Urgent need for Holistic Manifesto for combating CLIMOCALYPSE

Today we are at the most critical crossroad of human history...we have reached or crossed tipping points in most spheres...this juncture of human history is characterised by the following mega trends: 

• population has crossed 7 bn which is far beyond what the resources of our dear planet can support...

• debt levels of the globe are highly over leveraged at least three times total GDP of all countries at about $ 300 trillion ... if we include derivatives the financial weapon of mass destruction then the debt to GDP ratio could be in the numbing 10 to 20 range...

• urbanisation is reaching unsustainable proportions thanks to proliferation of media and transportation which is making it easy for rural population to migrate to cities in search of modern lifestyles, jobs, education and better prospects .... resulting in growth of urban concrete jungles with attendant nightmarish problems of heat stress, garbage disposal, sewerage, pollution, crime and violence, water scarcity. Urban areas which constitute only 1% of global land mass emit 60% of carbon....

• rampant high energy / carbon intensive lifestyles due to cars, ACs, surfeit of electrical, consumer durable & electronic gadgets, air travel....

• societal transformation marked by rise of divorces, single parents, permissiveness, drugs, guns, tv and entertainment.....

• rise of tech, Internet and AI which are now synonymous with life with the ubiquitous mobile becoming our alter ego......our robotesque future close at hand.. and the hurtle towards the age of singularity ….

• widening inequalities across the world giving rise to dissatisfaction with political parties of past, inner cities and slums, decline in effective demand a prerequisite for keeping the wheels of capitalism moving, ….

• surge of migrants due to inclement climate, religious persecution and terror, .....

• Wars and terror...to some extent both are intertwined... terror has made inroads into Europe... and the proliferation of nukes and especially the nuke programs of Iran and North Korea are creating global tension mainly after Trump's arrival.....but what is probably as scary is the possibility of terror groups acquiring nukes or dirty bombs along with fallen states like Pakistan with large nuke piles....

Though each of the above is game stopper by itself ...the combined cross impact of these paints a very grim picture...but last but not least it is climate change which is fast threatening to become the ultimate game changer....climate change (clichange) is also integrally intertwined with most of the above mega trends....except for the probability of a nuclear war, clichange is 100% probability event which is insidiously spreading its tentacles on all parts of the globe with increasing frequency, intensity and amplitude...through unusual unseasonal extreme weather events, global warming especially at the poles, urban heat stress, increasing precipitation and resulting flooding, storms and tornados, rising sea levels, snow, pollution, dust storms, warming oceans....

Yogi's Climate Action Plan

Climate Action Plan: Espouse, write, help in implementing radical or moderate versions of the following action points: 

1.       Heat Action Plans for Indian cities and rural areas.

2.       Flood action plans. 

3.       Climate proof ratings for cities, buildings, complexes, organisations, homes. 

4.       Green action plans for cities, buildings, complexes, organisations, homes.

5.       Deurbanisation action plans.

6.       Decarbonisation action plans. To include reducing cars on roads. Stop producing internal combustion engine cars. 

7.       Back to nature and roots movements for urban people.

8.       Integrated climate plan for alternative lifestyles and eco systems for Zero carbon societies. 

9.       Rehabilitation and restructuring action plans for implementing Climate Action Plans under which many carbon intensive products and industries are going to be banned, controlled, phased out, remodelled, merged, closed for individuals, companies, sectors, industries. 

10.   Universal income scheme of Zuckerberg especially since several industries like car, fossil fuel based, etc would need to close.

11.   Carbon and water values for all consumer products, food, buildings, manufactured items. 

12.   Carbon and water monitoring and meters for homes, offices, buildings, complexes, organisations and cities. 

13.   12 linked to salary structures, individual and company tax rates, GST, interest rates both for deposits and loans.

14.   Processes and systems for all above. 

The above list is not a comprehensive or exhaustive one. Further details of the above will be published in this blog periodically…each of the above points need to be expanded and fleshed out into draft action plans….then maybe with the collaborations of educational and research institutions these drafts can be finalised….next get in touch with agencies which can implement these and convince them about the usefulness of these action plans for combatting climate change… we must try to minimise the ravages of climocalypse by being better prepared….

