Item 4 presents an EcoFeminist view of History which seems Communist to me.

It advocates a Turning "From Empire to Earth Community".

It makes these claims:

"Delphi was inhabited since 1400 B.C. by people who worshipped the Mother Earth
deity ..."
CORRECT; BUT THE GODDESS REGIMES ALSO PRACTISED HUMAN SACRIFICE

"The sexism, racism, economic injustice, violence, and environmental destruction
that have plagued human societies for 5,000 years ..."
THIS 5,000 YEAR PERIOD IS WHAT WE KNOW AS "CIVILIZATION"

"Given that Empire has prevailed for 5,000 years ..."
THE AUTHOR SEES NO MERIT IN THAT 5,000 YEAR PERIOD - ONLY IN THE "COMMUNIST"
SOCIETY THAT PRECEDED IT.

"For 5,000 years, the ruling class has cultivated ..."
I.E. "CIVILIZATION" IS MERELY A MISNOMER FOR "CLASS RULE".

NO WONDER THAT OUR KIDS IN SCHOOLS ARE NO LONGER STUDYING HISTORY (ANCIENT OR
MODERN) AS WE USED TO. SINCE ALL SUCH HISTORY IS MERELY A MASK FOR IMPERIALISM,
WHAT IS THE POINT?

(1) How new drugs are approved.. concealed
(2) Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says
(3) Free Trade Area of the Americas - FTAA
(4) The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community [ERAInf]

(1) How new drugs are approved.. concealed

Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:35:10 -0400 From: Gregory Abbey
<g-abbey@comcast.net>

How new drugs are approved; adverse reactions concealed during trials
Big Pharma Research Racket Is Killing People June 23, 2006. By Evelyn
Pringle http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/Pharma.html

I'm well aware of this with an 80+ y/o mom who's being drugged and
tox'd into oblivion by BIG media and BIG pharma. At the doctors' office
there are `Physicians Leisure´ magazines which associate the 10 or 15
biggest drugs with grand and exotic vacations.

Here's a book overview on some medical myths.
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/kauffman.htm

Dr. Stan Monteith discusses this each week. ==

Book Review

Malignant Medical Myths

Why medical treatment causes 200,000 deaths in the USA each year, and
how to protect yourself

Joel M. Kauffman; West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity, 2006; ii + 326
pages. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/kauffman.htm

In this eye-opening and meticulously documented book, Dr Joel Kauffman
presents a damning critique of mainstream medicine in the United
States. The US spends $2 trillion per year on healthcare, about $7000
per person, yet it buys almost the poorest care among developed
countries, with at least 200,000 deaths per year from medical
treatment. Based on a thorough review of the professional literature,
Kauffman shows that official advice on screening tests, drugs, diet,
exercise, alcohol, radiation, and water fluoridation is often wrong and
commercially motivated, that clinical trials are often slanted, and
that "sickness" is created to sell treatments.

There is compelling evidence that treatment with some of the
best-selling prescription drugs fails to prolong life or improve its
quality in many of the people who take them. This includes
anticholesterol drugs, blood pressure drugs, and most anticancer drugs
used for chemotherapy. Over 90% of drugs only work in 30 to 50% of the
people taking them. However, if medical providers fail to follow
"official" guidelines for diagnosis and treatment or if they use an
"alternative" treatment, they may be threatened with lawsuits for
malpractice or suffer ostracism or even delicensing.

Schering-Plough, one of world' biggest drug companies, is known to send
doctors unsolicited cheques for $10,000; in return they are "invited"
to sign an attached "consulting" agreement requiring them to prescribe
the company' medicines. Johnson & Johnson, Wyeth, and Bristol-Myers
Squibb have made similar enticements. Giant pharmaceutical companies
peddle biased information on drugs and tests, and pay academics to give
papers at international conferences, reporting favourable results from
drugs trials. Respected reporters and commentators often owe part of
their salaries to corporations whose products they endorse.

As Kauffman demonstrates in great detail, articles in peer-reviewed
medical journals can"t necessarily be trusted. It is usually only the
information contained in the abstracts of such articles that receives
publicity. But abstracts are often incomplete and misleading. For
instance, many people taking part in drug trials tend to drop out
because of side-effects, but this information rarely finds its way into
the abstract. "You would be appalled to find how often only favorable
results are cited in an abstract," says Kauffman (pp. 8-9). One of the
favourite types of phoney evidence results from "selection bias" - i.e.
the inclusion of all studies that support one' biases, and omission of
some or all that do not. Reviewers of articles submitted for
publication are supposed to be independent of the financial sources of
the authors and their peers in expertise. Many are, says Kauffman, "but
considerable trading of favors and behind-the-scenes pressures must
occur to lead to the publication of so many poorly written, or
well-written yet misleading papers" (p. 5).

