. Their displacement was vital to the birth of industrial society. Not a good thing but a key systems factor. 

By 1905, thanks to Henry Ford, wages in this sector had begun to offer a middle class life for labourers. Not an easy struggle to get there. But by 1950 it was normal to be able to life a good life with few deep skills. By 1970, the more literate could live an even better life in an office setting.

But then the process of Globalization began.

7 billion people tied into a global trading system drives wages to the basement. 

What started on the factory floor now affects white collar work as well. Now even call centres.

For those of us in the West with Western expenses, we are put in an impossible bind. We cannot compete with global wages.

 

Now Technology is accelerating this displacement and is stripping the work itself out of the system.

Planting in 1600 needed the entire village. In 1750 it could be done by one man and a horse. No land owner was going to bring back his old workforce.

As with farm technology in the 1750's, machines and computers can do so much of what we used to do. Labour on its own in an industrial or office setting is also being replaced irrevocably by machines and technology.

The Jobs are not coming back and the jobs for our kids will never be there.

This is current data from OECD and Statistics Canada.

This is the modern equivalent of the Highland Clearances.  

All the puffery of the politicians about getting behind job creation is misguided. How can the jobs come back in Europe or North American when our living costs are so high compared to places like China?

For all our key costs in the west are based on the old model. Housing, energy, education, health, food - all of these are based on the old reality and are systems costs based on the cost of the industrial and centralized model.

How can we bring the well paying labour based jobs back when technology has made us truly redundant?

OK enough doom and gloom - do you get my point though? The well paying jobs for routine work cannot come back. And here is the proviso - so long as we hang onto the industrial model!

So where is the hope and also the health? For this kind of stress - low self esteem - low status - lack of a sense of meaning is a killer.

The hope is here - that there are millions of us with talent and energy - old and young - who have nothing to lose by "Immigrating" to the Real New World Economy. The New Personal Networked Economy. Where the Household Oikonomia. Where the Household/Tribe is the core unit. 

The irony of where we are going is that we the Displaced will have the tools that will take on the industrial economy on and decisively beat it. 

Where we will use the new tools that empower the small and the network that gives scale and power to the aggregated small.

In the next post I will go into some detail about what this may look like - but here are a few teasers.

One thing that all of us share is that we don't have much money and we worry about how we will afford to buy the things and services that we need. 

• Food - But if you grew your own or shared growing food with others - you would have food - Now you have the time to do this as millions are finding out. We can eat REAL food at a cost we can afford and employ a lot of us. We can also gain independence from the system. The key will be to learn how best to work WITH nature. The system which is based on oil has to fail anyway - this way we can get ready for the day and have a new more viable system in place. 
  
• Paid work - New technology will enable you to sell your services and products personally and directly. We offer something that THEY cannot - Trust - we can offer authentic and truly good and safe things - THEY can't
• Manufacturing - New Technology - 3D Printers now enable the most complex things to be made locally - no more big factories. More true freedom - craft and skill returns to work
• Energy - We can never replace oil in its ease of use - but we can redesign our lives and energy systems to do well. In doing so we can be free of depending on Big Oil. How and where we live and work is a big part of this as is a new food system that is integrated into our energy system. 
• Health Insurance and Care - With this kind of life we recreate the environmental fit that we need to be naturally healthy. Our dependence on Big Pharma will be broken
• Day Care - If you worked from home you can work around this as parents did for all time before our own - Freelancers are recreating the old home economy - where all is centred on the home and the tribe
• High Quality Education - All there today online waiting for you now - Homeschooling will offer more and better than any school and then if enough near you are doing this - you can have all the sports and social too
• 2 cars or more - Essential for job families - Not for Freelancers - your energy costs will drop
• Housing - You don't have to move all the time to get work anymore. You may just make one more move to a place where all of this is emerging
• Pensions - Where will the money come from to pay for me when I am old? - You will have a role and work in the tribe - if you are prepared to contribute
• Elder care - Not if you rearrange how your family works - more labour at home and a real role for grandma and grandpa - I am ready!

So where are we Immigrants going too?

I think to a more dispersed and more stable pattern of settlement.

We are in the 1740's in America - with the early colonies. Colonists who still have to obey the King's rule and the King's men.

