Damn it.

http://www.muslimwakeup.com/mainarchive/000119.html

Well, at least there’s Kucinich

Apologies for not answering many emails and not making many postings of late. I’ve been super busy trying to get various things in order, and haven’t been spending nearly as much time on the computer.

It’ll spin back up in a while – probably another week or so. For now, a forward from a friend to share.

I should note that this article is pretty antagonistic towards Christians. I personally don’t share that feeling (unless they’re trying to stone or burn my friends), but I think the material is well presented and has some ideas worth considering.

“We Are the Other People”
by Oberon Zell

“Ding-dong!” goes the doorbell. Is it Avon calling? Or perhaps Ed McMahon with my three million dollars? No, it’s Yahweh’s Witlesses again, just wanting to have a nice little chat about the Bible…

Note: I find the insults superfluous and a bit counter productive, but I’m not going to edit the original.

Boy, did they ever come to the wrong house! So we invite them in: “Enter freely and of your own will…” (Hey, it’s Sunday morning, nothing much going on, why not have a little entertainment?) Diane and I amuse ourselves watching their expressions as they check out the living room: great horned owl on the back of my chair; ceremonial masks and medicine skulls of dragons and unicorns on the wall; crystals, wands, staffs, swords; lots of Goddess figures and several altars; boa constrictors draped in amorous embrace over the elkhorn; white doves sitting in the hanging planters; cats and weasels underfoot; iron dragon snorting steam atop the wood stove; posters and paintings of wizards and dinosaurs and witchy women, some proudly naked; sculptures of mythological beasties and lots more dinosaurs; warp six on the star-filled viewscreen of my computer; a five-foot model of the USS Enterprise and the skeleton of a plesiosaur hanging from the ceiling; very, very many books, most of them dealing with obviously weird subjects… To say nothing of the great horned owl perched on the back of my chair and the Unicorn grazing in the front yard. You know; early Addams Family decor.

And then, of course, it being late in the morning, you can expect Morning Glory to come wandering out naked, looking for her wake-up cup of tea. Morning Glory naked is a truly impressive sight, and the Witlesses look as if she’d set titties on stun as they stand immobilized, hands clasped over their genitals. With the stage set and all the actors in place, the show is ready to begin.

Their mission, of course, it to save our heathen souls by turning us on to “The Word of the Lord” – their Bible. I guess they figure some of us just haven’t heard about it yet, and we’re all eagerly awaiting their joyous tidings of personal salvation through giving our rational faculties to Jesus. Every time they come around, I look forward to trying out a new riposte. Sure, it may be cruel and sadistic of me, but hey, I didn’t call them up and ask them to come over; they entered at their own risk!

This time should be pretty good. After letting them run off their basic rap while lovely Morning Glory serves us all hot herb tea, I innocently remark: “But none of that applies to us. We have no need for salvation because we don’t have original sin. We are the Other People.”

“Hunh? What?” they reply eloquently. It’s clear they’ve never heard this one before.

“Right,” I say. “It’s all in your Bible.” And I proceed to tell them the story, using their own book for reference:

Genesis 1:26 – The [Elohim] said, “Let us make humanity in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild beasts and all the reptiles that crawl upon the earth.”

Elohim is a plural word, including male and female, and should properly be translated “Gods” or “Pantheon.”

Note: Obviously, my translation of the Bible says God rather than Elohim, but there is a plural aspect, and it does specifically say Male and Female they created them (this is in the sixth “day”). In 2:18 (where this writeup refers to God meaning Yahweh God), my translation states “The Lord God” (as opposed to just God) and has him saying “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” – singular. Kind of interesting.

27 The Gods created humanity in the image of themselves, In the image of the Gods they created them, Male and Female they created them.
28 The Gods blessed them, saying to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth.”