US government cholesterol guidelines, which promote more and more
aggressive use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, were prepared by drug
experts, many involved with drug manufacturers, without any government
supervision or approval. During the advisory committee meetings held by
the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to discuss the safety and efficacy
of two new drugs for diabetes, one-third of committee' nine members had
financial ties with the drug manufacturers that submitted the new drug
applications or with their competitors. Staff at the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) are allowed to engage in lucrative private
consulting deals with drugs companies. One university professor who
reviewed two dozen treatments for psychiatric disorders favoured three
of the treatments he stood to profit from based on his consultancy
ties. University or medical school researchers cannot be trusted
either, due to the influence of their commercial sponsors. Researchers
who publish findings unfavourable to the sponsor have been threatened
with loss of funding, lawsuits, blacklisting from future contracts, or
loss of employment.

Drugs trials are often flawed. A favourite trick is to test drugs on
healthy male adults, then use the result to prescribe for women,
children, and the elderly as well. Trials of tests, devices, and drugs
often fail to compare the results with earlier work, or with
competitors" drugs, and only the studies with the most favourable
results are publicized. Companies routinely delay or prevent
publications that show their drugs to be ineffective. A majority of
studies on Zoloft, an antidepressant drug, showed it to be no better
than placebo (i.e. sugar pills). In 1990, more than a decade after
antiarrhythmic drugs had been introduced, it was estimated that they
were killing more Americans every year than had died in action in the
Vietnam War. The tendency of Big Pharma to publish only drug trial
results which are positive is so pervasive and misleading that Spain
has made it mandatory to publish the result of all clinical trials run
in that country.

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are essential: this means that half
the subjects receive the genuine drug, operation, or treatment and the
other half a fake version (placebo), without being told which group
they belong to. Positive results typically occur in 30 to 50% of
subjects in the placebo group, and a significantly higher percentage of
the subjects in the other group must show positive results if the
treatment in question is to be considered genuinely beneficial.
Clinical trials with no control or placebo groups are automatically
suspect.

Many drugs have side-effects underplayed in the trial results presented
to the FDA, which does not test drugs and devices itself but merely
examines the test results the manufacturers choose to offer. Kauffman
writes:

Many interventions are justified on conveniently measured parameters,
such as bone density, cholesterol level, EKGs, and blood pressure. In
all of these cases, examples exist in which the intervention improved
the easily measured symptom, called the surrogate endpoint, such as
lowering blood pressure, yet worsened the primary endpoint of heart
attack, bone fracture, or death. One extreme example was the use of
antiarrhythmic drugs. "Success" was shown by altered EKGs
(electrocardiograms), but the drugs caused sudden cardiac death.
Conversely, the FDA has sometimes been a ferocious obstructor of
effective and nontoxic alternative treatments ... (p. 4)

Treatments are often claimed to reduce the relative risk for some
condition by a certain percentage. For instance: "Take this treatment
and your chances of a heart attack will drop by 50%." Kauffman says
that this is a major method used to perpetuate today' medical myths on
diet, blood pressure control, cholesterol control, annual mammograms,
and many other subjects. This is because any reduction in the relative
risk of some condition, however large, may pale into insignificance
when the absolute risk is considered. For example, saying that taking a
particular drug for 10 years cuts the relative risk of acquiring a
sickness by 50% sounds impressive. But this could mean that your
absolute risk of acquiring a sickness is reduced from 2 in a million to
1 in a million. Seen in these terms, the improvement is negligible, and
if the treatment is highly expensive and has adverse side-effects, it
would be advisable to avoid it.

The following is a typical example of unreliable medical advice: A
54-year-old English literature teacher at Oxford University was
diagnosed with multiple myeloma and told to begin chemotherapy within a
week otherwise he would be dead within a year. He was told that
chemotherapy would enable him to live up to two or three years longer.
After seeking other opinions on the value of chemotherapy, he refused
it in favour of a combination of alternatives. Eight years later he was
still alive and employed.

* * *

A brief summary of the "malignant medical myths" that Kauffman explodes
is given below.