Why I am a climate hippie wanting to become a climate yogi...

I know all my mad rantings in newgrammaroflife.blogspot.com, Facebook's New Grammar of Living and twitter @pkd603 for the past decade or so and my diaries since the 70s have come to nought....fallen on deaf ears of a civilisation bent on climate hara-kiri (in a lighter vein and very likely my blogs are being read only by bots!!).... we are too addicted to the ever-increasing comfortable life of modern civilisation enabled by technological progress over the past two centuries or so spearheaded by the western societies...

Indeed it's a Faustian choice and bargain for society...all of us including yours truly have been sucked into the entails of the devilish charms of all the energy intensive goodies which the capitalistic societies are offering through supermarkets... now just a click away on the ultimate celestial mall of amazon...there is simply no escape ...it's sheer digital nirvana...the opium of the masses….

As billions of people in the developing and emerging markets join the rapidly increasing global urbanscape... fed and tempted daily by the alluring ads and serials on the ubiquitous TVs and internet...consumerism is spreading across all nooks, crannies and crevices of human settlements .... due to the aggressive trickle down sales and distribution networks of manufacturing ...the aspiration levels of billions are rising fast... fuelled by movies and telly serials which have been influenced by the puerile Hollywood over the past century .. yes, the entire planet has been effectively and suitably americanised…wearing jeans which require 2000 to 3000 litres of water to manufacture, drinking coca cola and pepsi, eating burgers and pizza, listening to rock n roll, driving SUVs and other toys of doom, frequenting and super markets……

Consumer goods form a major step in the upward movement of humans to a so called better life...followed by household durables .. housing .. two wheelers ... cars... electronics... air conditioning...in the process driving nail after nail into the sputtering climate coffin...mass consumerism, urbanisation, energy intensive lifestyles...with attendant environmental degradation and pollution…are driving us towards a climocalypse...

We are indeed on the horns of mankind's most difficult dilemma...to progress or not to...human race has emerged out of a long evolutionary process...biogenetics which is the root of the nature's evolutionary process… where natural selection ensures that the best of the species adapt and survive.... and there is continuous move towards so called superior and higher species...hence now the moot question is where do humans evolve from here onwards...

Human civilisation has peaked....with its brains which have been improving over the past ten thousand years or so...humans have evolved from discovering how to ignite fire ....to inventing nuclear weapons..  It has indeed been a long journey...in the process of continuous improvement the western world has over past four centuries or so (starting with Europe and then along with America) leapfrogged ahead of the east ..mainly India and China which had dominated the global wealth till then ....by inventing the steam engine, locomotives, ships, guns, electricity, cars, aeroplanes, nuclear weapons and energy, internet.....

Now we are at the inflexion point... technology and knowledge has spread to all continents... Russia and China have emerged as superpowers...Japan and South Korea. ...India.. manufacturing and the service industry have matured in all the top countries.... meanwhile the population of humanity has crossed 7 billion... clearly an unsustainable number.. planet's resources are grossly inadequate to support the ever-increasing demands of rising  humans and per capita requirements... 

There is no way we can curb the hunger for higher volumes and sophistication of goods and services of the planet's rising population ...the mantra of capitalism is forever rising GDP .... even though inequalities are widening ... all the measures outlined in the Paris accord are vague and too little too late...though intentions are honest but no one can think of radical solutions to tackle the root causes of climate change...the stark reality is that it’s an unequal world with high inequalities. Hence the top 10% of the global population would be emitting over 70% of the carbon. Hence the actions of the top 10% have accelerated the climate change for entire world. Sadly but ironically the major 90% are facing the brunt of the climate change events and suffering huge financial losses which they can ill afford. It's indeed an unfair world where the rich who are the main cause of climate change are able to continue their comfortable lives well protected from the ravages of climate....