Now clearly, here we are talking about the original creation of the human species: male and female. All the animals, plants, etc. have all been created in previous verses. This is before the Garden of Eden, and Yahweh is not mentioned as the creator of these people. The next chapter talks about how Yahweh, an individual member of the Pantheon, goes about assembling his own special little botanical and zoological Garden in Eden, and making his own little man to inhabit it:

Gen 2:7 – Yahweh God fashioned a man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus the man became a living being.
8 Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned.
9 Yahweh God caused to spring up from the soil every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden.
15 Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it.

Now this next is crucial: note Yahweh’s precise words:

Of course, it is unlikely that these are the “precise words” as it is unlikely that either Yahweh or Adam spoke english.

16 Then Yahweh God gave the man this admonition, “You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden.
17 Nevertheless of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.”

Fateful words, those. We will refer back to this admonition later.

Then Yahweh decides to make a woman to go with the man. Now, don’t forget that the Pantheon had earlier created a whole population of people, “male and female,” who are presumably doing just fine somewhere “outside the gates of Eden.” But this setup in Eden is Yahweh’s own little experiment, and will unfold to its own separate destiny.

21 So Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh.
22 Yahweh God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.

Right. Man gives birth to woman. Sure he does. But that’s the way the story is told here.

I’m not sure what the objection is here – based on the direction this is going, this isn’t all women (those created in chapter 1), this is Eve who according to 2:20 was made to be Adam’s helper. Following the line of this article, Eve was created to be subservient, but the wives of Cain, and probably Seth (unless he married his sister) were not.

25 Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other.

Well, of course not! Why should they? But take careful note of those words, as they also will prove to be significant . . .

Now this next part is where it starts to get interesting. Enter the Serpent:

Gen. 3:1 – The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman, “Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”
2 The woman answered the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden.
3 “But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, ‘You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death’”
4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “No! You will not die!
5 “God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.”

What a remarkable statement! “Your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The Serpent directly contradicts Yahweh.

Obviously, one of them has to be lying. Which one, do you suppose? And, if the serpent speaks true, wouldn’t you wish to eat of the magic fruit? Wouldn’t it be a good thing, to become “like gods, knowing good and evil”? Or is it preferable to remain in ignorance?

6 The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it. She gave some also to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths.

The author makes an interesting assumption here: that if you realize you are naked you will automatically want to cover yourself. Further implications will unfold shortly…

8 The man and his wife heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.
9 But Yahweh God called to the man. “Where are you?” he asked.
10 “I heard the sound of you in the garden,” he replied. “I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”
11 “Who told you that you were naked?” he asked. “Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?”

And so the sign of the Fall becomes modesty. Take note of this. The descendants of Adam and Eve will be distinguished throughout history from virtually all other peoples by their obsessive modesty taboos, wherein they will feel ashamed of being naked. It follows that those who feel no shame in being naked are, by definition, not carriers of this spiritual disease of original sin!

Note: This hasn’t prevented them from making the rest of us wear clothes on pain of ostracism or other penalties…

12 The man replied, “It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”

Right. Blame the woman. What a turkey!

Note: Unnecessary for the analysis. This didn’t have to be done as an offense to Christians if you wanted to simply point out that the descendents of Adam were not the only people out there and that the other people had their own deities.

13 Then Yahweh God asked the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman replied, “The serpent tempted me and I ate.”

So of course she blames the serpent. But just what did the serpent do that was so evil? Why, he called Yahweh a liar! Was he wrong?

Let’s see…

21 Yahweh God made clothes out of skins for the man and his wife,
and they put them on.

Out of skins? This means that Yahweh had to kill some innocent animals to pander to Adam and Eve’s new obsession with modesty! And now we come to the crux of the Fall. Yahweh had said back there in chapter 2:17, regarding the fruit of the tree of knowledge, that “on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.” The Serpent, on the other hand, had contradicted Yahweh in chapter 3:4-5: “No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” So what actually happened? Who lied and who told the truth about this remarkable fruit? The answer is given in the next verse:


22 Then Yahweh God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat some and live forever.”

Get that? Yahweh himself admits that he had lied! In fact, and in Yahweh’s own words, the Serpent spoke the absolute truth! And moreover, Yahweh tells the rest of the Pantheon that he intends to evict Adam (and presumably Eve as well) to keep them from gaining immortality to go with their newly-acquired divine knowledge. To prevent them, in other words, from truly becoming gods! So who, in this story, comes off as a benefactor of humanity, and who comes off as a tyrant? THE SERPENT NEVER LIED!