Myth 1: Taking an aspirin a day forever will make you live longer. ...

Myth 2: Low-carbohydrate diets are unsafe and ineffective for losing
weight.

The truth is that the advice from every government agency and most
non-profit foundations to eat low-fat diets, especially low in
saturated fat and cholesterol, is utterly baseless, and results in
immense suffering and costs. "Much of the evidence for low-fat
(high-carb) diets," Kauffman concludes, "is a result of poorly designed
studies, misinterpretation, exaggeration, and outright fraud" (p. 73).
The safety of low-carb diets, on the other hand, is well established
and there is indisputable evidence that they contribute to weight loss
and help prevent the complications of diabetes. Evidence for the
benefits of low-carb diets is even found in journal articles claiming
to provide evidence of the opposite - once their actual data are
studied and not just the misleading abstracts.

Myth 3: Using cholesterol-lowering drugs, especially the statins, would
benefit nearly everyone. ...

Myth 4: Nearly everyone over 50 should take drugs for high blood
pressure.

Blood pressure increases naturally with age, and is higher in women
than in men of the same age. It is very low blood pressure that is
dangerous. Using drugs to forcibly lower blood pressure by dilating
arteries or veins, weakening the heart, or increasing urination rarely
does anything of overall value. Only people with very high blood
pressures (the top 10%) would obtain any benefit at all from
antihypertensive drugs, and this would be minor as well as accompanied
by severe side-effects. The side-effects are so bad that 20 to 60% of
people stop taking the drugs within three years.

Medical textbooks are warring about the right blood-pressure levels,
and new national standards come out every few years placing the target
values ever lower. Kauffman asks: "Is good medical practice fueling
this war or might it just be the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical
industry? For to lower the target value 5 points on the BP scale can
mean $billions more in drug sales" (p. 110).

Myth 5: A drink a day keeps the doctor away. ...

Myth 6: Exercise! Run for your life! No pain, no gain! ...

Myth 7: EDTA chelation therapy for atherosclerosis is ineffective,
dangerous and a fraud. ...

Myth 8: All ionizing radiation is dangerous except when an oncologist
delivers it.

Contrary to the popular dogma that any amount of ionizing radiation
causes cancer, there is overwhelming evidence that small doses of
radiation actually prevent cancer by stimulating the body's natural
defences. This is known as radiation hormesis, but it is ignored by the
authorities. Not only is typical background radiation harmless, it is
actually beneficial, and is usually less than the optimum amount.
Kauffman concludes that small leaks from nuclear power plants or
radioisotopes in transit, and small doses from radon in homes and from
most medical imaging techniques are harmless and probably beneficial.
People are now paying money to enter caves with radon-laced atmospheres
for the purpose of helping their cancers and arthritis, and they are
doing so because they find that it works (www.radonmine.com). Radon may
well be one of mankind' oldest therapies; in Europe, the use of hot
springs with high radon content dates back some 6000 years.

Kauffman says that hysteria about low-dose ionizing radiation has been
fed by overzealous environmentalism.

This has led to needless expense both in dwellings and workplaces,
resistance to nuclear power plants, as well as avoidance of exposure to
beneficial medical procedures utilizing low-dose radiation. ...

Myth 9: Annual mammograms and follow-up treatment prolong life. ...

Myth 10: Cancer treatments are better than ever, and have cure rates of
60%.

Cancer experts claim current treatments have a 60% "success" rate, but
this should not be confused with a true "cure" rate. What they mean is
that 60% of those treated will still be alive five years after
diagnosis. But even this modest progress is the result of earlier and
earlier diagnosis with very little improvement due to the benefit of
mainstream treatments. The five-year survival rate has been called "the
world' most misleading number". In clinical trials, a control patient
dying of any cause is counted as a failure of nontreatment, whereas a
patient who dies just before a treatment programme is completed is not
counted as a failure of treatment, on the grounds that the patient had
not completed the treatment programme!

Kauffman says that professional scaremongers, especially
pseudo-environmentalists, have caused alarm with their claim that the
total number of new cancer cases is at an all-time high in
industrialized countries, and that most of the increase in cancer is
caused by pesticides or other pollutants. When cancers due to smoking
are removed, the age- and smoking-adjusted rate actually shows a 33%
drop since 1950.

