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Fritjof Capra and Another Day in Paradigm

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09 December 2005, 09:05 PM
spoonboy
Fritjof Capra and Another Day in Paradigm
http://www.abc.net.au/specials/saul/fifth.htm

Saul contends that our policies are courting boom and bust cycles which end up in terrible depressions.

"History shows quite clearly that trade and direct investment are powerful catalysts for economic liberalisation, democratisation and the improvement of domestic social conditions."

"Interest based societies, societies which percieve themselves as being interest-based, end up in violence. This is a natural outcome of the natural imbalance of markets."

http://www.abc.net.au/specials/saul/sixth.htm

"We broke all the rules which are supposedly inevitable rules in order to create the society we live in today."

Saul speaks of the "commodity trap" which affects New Zealand, Australia, South America ond other countries.

http://www.abc.net.au/specials/saul/seven.htm

This segment is about the "diamond shaped" democratic society with a large middle class that we saw in mid-twentieth century being replaced by a "pyramid shaped" nineteenth century model.

http://www.abc.net.au/specials/saul/eight.htm

"Now in all of that there is nothing positive, nothing creative, there's nothing new, there are no policies, a total lack of imagination, there's mediocrity, and of course there's an attempt to ignore the fact that when you cut taxes you do automatically cut public policy."

"They argue that people who would disagree with them are simply the left. You'll notice there's alot of "it's the left" as a way of not having to confront their fears and failures when they're faced by the real global engagement."

"And so I believe very strongly that the willful undermining of universal public education by our governments and the direct or indirect encouragement of private education is the most flagrant betrayal of the basic principles of middle-class representational democracy in the last 50 years."
09 December 2005, 10:22 PM
spoonboy
http://www.abc.net.au/specials/saul/ninth.htm

"The descendents of Hume and Smith turned their backs on Hume and Smith."

"Six trillion dollars American per day moves around in the international money market. Every serious banker I know tells me "off the record" that 95% of that is just paper, it's inflation, moving stuff around in South Sea bibble tradition."

"Those international money markets are not inevitable, they're just the result of public passivity."

This is a SYSTEM in crisis, a SYSTEM not yet sufficiently adapted to the opportunities and risks of globalisation." --Michel Camdessus, head of the IMF.

"They missed the point, but then you know ideology is a form of denial, a denial of reality. It is a profound form of naivette."

http://www.abc.net.au/specials/saul/tenth.htm

"In other words ideology has been contradicted by reality."

"The Americans won't admit any of it, or the English, it doesn't matter whether you're the left or the right in power in England, they just don't admit stuff like this because the City is so powerful."

Speaking of control paradigms and systems theory...

http://www.abc.net.au/specials/saul/eleven.htm

"I think we are at a turning point. I think we are in a way at a kind of turning point that Tolstoy described in his theory of history..."

(This speech was back in 1999, so could it be that 9/11 has postponed realization of this turning point, and by the way, The Turning Point is the title of Fritjof Capra's second book).

"It could lead to, and we've seen this in all of our countries, the rise of what I call negative nationalist parties." (prophecy?)

http://www.abc.net.au/specials/saul/twelve.htm

"Globalisation as presented and advanced doesn't have to be-- it's anti-democratic and it's a failed experiment."

"If you analyse the base of your country you'll find that corporations have moved from paying around 50 years ago somewhere around 45 per cent of the income tax, and they're now probably somewhere arounf six or seven per cent."

(It's not just a river in Egypt) Wink