Note: Ok, there are some aspects that are likely to be a bit troublesome for Christians, but it still could have been done a bit more “philosophically”.

This story, to digress slightly, bears a remarkable resemblance to a contemporary tale from ancient Greece. In that version, the Serpent (later identified as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer) may be equated with the heroic titan Prometheus, who championed humanity against the tyranny of Zeus, who wished for people to be mere slaves of the gods. Prometheus, whose name means “forethought,” gave people wisdom, intelligence, and fire stolen from Olympus. Moreover, he ordained the portions of animal sacrifice so that humans got the best parts (the meat and hides) while the portion that was burned to the gods was the bones and fat. In punishment for this defiance of his divine authority, Zeus condemned Prometheus to a terrible punishment for an immortal: to be chained to a mountain in the Caucasus, where Zeus’ gryphon/eagle (actually a Lammergier) would devour his liver each day. It would grow back each night. Zeus promised to relent if Prometheus would reveal his great secret knowledge: Who would succeed Zeus as supreme god? Prometheus refused to tell, but history has revealed the answer…

The interesting thing about all this is that the Greeks properly regarded Prometheus as a noble hero in his defiance of unjust tyranny. One may wonder why the Serpent is not so well regarded. On the contrary, snakes are loathed throughout Christiandom.

23 So Yahweh God expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken.
24 He banished the man, and in front of the garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and the flame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.

So that’s it for the Fall. But the story of Adam and Eve doesn’t end there.

Gen 4:1 – The man had intercourse with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain…

2 She gave birth to a second child, Abel, the brother of Cain. Now Abel became a shepherd and kept flocks, while Cain tilled the soil.
3 Time passed and Cain brought some of the produce of the soil as an offering for Yahweh,
4 while Abel for his part brought the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as well. Yahweh looked with favor on Abel and his offering. But he did not look with favor on Cain and his offering, and Cain was very angry and downcast.

Well, why shouldn’t he be? Both brothers had brought forth their first fruits as offerings, but Yahveh rejected the vegetables and only accepted the blood sacrifice. This was to set a gruesome precedent:

8 Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out;” and while they were in the open country, Cain set on his brother Abel and killed him.

Accursed and marked for fratricide,

16 Cain left the presence of Yahweh and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

We can assume that the phrase “left the presence of Yahweh” implies that Yahweh is a local deity, and not omnipresent. Now Eden, according to Gen. 2:14-15, was situated at the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, apparently right where Lake Van is now, in Turkey. “East of Eden,” therefore, would probably be along the shores of the Caspian Sea, right in the Indo-European heartland. Cain settled in there, among the people of Nod, and married one of the women of that country. Here, for the first time, is specifically mentioned the “other people” who are not of the lineage of Adam and Eve. I.e., the Pagans.

So let’s look at this story from another viewpoint: There we were, around six thousand years ago, living in our little farming communities around the Caspian Sea, in the land of Nod, when this dude with a terrible scar comes stumbling in out of the sunset. He tells us this bizarre story, about how his mother and father had been created by some god named Jahweh, and put in charge of a beautiful garden somewhere out west, and how they had gotten thrown out for disobedience after eating some of the landlord’s forbidden magic fruit of enlightenment. He tells us of murdering his brother, as the god of his parents would only accept blood sacrifice, and of receiving that scar as a mark so that all would know him as a fratricide. The poor guy is really a mess psychologically, obsessed with guilt. He is also obsessively modest, insisting on wearing clothes even in the hottest summer, and he has a hard time with our penchant for skinny-dipping in the warm inland sea. He seems to believe that he is tainted by the “sin” of his parent’s disobedience; that it is in his blood, somehow, and will continue to contaminate his children and his children’s children. One of our healing women takes pity on the poor sucker, and marries him…

17 Cain had intercourse with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. He became builder of a town, and he gave the town the name of his son Enoch.