There is no epidemic of cancer at present except lung and malignant
melanoma (skin cancer). The former is due to smoking and the latter,
possibly, to too much UVA from sunlight, often caused by overexposure
despite UVB "protection" from sunblock, which makes things worse by
preventing vitamin D formation in the skin. Since there is no epidemic
of cancers of the gastrointestinal tract or other places where certain
foods, pesticides or pollutants would be expected to manifest
themselves, these factors can hardly be major causes of these types of
cancers. (p. 254)

It is beyond dispute that mammography in women and the test for
prostate cancer in men with no symptoms have no overall benefit. And
since the treatments for lung and pancreatic cancer are so poor,
there's not much use being screened and finding out early that you have
one of them.

The five-year survival rate was cleverly chosen to mask the delayed
destructive effects of radiation and chemotherapy. Highly toxic
chemotherapeutic drugs kill all rapidly dividing cells in the body,
which means not only cancer cells, but also many kinds of healthy
cells, including those of the immune system. Mainstream treatments
often provide only a few weeks to months more of poor-quality life.
Some alternative treatments work well enough to cause complete
remisssions, but are not always available in the US.

Myth 11: Water fluidation prevents tooth decay in children and is
perfectly safe. ...

Kauffman concludes there is too much surgery in the US, and too many
screening tests are carried out; if there is no satisfactory treatment
for a condition, as with most cancers, there is little point having a
test done. Too many drugs are prescribed, including many of the
best-sellers such as antinflammatory, anticholesterol,
antihypertensive, and antidepressant drugs. A fifth of hospitalizations
occur because of the adverse effects of drugs, and cost more than the
drugs themselves. In addition, too many antibiotics are prescribed for
non-bacterial infections.

No one is allowed to die a natural death free from the adverse effects
of FDA-approved, yet unproven treatment:

The typical 70-year-old USA citizen takes about 7 prescription drugs
daily, of which none are really a benefit in most cases, and 5 merely
deal with the adverse effects of the other 2. ... [M]edical myths have
made normal aging expensive, debilitating and depressing. (p. 280)

A disturbing development is that the UN's Codex Alimentarius
Commission, which has strong ties with the World Trade Organization and
multinational corporations, is planning to ban all non-prescription
sales of vitamins and supplements, even though many are of great value
in preventing and treating some important conditions, as well as being
low cost. Kaufmann calls this a "Codex-driven pharmaceutical takeover
of the natural products industry". In Canada, for example, possession
of DHEA, a harmless and valuable supplement, is now a felony, carrying
the same penalty as crack cocaine.

As Codex continues its march, herbs are increasingly classed as drugs
with restricted access. ... This is designed to assist drug companies
in their technology of PharmaPrinting, which produces versions of herbs
that will be standardised and patented by drug companies and approved
by government regulators as drugs. (p. 283)

There is a fortune to be made by multinational drug companies that
obtain a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of life-sustaining
natural products. It has been estimated that if the Codex Commission is
allowed to obstruct the eradication of heart disease by restricting
access to nutritional supplements, more than 12 million people
worldwide will continue to die every year from premature heart attacks
and strokes.

Kauffman criticizes the way powerful commercial interests and the
government agencies they control routinely debunk all forms of
alternative medicine. Although the promoters of alternative treatments
are sometimes even less scientific than mainstream promoters, there are
some valuable alternatives available.

An extensive list of recommended books and websites is given at the end
of Kauffman's engaging book.

by David Pratt. June 2006.

(2) Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says

Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 16:03:05 -0400 From: Michael Hudson
<michael.hudson@earthlink.net>

Might you send out a copy of th full text?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/22/AR200-
6062201763.html

Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says

The Number of People Who Say They Have No One to Confide In Has Risen

By Shankar Vedantam

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, June 23, 2006; Page A03

Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two
decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no
one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new
evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss
personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly
isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their
closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about
two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an
increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties -- once
seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of
psychological and civic benefits -- are shrinking or nonexistent. In
bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone.

"That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because
those people did not know someone with a car," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a
Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. "There really
is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants."

If close social relationships support people in the same way that beams
hold up buildings, more and more Americans appear to be dependent on a
single beam.

Compared with 1985, nearly 50 percent more people in 2004 reported that
their spouse is the only person they can confide in. But if people face
trouble in that relationship, or if a spouse falls sick, that means
these people have no one to turn to for help, Smith-Lovin said.