Hence the only way to satisfy my conscience is to become a climate hippie ...not for the first time…I have been a hippie since 1970..it's interesting to note that the earliest rebels who revolted against the establishment were rock n roll musicians...during the 60s which was the most defining decade for the world in more than one way ..in fact the rock n roll musicians like led zeppelin, pink floyd...were some of the earliest to protest against consumerism, rampant industrialisation and impact on nature....perhaps the best way to cope up with the insane demands of modern society and senseless damage to environment by our high energy lifestyles is to get comfortably numbed...during the early 70s I had shoulder length hair with mid parting for a couple of years like the sage Sri Aurobindo whom I used to admire...

But now I am quite ready to give up urban living and spend the rest of one’s life near the sea or at my ancestral village in Odisha… a most cosmic state ...in spite of the heat there… this is not a new fad for me....in fact during my schooldays (class 7 during 1965) I used to take cold showers in the midnight of winters in Kolkata when the temp was about 10C .... to strengthen my mind...kind of a renunciation and self-mortification … during the height of summer my younger brother and me used spend hot afternoons during holidays without the ceiling fan when the temp used to peak at around 38C (with maybe a feels like index of maybe 42C)....it was kind of divine madness during ones teens...there was this strong spark within one to lead a spartan life of monks...at that age I wanted to reduce my dependence on electricity....kind of abhorred an energy intensive life....intuitively both of us brothers wanted to reduce our carbon imprint....

All along since my childhood I was quite accustomed to walking.....to school, markets, the British council library, later after working home from office, to the bank....in Kolkata we used the public transport for going further.....even after I bought a car in Bengaluru which was quite late in life when was 41....I still liked to walk wherever I could....even the car I was forced to buy because in Bengaluru public transport was poor in the 90s....and plus the bank where I was working gave us interest free loans and petrol, driver, etc....luckily my wife had no hang ups that we must own a car....now I very rarely use the car... walking to do all my chores like bank work, groceries... 

Since we moved to Bengaluru in 1992...we never felt the need for air conditioners....gradually over past 20+ years the average temp in Bengaluru has risen by over 2C...in our previous apartment all the flats had at least one AC while we had none....it was only in 2014 we installed ACs since we were on top floor...which we use only for about two months a year..

So now being totally disillusioned in Bengaluru by the phoney and plastic scene, energy intensive lifestyles, concrete urban nightmare, environmental disaster, density of population..... ....I wish to become a climate yogi and go and live in a village....my ancestral village near Bhubaneswar in Odisha....practising my manifesto for climate change...the manifesto has been drafted....it needs to be completed...

Basically as a yogi...I will have to lead the deenergised lifestyle which I have been espousing all these years....solar power which will provide basic electrical gadgets like lights, fan, small fridge, TV, music, laptop, tablet, phone .. I should get deeply involved as a climate activist in creating Heat Action Plans for cities and villages of Odisha…I have been trying my best to convince my wife…but so far she has not been in favour…neither does my daughter with all  me in this role in Odisha … feel deeply troubled… would not mind also to stay in Bhubaneswar the capital of Odisha .. or wage my struggle to spread awareness about climate change right here in Bengaluru the city which is collapsing under the its weight as one of the fastest growing cities in the world……with all the banes of modern civilisation and urbanisation…will outline my role as climate yogi soon in my next blog….

The Climate Conundrum or whose Climate is it anyway....or Nero fiddling as Rome was burning….

The world is aghast at Trump withdrawing from Paris Accord...as if he has driven the last nail on the climate coffin....whether trump would have joined Paris or not....humanity is at crossroads in any case...the moot point is whether we are admitting to the root causes of climate change and whether we are ready to eschew our energy intensive lifestyles and adopt a pastoral one in order to immediately reach zero carbon on a current basis....and possibly avert a CLIMOCALYPSE ....or postpone the extinction of life on Earth beyond Hawking's prediction of 100 years...