With both of their first sons not turning out very well, Adam and Eve decided to try again:

25 Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she gave birth to a son whom she named Seth…
26 A son was also born to Seth, and he named him Enosh. This man was the first to invoke the name of Yahweh.

Now it doesn’t mention here where Seth’s wife came from. Another woman from Nod, possibly, or maybe someone from another neolithic community downstream in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. But her folks also, cannot be of the lineage of Adam and Eve, and must also be counted among “the other people.”

But whatever happened to Adam? After all, way back there in chapter 2:17, warning Adam about the magic fruit of knowlege, Jahweh had told him that “on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.” So, when did Adam die?

Gen. 5:4 – Adam lived for eight hundred years after the birth of Seth and he became the father of sons and daughters.
5 In all, Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years; then he died.

Hey, that’s pretty good! Nine hundred and some odd years isn’t bad for a man who’s been told he’s gonna die the next day!

Well, the story goes on, and maybe next time the Witlesses come to visit I’ll tell more of it. But suffice it to say that those of us who are not of Semitic descent (i.e., not of the lineage of Adam and Eve) cannot share in the Original Sin that comes with that lineage. Being that the Bible is the story of that lineage, of Adam and Eve’s descendants and their special relationship with their particular god, Yahweh, it follows that this is not the story of the rest of us. We may may have been Cain’s wife’s people, or Seth’s wife’s people, or some other people over the hill and far away, but whichever people the rest of us are, as far as the Bible is concerned, we are the Other People, and so we are continually referred to throughout. Later books of the Bible are filled with admonitions to the followers of Jahweh to “learn not the ways of the Pagans…” (Jer 10:2) with detailed descriptions of exactly what it is we do, such as erect standing stones and sacred poles, worship in sacred groves and practice divination and magic. And worship the sun, moon, stars and the “Queen of Heaven.” “You must not behave as they do in Egypt where once you lived; you must not behave as they do in Canaan where I am taking you. You must not follow their laws.” (Lev 18:3) For Yahweh, as he so clearly emphasises, is not the god of the Pagans. We have our own lineage and our own heritage, and our tale is not told in the Bible.

We were not “made” like clay figurines by a male deity out of “dust from the soil.” We were born of our Mother the Earth, and have evolved over aeons in Her nurturing embrace. All of us, in our many and diverse tribes, have creation myths and legends of our origins and history; some of these tales may even be actually true. Like the descendants of Adam and Eve, many of us also have stories of great floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other cataclysms that wiped out whole communities of our people, wherein “I alone survived to tell the tale.” Nearly all of our ancestral tribes (and especially those of us who today are reclaiming our own Pagan heritage) lack that peculiar obsessive body modesty that seems to be a hallmark of the original sin alluded to in the story of the Fall. We can be naked and unashamed! Why, our Goddess even tells us,” as a sign that you are truly free, you shall be naked in your rites.” Not being born into sin, we have no need of salvation, and no need of a Messiah to redeem our sinful souls. Neither heaven nor hell is our destination in the afterlife; we have our own various arrangements with our own various deities. The Bible is not our story; we have our own stories to tell, and they are many and diverse. In a long life, you may get to hear many of them…

Brightest Blessings!

Anyway, an interesting write up to think about. Of course, with interbreeding and such, ancestries are all mixed up all over the place, but there certainly are people who seem naturally drawn the one way and others who seem naturally drawn the other. If anyone ever comes across a less antagonistic version, let me know.