But in a short time, we will start to organize. Our power will grow. In the end, the King's men and all his power will not be enough to subdue us - we will create our own place.

And then my friends, the words of the Statue of Liberty will call out again:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

And millions will answer.

Next I will share the details of how the the pioneers are buildong this new system - it is all here in fractal form.

Why are we so fat in rural settings - Part 4 - Because we don't fit the industrial world

In this last post of this series, I will explore the downside and the upside of our special tribal Gael and First Nations culture in rural Canada and America. 

We have seen that there are many physical reasons why those who live in big cities tend to be thinner/healthier than the rest of us who live in rural settings.

We have seen that a major factor is also status. In a city like Paris, London or New York you are part of the elite of the Industrial world. In rural areas like PEI or Louisiana we get the crumbs of this system. They tell us what we can have and it's not much.

We have seen that a factor for why we are fat is that we are influenced by our friends and family.

We have seen that our ancestry plays a role too. Most of us are Gaels or First Nations. We are the last of the Western Hunter Gatherers and so we are the least adapted to the modern diet.

Today we are going to look at our culture. This too is a factor in why we mainly live in places outside the best oportunities in the industrial system. It is why if we have to leave to go to the big city for work, we long to come home. To come home to a place where there are few jobs. It is why we like the seasonal nature of our system.

We don't want to make working for the man the centre of our life.

Our Hunter Gatherer culture is a powerful force that lingers on in us. Culture hard wires into behaviour. You can see this easily in dogs. A Border Collie that has never seen a sheep will still have all its cultural wiring in place to herd. Even a Pekenese will defend her owner as she was once a guard dog. 

So do we. For, underneath the veneer of modernity, we Gaels and Native North Americans are still Tribal Warriors.

This is a reason why we are not well adapted to industrial life. This is why if given a chance we want to live on PEI, in Appalachia or in a tribal setting. 

Not having been farmers for millenia we don't do "clock" very well. We don't like to be told what to do. We love working out doors and don't like the inside that much. We don't take well to roles that are not earned. We like to know who people really are by reputation. "Who is your father?" is not a stupid question. Nicknames based on character are common. Your name is very important. Your family is important. Your place is important.

This has meant that we make poor peons and serfs. 

So our health is further compromised by poor opportunity and poor fit with the prevailing system. We remain the outcasts and the edge dwellers. We are the butt of jokes and predjudice. We have among the lowest status in our nations. 

But I think that we are just the right people to get our power back when a new form of Tribal/Networked/Local/Dispersed econonmy takes over from the impersonal money based power based Industrial system.

We have the best chance to get our health back by going back to our traditional diet. And we are best suited to a new economy that is based on the personal, the trusted and the tribe.

Those who laugh at us now will find life outside their comfort zone very challenging.  

That is quite a statement. So I will post a series on this next week. I will explore the new emerging reality of the new Tribal Economy where people live again, but in modern circumstances, the lives of Hunter Gatherers. 

But in closing this post on Canada day weekend and with July 4th on Monday - I would like to show you how much we have in common with each other. I would like to show you what special people we are.

We love to dance.

We love music

Our women are tough and noble

My Great Great Aunt Marguerite (Mackenzie) Allan - who lost these,both her daughters, on the Lusitania, her son on his first mission and who stayed on and founded a hospital to look after wounded Canadians.

Our men are tough and noble

We are a warrior society

We love our place.

It stirs me to see these pictures - for they remind me of who we are.

I think that our future is in remembering our past.

It is in bringing our cultures back to the fore. It is seeing the principles that embody them and in applying them to how we live our lives again. 

The hunter gatherer and heroic society has been crushed by the Industrial culture - crushed but not broken.

The next economy will be Tribal - parts of it are here already. It will be possible - no essential - to master the culture of the hunter gatherer again. I don't mean live the exact life but the DNA of that life. 

A life lived where, once again, the kind of man and woman you are is your "brand". Where your wealth is your tribe and how your peers regard you. Where none of your economic eggs are all in one basket. A life where you have real skills. Skills that can't be learned in 3 years from a series of books but have to be absorbed by working alongside others. A life where there is no separation between work and family. An economy, where your kids grow up with you and your wider family and learn from your life and the stories of their family.