The Paris accord was hammered out after almost two decades of climate meets and negotiations since the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 ...the accord was a great achievement because it finally arrived at a broad agreement between almost two hundred countries...In the Paris Agreement, each country determines its own contribution it should make in order to mitigate global warming. There is no mechanism to force a country to set a specific target by a specific date.

The participating 195 countries agreed, by consensus, to reduce emissions as part of the method for reducing greenhouse gas. In the 12-page document, the members agreed to reduce their carbon output "as soon as possible" and to do their best to keep global warming "to well below two degrees C".  (Source Wikipedia)

There could not have been a vaguer and wishy-washy document. This just shows how difficult it must have been even after about 18 years of meets and negotiations to hammer out a consensus which was at best a masterpiece of obfuscation. I wonder whether it really matters that a 140-character attention span surreality star like Trump who revels in the absurd, mentored by a diehard anti establishmentarian the fanatical Steve Bannon, says he does not want to join Paris. 

In any case the Paris accord had an impossible requirement that the developed nations will contribute $ 100 bn per year from 2020 to developing ecos for implementing carbon reduction strategies. This is indeed a tall task since most of the developed ecos are mired in economic stagnation or low growth, aging demographics, crippling debt, weak banking systems, rising unemployment, violence, migrants’ crises, crumbling infrastructure, terror, extreme climate events ...

Against this background, none of them, except perhaps with the lone exception of Germany, can really contribute anything significant to the Green Fund....maybe most thought the perhaps USA would be the major contributor like in many other funds, projects, alliances...in fact US is cribbing that most NATO members are not contributing their shares...and some signatories like India had made it clear that without external financial impetus they cannot go whole hog on changing over to clean energy which requires heavy investments.. currently the world’s total foreign aid per annum is about $130 bn ...leading contributors being USA $30 bn, Germany and the U.K. $20 bn each...most of this are to existing projects. May not be easy for them to divert much from these existing commitments...expecting the rich nations to cough up an additional $100 bn may not be at all realistic…

Ironically the highest cumulative co2 emitter since 1850 is USA… and it wants to abandon its commitments under paris with 27%…next come the EURO nations…the top 10 nations / groups constitute 83% of cumulative co2 emissions…

Anyway we want to analyse the top emitters (https://wri.org/blog/2014/11/6-graphs-explain-world%E2%80%99s-top-10-emitters), whether nation wise, per capita wise, carbon consumption to GDP-wise…we will arrive at various statistics…which still does not help us to arrive at how to reduce emissions asap, which countries should reduce more, whether rich nations should pay poor and poorer nations for their efforts, if so how much, whether carbon tax will help, what should be tax rates, whether we should calculate on the basis of carbon or greenhouse gas emissions, countries which consume high carbon products manufactured elsewhere should also pay for emissions…..and so on…the climate conundrum goes on….there can be no path acceptable to all which is fair….

But few facets of this contentious climate issue are irrefutable…

·         The cities which occupy about 1% of the land mass, emit 60% of carbon

·         Richest economies are among top emitters

·         The top 5/10% of the world’s population according to wealth are the top emitters since they own overwhelming majority of carbon intensive contraptions…

·         Top fossil fuel users and producers contribute most to total emissions…

·         Over an estimated 60% of global emissions, environmental pollution and degradation has taken place since 1960s with the explosion of technological advances, consumerism, cars, air conditioning, consumer durables, air travel, urbanisation, rampant capitalism….

Hence any strategy to contain the root causes of climate change must start with proactive steps by the above group of nations / cities / factors….if they can drastically bring down and stop their contributions to climate change …. Then there could be a glimmer of hope that our planet may survive the onslaught of climate change and avoid the dystopian future which could be as close as 20 years away…. a very good analogy is lung cancer in a human where doctors unequivocally advise to stop smoking immediately upon diagnosis….similarly here there is an immediate need to STOP CARBON EMISSIONS right away….