Who IS John Ashcroft. Two short Bios:

A relatively neutral one from Wikipedia, and a must read from rotten.com’s library:

“It’s just our luck that the one principled politician in the history of the United States would have to have principles like these.” – rotten.com library

In other topics, I ran across a short quote which I can attribute via email if anyone wants.

Basically, this was the writer’s comment in response to someone who sounded a lot like me.

Yes, we shall revolt! But right after I finish this bag of chips and coke! The time is now! But not before this episode of Seinfeld is over! We shall overcome our enemies, right after I finish buttoning up my new shirt from The GAP!

Yeah, yeah, I know, I KNOW.

Oh yeah, I really can’t do anything until after I subject my poor readers to another bad pun:

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.

Anyhoo, an old friend of mine was up visiting for part of this week. It would have caused some folks no end of amusement to hear me arguing the “cars are not the problem” side of things. Seriously.

I apologize again for the relatively low quality of posting lately. Since I’ve got laid off, I actually have a vague chance of catching up with stuff, so rather than be paralyzed into inaction like I was for the last … oh, year or so … I’ve been trying to get stuff done. That combined with a bit of social life, standard surfing, and the like has been eating up a lot of time.

The down side is, I didn’t get nearly as much done as I wanted to this week. The lawn’s still not mowed, the house still isn’t rearranged, and the finances still aren’t caught up on. On the up side though, I’m getting back on track with a few other things, so that’s good.

Tomorrow’s Friday, I’ll do a bit more coding, a bit more reading, maybe move a thing or two around, but I’m not sure I’m up for the full project yet. Possibly mow the lawn, but I’m still hoping to find a neighborhood kid to pay to do that one. The cool thing is, I still feel like a huge burden’s been lifted off of me. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when I actually catch up.

Finally, a really interesting job opportunity has popped up. Downside is that it is based out of Brooklyn Center and requires a few skills I don’t have, but could probably come up to speed with. I don’t want to have to go to Brooklyn Center though, but then again, working on http://www.wolf.org would be pretty cool.

Hrm. I’ll think on it for a bit.

Sorry for not posting much, but now that I’m unemployed, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Yeah, go figure.

Anyway, a quick groaner and a couple links:

4. A three-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West. He slides up to the bar and announces: “I’m looking for the man who shot my paw.”

Gawd, these are so bad, I want to punch myself in the nose.

Hey, guess what, the war may have actually been about …

…

…

oil! *gasp*

GAH!

Actually, I’m wondering what they’re going to do about Wolfowitz – he’s starting to become a bit of an image problem.

anyway, and a link from a friend about another nifty little DARPA project as well as a Salon article on the same topic (the Strange Black Cat reported on this one recently as well.)

Another report (with early signs of serious ass-covering) regarding “intelligence failures”: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/030609/usnews/9intell.htm

I’ve been rather silent here for a few days, but its been rather eventful in meatland, so I haven’t been on the net much.

I lost my job on Friday. While I have all the standard concerns regarding buying food, paying mortgages, getting spending cash, etc., in general, this is pretty exciting. As the fortune at the bar on Friday afternoon said:

“No day holds as much future as today!”

Now I just have to decide how I’m going to shape that future.

The weekend was a weekend. I enjoyed Grand Old Days. I did get up a bit too late to make the first party I was going to go to with a bunch of the folks from YM (where I used to work), but I made it to Dan’s traditional party which, as always, was a blast.

I rolled out of there around 8-something to go down to 7th street entry and catch Apocalypse Theatre and All the Pretty Horses. I was wondering how on earth APOX was going to fit on that tiny stage, but they managed. A little mosh pit broke out towards the end of the ATPH show and something on someone ended up slicing my hand open a bit, but it was all worth it. It was a great show.

And, to continue my descent into punny hell, here’s another:

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it, too.

Ouch. Don’t hurt me.

And for those who haven’t been paying attention, there are two growing news stories that should have people calling for the administration’s metaphorical heads.