"We know these close ties are what people depend on in bad times," she
said. "We're not saying people are completely isolated. They may have
600 friends on Facebook.com [a popular networking Web site] and e-mail
25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are
personally important."

The new research is based on a high-quality random survey of nearly
1,500 Americans. Telephone surveys miss people who are not home, but
the General Social Survey, funded by the National Science Foundation,
has a high response rate and conducts detailed face-to-face interviews,
in which respondents are pressed to confirm they mean what they say.

Whereas nearly three-quarters of people in 1985 reported they had a
friend in whom they could confide, only half in 2004 said they could
count on such support. The number of people who said they counted a
neighbor as a confidant dropped by more than half, from about 19
percent to about 8 percent.

The results, being published today in the American Sociological Review,
took researchers by surprise because they had not expected to see such
a steep decline in close social ties.

Smith-Lovin said increased professional responsibilities, including
working two or more jobs to make ends meet, and long commutes leave
many people too exhausted to seek social -- as well as family --
connections: "Maybe sitting around watching 'Desperate Housewives' . .
. is what counts for family interaction."

Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard and the
author of "Bowling Alone," a book about increasing social isolation in
the United States, said the new study supports what he has been saying
for years to skeptical audiences in the academy.

"For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected
with family and friends, and there was more giving of blood and money,
and all of those trend lines turn sharply in the middle '60s and have
gone in the other direction ever since," he said.

Americans go on 60 percent fewer picnics today and families eat dinner
together 40 percent less often compared with 1965, he said. They are
less likely to meet at clubs or go bowling in groups. Putnam has
estimated that every 10-minute increase in commutes makes it 10 percent
less likely that people will establish and maintain close social ties.

Television is a big part of the problem, he contends. Whereas 5 percent
of U.S. households in 1950 owned television sets, 95 percent did a
decade later.

But University of Toronto sociologist Barry Wellman questioned whether
the study's focus on intimate ties means that social ties in general
are fraying. He said people's overall ties are actually growing,
compared with previous decades, thanks in part to the Internet. Wellman
has calculated that the average person today has about 250 ties with
friends and relatives.

Wellman praised the quality of the new study and said its results are
surprising, but he said it does not address how core ties change in the
context of other relationships.

"I don't see this as the end of the world but part of a larger puzzle,"
he said. "My guess is people only have so much energy, and right now
they are switching around a number of networks. . . . We are getting a
division of labor in relationships. Some people give emotional aid,
some people give financial aid."

Putnam and Smith-Lovin said Americans may be well advised to
consciously build more relationships. But they also said social
institutions and social-policy makers need to pay more attention.

"The current structure of workplace regulations assumes everyone works
from 9 to 5, five days a week," Putnam said. "If we gave people much
more flexibility in their work life, they would use that time to spend
more time with their aging mom or best friend."

(3) Free Trade Area of the Americas - FTAA

Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 17:55:37 -0500 From: "Jacob G. Stansbury, Jr."
<damor1@cox.net>

Free Trade Area of the Americas - FTAA Yes, It is real! ... and … you
really need to read about it. The index page of the official URL is
here: http://www.ftaa-alca.org/alca_e.asp

This despicable plan, although it reflects all of the earmarks of
"communism", is pure capitalism.

I think it important to recognize that "communism", like "terrorism",
has been established by propaganda and dogma, to represent our "enemy".
On the other hand "capitalism" (we always have to have two and only two
choices) is upheld as benevolent and good. Both of these affirmations
are of course a lie.

Recognize that in the FTAA document, the "Parties", with an upper case
"P", referenced are corporations and states as defined in the
instrument itself, NOT PEOPLE.

This document formalizes the status of Parties as superior to that of
the peoples of the various geographic areas enslaved by the
"agreement". Its sole purpose is to increase the return (profits) to
the Parties, and to distribute the burden "equally" among the peoples
thereby enslaved. The referenced "boundaries" are both economic and
geographical, and serve to only imprison the people within them.

It contains NO provisions to protect the peoples from exploitation, and
actually actively promotes and facilitates the exploitation of the
"common" people of the world! Slavery is redefined as "security".