Another way of interpreting this imbroglio is that the rich are the main culprits in terms of being the main sources of the damaging carbon whereas it’s the poor who will have face the brunt of the downside of climate change without the wherewithal to equip themselves adequately to cope with the climate ravages – hence the rich enjoy the thrills of high carbon cars while the poor not only suffer the flooding from excessive precipitation but also the pain of homes damaged homes since they generally stay in the cheaper low lying land and lack of funds to repair damage to homes or build new houses….well that is how all societies work…..hence within a Marxian framework again the poor are at the receiving end of climate change…ironically the world’s biggest polluter and emitter has the temerity to say climate change is a hoax…..this can be beautifully summarised by an appropriate adage Nero fiddling while Rome was burning!!!…….though of course the enlightened driving forces of American innovation and industry are trying to reduce their carbon print…sadly these incremental measures maybe be too little too late….urgent need for radical solutions….now or never…

Hawking's 100-year countdown to Extinction....2117

Few days ago, the high priest of science Stephen Hawking announced that humans have another 100 years to leave earth and establishment settlements in other planets in space since earth will become inhabitable....perhaps the most important statement on the future and fate of the human race ....the finiteness and finality of existence as we know it is indeed chilling...strangely even now after 3/4 days of his chilling prediction....hardly any reporting on by main stream media....or even any outcry by ppl who have read it...we are indeed an abominable thick skinned mammal race immersed so heavily in our sinful energy intensive, greedy, selfish, anthropogenic, violent lifestyles that these pronouncements don't affect us at all....its business and life as usual....

In fact only in Nov 2016, Hawking had given the human race 1000 years to survive before we are wiped out...strange why he had to revise it so drastically and within six months...10 years ago RK Pachauri, chairman of IPCC, Nobel prize winner... had referred to the IPCC report which had stated that by 2035 the Himalayas will be bereft of all snow....there was an immense hue and cry..then Pachauri had to retract the 2035 deadline mentioned in the report ....

In my New Grammar of Living (NGL) blogs and diaries I have been forecasting that the CLIMOCALYPSE will occur by 2030-50....this prediction was based by the accelerating climate change over the past few decades....which has now over the recent say 5 years or so achieved perceptible critical mass in all respects.....such as: melting poles, heat records outstripping cold records by 7 to 1, disappearing seasons as we knew them, rising sea levels, unseasonal storms & lightening, flooding, permafrost melt, famines, warming oceans, atmospheric rivers, dying species....and list goes on and on...

My plaintive cry for stopping our anthropogenic ways started during the early 70s....when I coined a few anthems....AS WE HURTLE INTO 2001 AND BEYOND ( 2001  was borrowed from Kubrick's masterpiece 2001 A Space Odyssey but 2001 was indeed a milestone year of the next millennium which was about 28/9 years away then).....other anthems were CLOSE TO EDGE....HURTLING TOWARDS THE ABYSS...close the edge taken from an album of Yes which was a searing experience especially if one was suitably high....those were the early years when industrialisation in Europe especially Germany polluted the rivers to the extent fish started dying, and also air was polluted...price society had to pay for producing steel, cars.....

Gradually with factories having come up indiscriminately all over the world in order to satisfy the ever spiralling consumer needs of humans suitably influenced by the innovative, capitalistic Americans...consumer products, durables, food and beverages, cars, air conditioning, heating, ....and also the nations and large corporations got into aviation, ramping up navies, acquiring aircraft carriers....the industrial production of the globe rose appreciably after the Second World War...growth rose geometrically then exponentially over successive decades...which led to pouring mounting levels of effluents into rivers and atmosphere everywhere....

In terms of anthropogenic damage to the planet, as per the NGL estimate (or informed guesstimate or fakestimate!!): about 60% of total cumulative CO2 emissions and other climate threatening effluents / waste added to the atmosphere / ocean since inception of present age ( ie about 50,000 to 200,000 years ago) till now have occurred since 1960...incidentally 60s has been recently judged as the best ever decade for USA in terms of several indicators...(rewind of the car boom of the the earlier part of the 20th century Ford et al, lifestyles, personalities, low individual and national debt, large middle class)......

