This is one of best articles I have read about the obscene wealth inequality that has developed in the United States. This is why we are not preparing properly for climate change. This is why our democracy is in serious danger. This is why the United States does not have a healthcare system that has anything to do with fostering wellbeing; this is why college has become almost unaffordable; this is why rents are so high, and home ownership so difficult to obtain; and on and on. We have become a nation with a small cadre of uber-rich and a growing population of financial peasants. It is a medieval world based on money not blood.
Peter Phillips, author of Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity
The top 10 asset management firms now control $50 trillion of global wealth. They answer to no one but the ultrarich — the 0.05 percent — whose fortunes they continue to expand. The rest of us pay the price. Investing in everything from fossil fuel companies to private prisons to weapons manufacturers, they provide the economic lifeblood for some of the most destructive forces in the world. This not only undermines democracy, but imperils our very survival.
In his new book out this September, Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity (The Censored Press & Seven Stories Press), Peter Phillips takes us deep into the world of these transnational asset management firms and the people who run them: the “Titans.” He shows how they constitute a new global elite who wield nearly unchecked power.
Phillips is professor of political sociology (emeritus) at Sonoma State University, the former director of Project Censored (1996 to 2010) and the former president of Media Freedom Foundation (2003 to 2017). He has been editor or co-editor of 14 editions of Censored, was co-editor with Dennis Loo of Impeach the President: The […]
People with brain lesions are more susceptible to religious fundamentalism, according to a study authored by a Harvard University neurology instructor.
Brain lesions aren’t isolated to brain tumors. Those with congenital disorders, degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s, Lewy body dementia, and Parkinson’s can add to brain cell death or malfunction, The Cleveland Clinic explains. There are also immune and inflammatory conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or lupus, that can lead to lesions in the brain. Problems like epilepsy, a stroke, traumatic brain injury or brain aneurysms can all cause brain lesions.
“The whole brain functional connectivity pattern was then correlated with religious fundamentalism scores on a voxelwise basis,” wrote Ferguson in a thread on X using a number of illustrations.
Here is another prediction I have published in SR becoming and acknowledged reality. Climate change is going to transform agriculture of all kinds across the Earth. Plants that grew in one place will no longer do so. This fact-based article should be seen as a warning about what is coming. And I chose this report also because it makes what I think is the essential linkage between climate change and the food economy all over the world.
Credit: Adobe
Extreme weather events, geopolitical conflict, high input costs and increased demand all contributed to spikes in food prices around the world, experts told Carbon Brief in June.
The impact of these events varies depending on the type of food — olive oil, orange juice and other common supermarket items are now more expensive, for example, whereas grains have dropped in price compared to the start of this year.
Food inflation has even featured in the U.S. presidential election campaign, with Democratic nominee Kamala Harrisproposing to ban “price gouging” on groceries by corporations.
Carbon Brief has produced five charts — each focused on a specific area — to show how […]
DENYSE O'LEARY , Nobel Prize Physicist - Mind Matters
Stephan:
Brian Josephson is a colleague in consciousness research I have known for something like 40 years. Like many in physics he is struggling with making consciousness foundational and causal in physics but is getting there. I publish this to make the point that physicists including Nobel laureates are beginning to recognize that the current physicalist science paradigm is not wrong it is simply inadequate. This is a process that has been going on for almost a century. Planck, Einstein, Pauli, Heisenberg and other of the olympians who created modern physics began their careers as physicalists, but came to recognize as Planck said in 1931, the consciousness is causal and fundamental and that spacetime arises from consciousness, not consciousness from spacetime. It is a radical change but essential to understand the Matrix of Consciousness.
At Closer to Truth,Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviewed Welsh physicist Brian Josephson on the topic, “Must the Universe Contain Consciousness?” (June 12, 2024, 8:39 min). Josephson won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for predicting the Josephson effect.
He sees consciousness as an aspect of the universe that we can’t ignore, even as he is not sure what to make of it:
Our universe seems fine-tuned for life, with the constants of physical laws having to be within tight boundaries. Does this mean that the universe has a goal of consciousness? Is there a directedness of the universe toward consciousness? Is consciousness entirely contingent or is it something special, even a ultimate object of universal development?
Here are a couple of selections prepared from the auto transcript at YouTube:
Kuhn asks how consciousness can underlie the universe, given that the universe has been around for billions of years but conscious life on Earth got started “just in the last few million years, even if you talk about animal consciousness.”
Josephson: But that [2:58] doesn’t tell us how universe begins. There lots of problems there. So therefore I propose that something happening beyond the universe and on a larger and possibly infinite time scale has this organization and is […]
Here is yet another alarming story about microplastics; this one about their growing presence in the human brain. Why is this happening, why is nothing being done to curtail the plastics corporations? I think the answer to that question is that this is a measure of the corruption in our society making profit more important than fostering wellbeing.
Pieces of microplastic found on the banks of the Warnow River in Rostock, Germany. Bernd Wüstneck Credit: picture alliance / Getty
It’s well-known that microplastics are pervasive, with scientists finding microplastics in testicular tissue, lungs and even blood. But now, researchers have discovered microplastic pieces in samples of the human brain at higher levels than expected.
In a new pre-printed study published early by the National Library of Medicine, scientists analyzed plastic content in the livers, kidneys and brains of autopsied human bodies. While the team found microplastics in all of the organs, the scientists were concerned that the average amount of microplastics in the 91 brain samples was between 7 and 30 times higher than the amount of microplastics in the liver and kidney samples.
“It’s pretty alarming,” Matthew Campen, lead author of the study and professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico, told The Guardian. “There’s much more plastic in our brains than I ever would have imagined or been comfortable with.”
In the study, the authors revealed that 24 of the brain samples that had been […]
I have been telling you for more than two decades that this trend was coming, and it is only going to get worse in the coming years. Climate change is going to cause enormous migrations both inside countries and between countries, and water violence is going to become a critical aspect of this crisis.
Children line up at a well to get water near a makeshift camp for internally displaced Yemenis in Abs in the northern Hajjah province. Credit: AFP / Getty
The number of violent incidents linked to water resources around the world has increased dramatically in recent years, according to a new study.
The Pacific Institute’s annual Water Conflict Chronology report shows there were 347 instances of water-related armed conflict in 2023, compared to 231 in 2022.
These include attacks on water systems, disputes over access to water, and the use of water as a weapon of war.
Senior fellow and the co-founder of the think tank Peter Gleick said the increase in such incidents around the world last year was “disturbing.”
“It was a very substantial increase, and it’s an indication of the importance of water and the failure of institutions to manage water properly,” he said in an interview.
According to the study, there were conflicts last year involving access to water in every major region around the world.
The institute’s senior researcher Morgan Shimabuku said there have […]