Please take the time to read this formalization of the end of our
personal liberty, especially between the lines.
http://www.ftaa-alca.org/FTAADraft03/ChapterII_e.asp

(4) The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community [ERAInf]

Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 11:44:17 +0930 From: ERA
<hermann@picknowl.com.au>

YES! Magazine, Summer 2006 Issue: 5,000 Years of Empire

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1463

The Great Turning:

From Empire to Earth Community

by David Korten

Silenced by Empires: Delphi was inhabited since 1400 B.C. by people who
worshipped the Mother Earth deity. Early goddess worship at Delphi gave
way to the Greek worship of Apollo. In 191 B.C. the sanctuary fell to
the Roman Empire. Photo by Ben van der Zee. Illustration by Tracy
Loeffelholz Dunn

By what name will future generations know our time?

Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great
Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to
sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental
systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's
resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they
look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when
their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human
nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative
partnership with one another and Earth?

A defining choice

We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing
human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community.
Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice,
we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or
mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be
replaced.

Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among
nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the
few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the
creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human
societies to maintain the institutions of domination.

Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the
human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and
surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the
possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum
physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology,
archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before
Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its
principles.

Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has
reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will
sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of
peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced U.S. economy dependent on
debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of
every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however,
whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic
opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility.

A turn from life

According to cultural historian Riane Eisler, early humans evolved
within a cultural and institutional frame of Earth Community. They
organized to meet their needs by cooperating with life rather than by
dominating it. Then some 5,000 years ago, beginning in Mesopotamia, our
ancestors made a tragic turn from Earth Community to Empire. They
turned away from a reverence for the generative power of
life-represented by female gods or nature spirits-to a reverence for
hierarchy and the power of the sword - represented by distant, usually
male, gods. The wisdom of the elder and the priestess gave way to the
arbitrary rule of the powerful, often ruthless, king.

Paying the price

The peoples of the dominant human societies lost their sense of
attachment to the living earth, and societies became divided between
the rulers and the ruled, exploiters and exploited. The brutal
competition for power created a relentless play-or-die,
rule-or-be-ruled dynamic of violence and oppression and served to
elevate the most ruthless to the highest positions of power. Since the
fateful turn, the major portion of the resources available to human
societies has been diverted from meeting the needs of life to
supporting the military forces, prisons, palaces, temples, and
patronage for retainers and propagandists on which the system of
domination in turn depends. Great civilizations built by ambitious
rulers fell to successive waves of corruption and conquest.

The primary institutional form of Empire has morphed from the
city-state to the nation-state to the global corporation, but the
underlying pattern of domination remains. It is axiomatic: for a few to
be on top, many must be on the bottom. The powerful control and
institutionalize the processes by which it will be decided who enjoys
the privilege and who pays the price, a choice that commonly results in
arbitrarily excluding from power whole groups of persons based on race
and gender.

Troubling truths

Herein lies a crucial insight. If we look for the source of the social
pathologies increasingly evident in our culture, we find they have a
common origin in the dominator relations of Empire that have survived
largely intact in spite of the democratic reforms of the past two
centuries. The sexism, racism, economic injustice, violence, and
environmental destruction that have plagued human societies for 5,000
years, and have now brought us to the brink of a potential terminal
crisis, all flow from this common source. Freeing ourselves from these
pathologies depends on a common solution-replacing the underlying
dominator cultures and institutions of Empire with the partnership
cultures and institutions of Earth Community. Unfortunately, we cannot
look to imperial powerholders to lead the way.

Beyond denial

History shows that as empires crumble - the ruling elites become ever
more corrupt and ruthless in their drive to secure their own power - a
dynamic now playing out in the United States. We Americans base our
identity in large measure on the myth that our nation has always
embodied the highest principles of democracy, and is devoted to
spreading peace and justice to the world.

But there has always been tension between America's high ideals and its
reality as a modern version of Empire. The freedom promised by the Bill
of Rights contrasts starkly with the enshrinement of slavery elsewhere
in the original articles of the Constitution. The protection of
property, an idea central to the American dream, stands in
contradiction to the fact that our nation was built on land taken by
force from Native Americans. Although we consider the vote to be the
hallmark of our democracy, it took nearly 200 years before that right
was extended to all citizens.

Americans acculturated to the ideals of America find it difficult to
comprehend what our rulers are doing, most of which is at odds with
notions of egalitarianism, justice, and democracy. Within the frame of
historical reality, it is perfectly clear: they are playing out the
endgame of Empire, seeking to consolidate power through increasingly
authoritarian and anti-democratic policies.

Wise choices necessarily rest on a foundation of truth. The Great
Turning depends on awakening to deep truths long denied.