The model which can prove the hypothesis "60% of earth's total cumulative emissions, etc have come since 1960"..... is based upon function of the variables: (no of cars and usage, aviation, air conditioning, heating, pollution, urbanisation, population, industrialisation, etc) since 1960 is more than 60% of the respective cumulative totals. Actually most of these variables since  the 60s it would perhaps be 70% to 80% of their cumulative totals.

We can see how few of the parameters have increased since '60: world population has risen from 3 bn to 7 bn now; no of vehicles registered has risen from 126 mn to 1 bn, international trade exports rose from $130 bn to a staggering $18,939 bn....this is just to highlight how much of anthropogenic activity has taken place since 1960....which has triggered off the tsunamis of various climate change parameters...this frightening Tofflerian future shockean telescoping of change is absolutely mind boggling for us to digest ....hence the same kind of change must have been inflicted on Mother Earth during the past 57 years or so....any indicator we take up like air travel, air conditioning, washing machines, dishwashers, urbanisation, concrete usage, plastics, manufacturing, electricity production and consumption, crude production......NGL is sure that the 60% principle will hold....NGL hopes to do further research in this direction soon...

Today we are helplessly watching these Frankensteins of our own making ie economic devt, technological progress, improving standards of living, industrialisation....the mantra or more, bigger, better and faster of everything is now striking back at us, consuming us with its anthropogenic tentacles....we are now so hopelessly addicted to all that we have created.... that it's well nigh impossible to extricate ourselves from their baleful effects and impact...though climate change and nature's fury is compounding year by year yet none of us has the courage or sense to break out of the evil spell of modern life with all its comforts, gadgets.....

Over the past couple of months or so there has been an flurry of writings on immediacy of climate change and its harsh impacts...one impactful article said 10 years left for controlling and reducing carbon dioxide.......the Paris accord too was a soft ....no specifics...at least it was some kind of accord...no firm targets...except a wishy washy not exceeding 2f in some fuzzy future....2100....an accord which the largest cumulative emitter of CO2 America may not honour...due to a stream of consciousness tweeting president who has stated in the past that climate change is a Chinese hoax....now has filled his cabinet caligari....full of climate sceptics and tentacles of the deep state.....ironically USA contributes about 20% of emissions...and if we compute cumulative emissions USA must have contributed maybe 30-40%....

The deep state comprising of industrialists who have interests in auto, crude, power, etc....are the ones who desperately want their businesses to prosper and continue even if they are the root causes of climate change. ... politicians like Trump also are hand in glove with the deep state....

In the greater scheme of things maybe the deep state is a few moves ahead in the climate chess game....in the ultimate analysis...maybe even if we stop all new carbon intensive and based projects right away....and try to reduce emissions to zero by 2050..still the toxic impact of the period 1960-2017 may be difficult to fully contain and offset.....the climatic imbalance which has already been set in motion....will be extremely difficult to control....maybe only 1% probability of the runaway climate collapse getting curbed....or delaying the inevitable CLIMOCALYPSE by few decades.... the deep state must be reasoning that in any case the dire consequences of climate change cannot be avoided....hence why stop fossil fuel....does it really matter whether doomsday is 100 or 120 years away....like Keynes said....in the long run we are all dead.....

Trump-Kim mtg: Dr Strangeglove....how I learnt.....to love the BOMB...

The events of the past year or so have been breathtaking as we all hurtled through a highly surreal cocktail of accelerating climate change and global warming, mounting debt, terror, AI, rise of Trump, brexit....though the different elements of this heady brew have been building up over the past few decades....the climax of this ianthropogenic drama on a global stage is approaching fast ....

Few scenes of this episode have been so symbolic of the crazy times we live...recently Donald Trump completed his 100 days...which culminated with a day of sheer comic interviews which trump gave...which were bizarre.... Suddenly out of the blue he waxed eloquent on Kim and said he would be honoured to meet him ....this conjured up the scene of a Trump Kim meeting...reminded me of Kubrick's classic Dr Strangeglove: how I learnt to stop worrying and love the bomb....perhaps the greatest movie of last century...things cannot get zanier...