A life where the meal and sharing food is the centre of the system. Where we know where our food comes from. A life where home is a place we would die for.

Next week I will put flesh on these bones. But for now, as we take pride in our wider nations of Canada and America, let us also take pride in our tribes. 

Broadcasters want to kill Netflix

The owners of Canada’s English-language broadcasters are on their way to Gatineau, Que., this week to ask the federal regulator to renew their TV licences, but the conversation is likely to turn to a new kind of broadcaster that requires no licence at all: Netflix.

TV stations such as CTV and Global are only allowed to broadcast in Canada with licences from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission that mandate spending on Canadian broadcast content and set rules meant to protect Canadian culture. Some of these companies are likely to complain to the CRTC this week that Netflix is allowed to operate in Canada without such costly rules; since it airs its TV shows and movies over an Internet connection to computers, Web-connected TV sets and gaming consoles.

via theglobeandmail.com

We have ditched our cable months ago and watch Netflix using an Apple TV. We see what we want and when we want with not ads. It's bliss. And it's easy to do.

Film makers are also starting to see the benefit. Normally they have to rely on a film making its money back in the first 6 weeks. Also a TV show that can have a cult but not a wide audience has to get cancelled early.

A service like Netflix enables such films and shows to build an audience over time. An entirely new idea.

But of course in Canada all of this will be under threat from an industry that has been allowed to integrate vertically - always a no no - and that wants to keep the walls up. They work entirely against the interests of the content producer and us the audience.

So once again we have to ask - whom does the CRTC serve - them or us?

Transocean Cites Safety in Bonuses

Transocean Ltd. had its "best year in safety performance" despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world's largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing Friday.

Accordingly, Transocean's executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. Safety accounts for 25% of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts.

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Associated Press

The payout contrasts with that for 2009, when the company withheld all executive bonuses after incurring four fatalities that year "to underscore the company's commitment to safety."

In a filing on executive pay, Transocean said, "Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record." Based on the total rate of incidents and their severity, "we recorded the best year in safety performance in our company's history."

via online.wsj.com

GE pays no taxes and Transocean have their best safety year???????

Am I alone in wondering about the Corporate mind?

Income inequality - At the limit soon? What history tells us.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Here is the long view of what is happening as presented by the great historian David Hackett Fischer in the key book "The Great Wave - Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History".

His data only goes to the end of the last century but I am sure you can see the meaning of the data plot. There are periods of history where the elite capture the system. Prices for key goods - food and energy rise. What you don't see on this graph is that wages fall. So do the costs of manufactured goods.

Then there is a bust up followed by a period of equilibrium. And then the whole thing starts over again. 

Here we see the key indocator - the price pf grain. Note what is happening today to food prices and real wages. 

Now look at these dates and think abut what happened at the pinnacle of each phase. Longe term starvation set up the Eurpean peasantry for the Black Death. A collpase in population and a break from the feudal system. Money became the key. Ties to the land were weakened forever.

In the 16th century, a loss in confidence in the ruler's connection to God lead to the Reformation. In Engand to civil war and the death of a king. To the founding of America with the values of the "Elect".

In the 18th century, the French Revolution and the beginning of the end of Monarchy as a system.

So who rules today? We have in effect a new aristocracy - now who pass their power on by birth. Who have a feudal system of serfs and servants. Whose religion is free markets.

It won't end nicely - it never does.

It will end though.

 

Copyright Madness - Tony Curtis - #Fail MGM

When I heard of Tony Curtis' death, I immediately went to YouTube to see what they had and the Shell Scene was one of the very few scenes available.

But I have just learned that MGM have taken this down for copyright reasons.

How sad! I had just legally rented the movie wanting to see MORE! there were only 3 scenes on YouTube from the entire movie.

How small minded and petty. It could only have helped sales and rentals. How would a younger person ever know what a gem this is?

There are a lot of really stupid people out there who cannot see what is good for them.

Disgusted from PEI

Raj on the Value of Nothing - Brilliance in 3 Minutes

 HT Charles Frith

This is the pathway to our future - we go this way or we go nowhere - and you only have to invest 3 minutes to hear the ultimate in coherence - a masterpiece of compression and story telling - I am aghast at how thoughtful he is.

Loving it?