Cultural Turning

The Great Turning begins with a cultural and spiritual awakening-a
turning in cultural values from money and material excess to life and
spiritual fulfillment, from a belief in our limitations to a belief in
our possibilities, and from fearing our differences to rejoicing in our
diversity. It requires reframing the cultural stories by which we
define our human nature, purpose, and possibilities.

Economic Turning

The values shift of the cultural turning leads us to redefine wealth-to
measure it by the health of our families, communities, and natural
environment. It leads us from policies that raise those at the top to
policies that raise those at the bottom, from hoarding to sharing, from
concentrated to distributed ownership, and from the rights of ownership
to the responsibilities of stewardship.

Political Turning

The economic turning creates the necessary conditions for a turn from a
one-dollar, one-vote democracy to a one-person, one-vote democracy,
from passive to active citizenship, from competition for individual
advantage to cooperation for mutual advantage, from retributive justice
to restorative justice, and from social order by coercion to social
order by mutual responsibility and accountability.

Global awakening

Empire's true believers maintain that the inherent flaws in our human
nature lead to a natural propensity to greed, violence, and lust for
power. Social order and material progress depend, therefore, on
imposing elite rule and market discipline to channel these dark
tendencies to positive ends. Psychologists who study the developmental
pathways of the individual consciousness observe a more complex
reality. Just as we grow up in our physical capacities and potential
given proper physical nourishment and exercise, we also grow up in the
capacities and potential of our consciousness, given proper social and
emotional nourishment and exercise.

Over a lifetime, those who enjoy the requisite emotional support
traverse a pathway from the narcissistic, undifferentiated magical
consciousness of the newborn to the fully mature, inclusive, and
multidimensional spiritual consciousness of the wise elder. The lower,
more narcissistic, orders of consciousness are perfectly normal for
young children, but become sociopathic in adults and are easily
encouraged and manipulated by advertisers and demagogues. The higher
orders of consciousness are a necessary foundation of mature democracy.
Perhaps Empire's greatest tragedy is that its cultures and institutions
systematically suppress our progress to the higher orders of
consciousness.

Given that Empire has prevailed for 5,000 years, a turn from Empire to
Earth Community might seem a hopeless fantasy if not for the evidence
from values surveys that a global awakening to the higher levels of
human consciousness is already underway. This awakening is driven in
part by a communications revolution that defies elite censorship and is
breaking down the geographical barriers to intercultural exchange.

The consequences of the awakening are manifest in the civil rights,
women's, environmental, peace, and other social movements. These
movements in turn gain energy from the growing leadership of women,
communities of color, and indigenous peoples, and from a shift in the
demographic balance in favor of older age groups more likely to have
achieved the higher-order consciousness of the wise elder.

It is fortuitous that we humans have achieved the means to make a
collective choice as a species to free ourselves from Empire's
seemingly inexorable compete-or-die logic at the precise moment we face
the imperative to do so. The speed at which institutional and
technological advances have created possibilities wholly new to the
human experience is stunning.

JUST OVER 60 YEARS AGO, we created the United Nations, which, for all
its imperfections, made it possible for the first time for
representatives of all the world's nations and people to meet in a
neutral space to resolve differences through dialogue rather than force
of arms.

LESS THAN 50 YEARS AGO, our species ventured into space to look back
and see ourselves as one people sharing a common destiny on a living
space ship.

IN LITTLE MORE THAN 10 YEARS our communications technologies have given
us the ability, should we choose to use it, to link every human on the
planet into a seamless web of nearly costless communication and
cooperation.

Already our new technological capability has made possible the
interconnection of the millions of people who are learning to work as a
dynamic, self--directing social organism that transcends boundaries of
race, class, religion, and nationality and functions as a shared
conscience of the species. We call this social or-ganism global civil
society. On February 15, 2003, it brought more than 10 million people
to the streets of the world's cities, towns, and villages to call for
peace in the face of the buildup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They
accomplished this monumental collective action without a central
organization, budget, or charismatic leader through social processes
never before possible on such a scale. This was but a foretaste of the
possibilities for radically new forms of partnership organization now
within our reach.

Break the silence, end the isolation, change the story

We humans live by stories. The key to making a choice for Earth
Community is recognizing that the foundation of Empire's power does not
lie in its instruments of physical violence. It lies in Empire's
ability to control the stories by which we define ourselves and our
possibilities in order to perpetuate the myths on which the legitimacy
of the dominator relations of Empire depend. To change the human
future, we must change our defining stories.