This frequent bipolar mood shifts of the supreme commander in chief of American forces...the super brat who tweets at 3 am in the morning...maybe is mirroring the present bipolar nature of humanity, the Americans, climate......there have been insinuations that perhaps trump is high on cocaine at 3 am....since no so called sane person can stay awake till 3 am...and keep on tweeting stream of consciousness style....maybe we cannot blame him....for having to resort to coke....at least he not into alcohol...which is such scourge of humanity like hard drugs.....cocaine is a high society safety valve which helps them cope with reality.....

During the 60s bored housewives in uk were resorting to mother's little helper immortalised by the Rolling Stones....to escape out of their boring lives...basically by popping yellow amphetamine pills...most of humanity is looking for escape routes for coping with life....be it cinema, alcohol, accumulating money, binge eating, drugs.....Clinton claimed he had not inhaled marijuana...Obama was open about his grass days...now US has a president who does not drink...but at the age of 70 is so full of energy...that too at 3 am....

Coming back to that scene to come when Trump meets Kim....like two trigger happy Cowboys meeting...atta boy...two of them with fingers on the dreaded nuclear button...then we have Putin with his nuke button...then Iran getting closer to nukes...Pakistan with over 100 nuke missiles...terrorists almost armed with dirty bombs...presaged by TV serials like Jack Bauer's 24....so what are we talking off...in a world with nukes having proliferated to such a level...a Trump Kim meeting is no great deal...at least it will be held in the splendour of Mar-a-lago gilded drawing room with ivanka and jarred in tow...

It really does not matter I guess what trump says whether it's u turns like breaking up big banks while dismantling the Dodd-Frank regulations....or gyrating around healthcare...or climate change as a Chinese hoax....he has every right to speak out mind...since in the first place why are we in this predicament today....isn't it after eight years of the most suave president USA ever had? ....and Clinton and the Bushes before Obama....with all his finesse Obama could not get most of his acts passed by the congress...hence he ruled by executive orders...only this time it's a bit different ....trump has to contend with the courts and judges who are forever placing obstacles to his executive orders...but now trump probably knows that eventually he can take these cases to the Supreme Court where he has a conservative majority...

Will be a new style of ruling through the court orders....its indeed a bipolar or multi polar schizoid world where we are governing through court decrees...maybe another face of fascism...maybe democracy and fascism are the obverse sides of the same coin...look at Philippines with Duterte ....person who is ruling through bayonets in the name of eliminating drug menace...but ask a lot of filipinos who swear by Duterte ...with an 80% popularity rating....

While in India Modi has emerged like a messiah to take India to its rightful place among nations....yet the MSM media and the English speaking elite who held sway since india's independence....do not waste a moment in tearing down Modi at every turn...the most glaring was the recent elections in UP the most populous state in India...where all the polls and columns forecasted a mixed outcome with no party gaining majority...but Modi proved everyone hugely wrong by winning by a landslide...in a way when Modi won the general elections in 2014.. no one really gave him a chance....that is how off the pulse of the ppl the media was....

It's indeed a strange strange world which is bipolar at several levels...the days of the 60s of love and flower power have morphed during the past 50 years or so into a hate festival...hate seems to be a strong motif everywhere...one common theme seems to be resources becoming scarce. The different strands of the new normal are: increasing inequalities, too many ppl, hyper competition, climate becoming harsher with famines, warming, flooding, pollution...., terror, violence, guns, drugs, promiscuity...... On the flip side AI and robotics are engulfing all walks of life...humans who control tech are the new ruling class.... only survivors of the coming climate armageddon.  .....

In fake times.....

Our fake times.....

26th Feb '17

On my ninth trip to modern Rome. Crazier and zanier. Time running out. We are indeed in the thick of fake times. People are hurling accusations about fake news. But we are all members of a fake society, which is part of larger fake reality. We have all surrendered to the fake Surreal indeed. No one has the courage to put an end to the spiralling insanity which is running out of control. I am taking refuge in the music of Atoms for Peace and Radiohead which seem to be only truth if ever there is one. Wish there was some herbs to ease the pain of existence. Yes human existence in the 2010s is at the closest to the EDGE....