First, the debt and tax cuts. We all know there was a huge tax cut for the rich. What came as a bit of a surprise is that the tax cut is on top of a predicted 44 trillion dollar deficit. A 44 trillion dollar deficit that was hidden until after the tax cut got passed. The strange black cat has been following that story, among others. It should be noted that among the steps taken to bury this was the December firing of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill who commissioned the paper making the prediction.

Second, the war on Iraq.

We were lied to.

I said it, the strange black cat said it, a lot of people said it, but now sources seem to be coming out of the woodwork.

There was one main reason given for the war. That reason was that we claimed that Iraq had “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. This was the reason it was pushed through congress. This was the reason we took to the UN. The holes in our proof and the options other than war that could have been pursued IF this was the reason for war were the reasons why France and Russia opposed it.

The proof was spun, and it was spun for political reasons to manipulate people. We all know it happens, but it is death to a democracy. And these particular lies resulted in us going to war.

We have a senate investigation, US spy agencies getting really ticked about how their work was misused to mislead people and drive policy, similar complaints about Rumsfeld from military sources. I seem to have lost the links, but I’ve also seen reports about Powell being pressured to report pretty much bullshit.

On top of that we have companies attached to the administration getting massive contracts for work in Iraq with no competitive bids and more effort being put into securing the oil fields than securing food, clean water, and safe streets for Iraqis. Additionally, potentially dangerous nuclear and biological sources that were known and not being used for WMD development have now disappeared in the looting in Iraq.

Beyond that, in the middle of our war on terror, we are not only allowing groups declared terrorists by the US to continue, we are allegedly talking about funding them.

The administration is not concerned about the truth. They are concerned about getting what they want.

What do they want?

My belief is that they want American Imperialism. Not a Roman style empire where kids in Bangladesh are saluting the American flag. An economic and sociological empire. Those kids don’t need to salute the flag – they need to eat at McDonalds, drink coke, listen to Clear Channel stations, watch Disney movies, bathe in privatized water owned by international corporations, eat Genetically Modified crops whose seeds are owned by Monsanto, and grow up to work at international conglomerates.

I believe they believe their vision to be positive. I believe they see this as the way to bring peace to the world, a way to end starvation, a way to end abuse and genocide. I believe it, in many ways, to be outlined by The Project For a New American Century.

So they are trying to build an empire of sorts in the belief that it will bring peace and stability to the world. What’s so bad about that?

1) Our government – supposedly by the people for the people – is lying to us about their agenda and why they’re doing what they are doing. Using these lies to spend our wealth and the lives of our soldiers in wars pushing these agendas. It is inherently undemocratic.

2) Speaking of Democracy, in a Pax Americana where our hyper power status is used to control and direct the world both socially and economically, you have a massive number of people being affected by decisions of a government they have no voice in. That is patently undemocratic.

3) Finally, environmentally, the world can not sustain 6 billion people living a “western lifestyle”. Therefore, massive inequity must be maintained via some methods – probably economically. It is either that or it will be necessarily unstable. Neither outcome will be good for 95% of the population.

Ok, there is one other option – Western nations could reduce their consumption to match the rest of the world in a sustainable lifestyle. While I could support that plan, I highly doubt it is in the playbook.

Here’s an interesting write up by Prof. Niall Ferguson, discussing that the United States is an “Empire in Denial”. A quote:

He told his audience that, with military bases in three-quarters of the countries of the world, and 31% of all wealth, America made the British empire at its zenith in 1920, when a quarter of the globe was pink, look “like a half-baked thing”.

His perspective is that since we are an empire, we should embrace it and act like one. Oh, another interesting quote:

He compared the “unique situation” the US felt it was in now in Iraq with a proclamation the British made on entering Baghdad in 1917: “Our armies do not come into your lands and your cities as conquerors, but as liberators…”

Prof Ferguson said the concept of “conquest as a form of liberation, of building an empire of democracy, is not new. Britain did it too in its liberal heyday. What we are looking at is a second Anglophonic empire similar in many ways to the first, and that has to be recognised.”

Hrm.