Story power

For 5,000 years, the ruling class has cultivated, rewarded, and
amplified the voices of those storytellers whose stories affirm the
righteousness of Empire and deny the higher-order potentials of our
nature that would allow us to live with one another in peace and
cooperation. There have always been those among us who sense the
possibilities of Earth Community, but their stories have been
marginalized or silenced by Empire's instruments of intimidation. The
stories endlessly repeated by the scribes of Empire become the stories
most believed. Stories of more hopeful possibilities go unheard or
unheeded and those who discern the truth are unable to identify and
support one another in the common cause of truth telling. Fortunately,
the new communications technologies are breaking this pattern. As
truth-tellers reach a wider audience, the myths of Empire become harder
to maintain.

The struggle to define the prevailing cultural stories largely defines
contemporary cultural politics in the United States. A far-right
alliance of elitist corporate plutocrats and religious theocrats has
gained control of the political discourse in the United States not by
force of their numbers, which are relatively small, but by controlling
the stories by which the prevailing culture defines the pathway to
prosperity, security, and meaning. In each instance, the far right's
favored versions of these stories affirm the dominator relations of
Empire.

THE IMPERIAL PROSPERITY STORY says that an eternally growing economy
benefits everyone. To grow the economy, we need wealthy people who can
invest in enterprises that create jobs. Thus, we must support the
wealthy by cutting their taxes and eliminating regulations that create
barriers to accumulating wealth. We must also eliminate welfare
programs in order to teach the poor the value of working hard at
whatever wages the market offers.

THE IMPERIAL SECURITY STORY tells of a dangerous world, filled with
criminals, terrorists, and enemies. The only way to insure our safety
is through major expenditures on the military and the police to
maintain order by physical force.

THE IMPERIAL MEANING STORY reinforces the other two, featuring a God
who rewards righteousness with wealth and power and mandates that they
rule over the poor who justly suffer divine punishment for their sins.

These stories all serve to alienate us from the community of life and
deny the positive potentials of our nature, while affirming the
legitimacy of economic inequality, the use of physical force to
maintain imperial order, and the special righteousness of those in
power.

It is not enough, as many in the United States are doing, to debate the
details of tax and education policies, budgets, war, and trade
agreements in search of a positive political agenda. Nor is it enough
to craft slogans with broad mass appeal aimed at winning the next
election or policy debate. We must infuse the mainstream culture with
stories of Earth Community. As the stories of Empire nurture a culture
of domination, the stories of Earth Community nurture a culture of
partnership. They affirm the positive potentials of our human nature
and show that realizing true prosperity, security, and meaning depends
on creating vibrant, caring, interlinked communities that support all
persons in realizing their full humanity. Sharing the joyful news of
our human possibilities through word and action is perhaps the most
important aspect of the Great Work of our time.

Changing the prevailing stories in the United States may be easier to
accomplish than we might think. The apparent political divisions
notwithstanding, U.S. polling data reveal a startling degree of
consensus on key issues. Eighty-three percent of Americans believe that
as a society the United States is focused on the wrong priorities.
Supermajorities want to see greater priority given to children, family,
community, and a healthy environment. Americans also want a world that
puts people ahead of profits, spiritual values ahead of financial
values, and international cooperation ahead of international
domination. These Earth Community values are in fact widely shared by
both conservatives and liberals.

Our nation is on the wrong course not because Americans have the wrong
values. It is on the wrong course because of remnant imperial
institutions that give unaccountable power to a small alliance of
right-wing extremists who call themselves conservative and claim to
support family and community values, but whose preferred economic and
social policies constitute a ruthless war against children, families,
communities, and the environment.

The distinctive human capacity for reflection and intentional choice
carries a corresponding moral responsibility to care for one another
and the planet. Indeed, our deepest desire is to live in loving
relationships with one another. The hunger for loving families and
communities is a powerful, but latent, unifying force and the potential
foundation of a winning political coalition dedicated to creating
societies that support every person in actualizing his or her highest
potential.

In these turbulent and often frightening times, it is important to
remind ourselves that we are privileged to live at the most exciting
moment in the whole of the human experience. We have the opportunity to
turn away from Empire and to embrace Earth Community as a conscious
collective choice. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

####

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures
Network.

This article draws from his newly released book, The Great Turning:
From Empire to Earth Community. Go to www.yesmagazine.org/greatturning
for book

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