We are in a hyper loop of alternate reality wedged between too many universes each trying to take the centre stage edging out the others. Too many planes of truth / untruth, reality/ unreality/ surreality mingling, intermingling...difficult to unravel the multitudinous strands... in order to reach.....

No one is interested in addressing the root causes of our existential, geophysical, metaphysical, psychological predicaments...all paying lip service while carefully safeguarding their hidden agendas...glossing over the truth...which is so relative...which serves their narrow selfish motives...

The recents weeks have witnessed a spike in extreme weather events across the globe. Australia is in the throes of an unprecedented heat wave. Sydney hitting 47 c for a few days. India too had an early heat wave unusual for this time of the year.  Delhi min temp 5 c above normal. Chicago has had the mildest winter in ages. Had not snowed much. Mid and northeast USA experienced 65-70 f recently which is most unusual for Feb. I am sure similar anomalies must be plaguing other parts of the world as well. We are too attuned to the new climate norms ...fake climate...to be perturbed by these aberrations which insidiously have crept under our skin and do not bother us much. As I keep harping like the proverbial frogs in boiling water... There are several among us diehard sceptics who still pout that climate change is fake.....

Strange but true...Trump wants to stop migrants from seven radical Islam terror breeding ground nations.... but ppl are protesting their guts out against this ban... agree it was a botched up implementation as it prevented green cards and other similar ppl from entering... but basically how can ppl welcome refugees from these failed countries without extreme vetting, etc ...western nations are indeed under seize from Islam... recently in London near Downing Street there were thousands of Muslims screaming allahu Akbar...and the other day in Times Square NYC thousands of Muslims protesting... indeed this is the new norm... the fake new world..where the unthinkable is the new norm...are these the rumblings of the Nostradamus crusades of the third millennium...indeed too much of surreal  fakeness to accept...the scary future where in few decades countries like Belgium, France and Germany may have Muslim majority population as they are multiplying faster than others....as it is globally resources are depleting rapidly and insufficient to meet gargantuan needs of US influenced consumerism of the 7 bn+ popn....last thing we need is population explosion and that too which spews terror and hatred...

Extreme poverty and violence are spawning waves of migrants from Africa and terror infested Middle East....this is upsetting the delicate global balance .... France is in ruins ...Paris one of the greatest cities is close to anarchy... migrants have virtually invaded the city...many of the fashionable boulevards are filled with unkempt migrants along with their belongings...with frequent skirmishes between them.. Germany too has let in thousands of migrants maybe as an atonement for the holocaust .... there was a news item recently that several churches had been desecrated...Sweden and other countries which have been kind to migrants are also facing similar problems..Australia also has started barring migrants from entering..USA has over 11 mn illegal immigrants...whom Trump wants to deport... But again these poor 11mn immigrants are not the radical Islam types......like in Europe...so far society was divided on these issues...but of late patience of ppl is wearing out and populist govts are being voted to power who want to stop illegal migrants from entering...
U
13th April '17

Fake wars are being pursued to enrich the pockets of the capitalistic military industrial complex...trump bent on flexing his ageing muscles and the might of United States...dropped the most powerful ever non nuclear bomb in Afghanistan yesterday...week or ago 59 dreaded tomahawk missiles hit Syria...in an attempt to exterminate the ISIS..but it seems 24 hours later that Isis facility was up and running...really don't know whose war is it...trump sprang this missile surprise maybe to impress Xi of China whom he was meeting for dinner at his extravagant palace in Florida...or may be to divert the attention of the MSM which was then gunning after his Russia connections...now trumpie is threatening to take out the nuclear arsenal of North Korea's Kim....and Kim in turn threatening to retaliate with nukes on American soil...indeed this is the craziest of fake times...where nothing seems real..anymore...a surreal unreal fake nightmarish dream....