What makes us human is the capacity to commune with our divine self,  to love and empower oneself and one another!

There's none.  I know only persons who have traces of both sanity and insanity in them, including myself.

from grinningplanet.com



Environmental Doublespeak — Environmental Ethics, Anti-Environmental Propaganda, and Greenwashing Language

In George Orwell's amazing (and scary) novel 1984, people used "newspeak" and "doublethink." It was soon after that the term "doublespeak" started being used to describe the words of politicians who were trying to sound like they were saying something without really having said anything tangible they could be pinned down on. More recently, doublespeak has been increasingly used as a clever way to cover up lies.

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND STATISTICS

Twisting statistics is an old game, and foes of a clean environment and public health are old pros at it. More and more, though, they just outright lie. For instance, proponents of genetically modified crops constantly say that GM crops reduce pesticide use and are needed to feed a hungry world. Both assertions are false.

So, how does one know when an industry rep is exaggerating, twisting statistics, or lying? There's no easy answer to that, but an old joke comes to mind: How do you tell when a PR flack is lying? His lips are moving.

In this decade, a new brand of this twisty-turny language emerged: Environmental Doublespeak. Here are a few of the dubious phrases:

* "using common sense"
* "modernizing regulations" or "updating laws"
* "simplifying and streamlining regulations" or "eliminating red tape"
* "clarifying regulatory language"
* "improving the way we protect the environment"

picture of politician with microphone to his mouth On the surface, these concepts are hard to argue with. Who wouldn't be in favor of reforming laws that are so outdated that they have become useless? What right-minded environmentalist wouldn't want to improve the way we protect the environment?

“IT'S CODE LANGUAGE, .007”

The problem is that environmental-doublespeak phrases are usually code language designed to obscure the fact that the speaker really intends to weaken environmental protection. Here are some common statements you hear from the sham environmentalists:

* "We're taking another look at the science associated with the problem."
* "We plan to invest in more study of the problem."
* "We want to make decisions based on sound science."

Again, such statements seem reasonable enough; but in practical terms, one can usually substitute the following phrase with perfect accuracy: "We plan to do whatever we can, including funding more studies on topics that are already well understood scientifically, to delay any strengthening of regulations in this area."

Much of environmental doublespeak is about "framing"—a political technique for using language that implies something positive rather than language that implies something negative. The most famous frame is probably "pro-life" (instead of anti-abortion). Our brains are more receptive to positive phrases, especially those that imply a broader positive meaning when taken outside the debate topic. In the case of "pro-life," if you take the phrase beyond the abortion debate, well, who isn't "pro-life"?

THE DOUBLESPEAK OF “SOUND SCIENCE” AND “BALANCE”

The phrase "we need sound science" has been used a lot during this decade to cast doubt on scientific evidence that is already solid, make the anti-environment speaker sound prudent, and make his opponents sound like reactionary Chicken Littles. But don't blame the phrase—the concept of sound science is a fine one; it's just been co-opted for use as cover by plutocratic, polluter-friendly politicians.

Environmental doublespeakers are also fond of stressing the need for "balance" when crafting environmental laws. Again, this is reasonable on the surface, but the devil is in the details. Today, the result desired by those preaching a need for "balance" is usually environmental regulation that is more acceptable to corporate polluters.

MISCELLANEOUS ENVIRONMENTAL DOUBLESPEAK

There's another type of environmental doublespeak: statistical manipulation. Consider, for instance, the statement, "The environment has gotten much cleaner in the last 30 years." That is a fact, at least in developed nations, but the implication is that there is a constant positive trend and that things are just about to the point where they're "clean enough"—so forget about toughening up any more.

But much of the environmental progress of the last 30 years occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s. We should be asking about RECENT trends and actions—i.e. what have you done for me lately? Half of US residents live in counties with unhealthful air and 40% of our surface waterways are not safe for swimming or fishing (with nearly all states having issued health warnings about mercury contamination in locally caught fish). Does that sound "clean enough" to you?

As energy issues have become prominent, doublespeak is creeping in there too:

* When they say "gas-price relief," they often are referring to their plan to ease regulation of refinery emissions or pollution-reducing gasoline blends.
* Politicians have become fond of saying that we can drill for oil in an "environmentally sensitive" manner—while simultaneously subverting efforts to regulate or ban environmentally damaging drilling techniques like fracking.
* When politicians speak of "energy independence," they use it as an umbrella term that excuses the limitations and negative consequences of many of their "solutions" like drilling in coastal areas, biofuels, and nuclear energy.

There is also something that might be called "insult doublespeak." This type of environmental doublespeak is intended to not only assert the speaker's enthusiasm for making progress on environmental problems but also to cast doubt on the motives or mental capacity of anyone who would criticize or oppose their views:

* "Those opposed to this plan are guilty of 'old thinking'; we need 'new thinking' on environmental problems."
* "Criticism often comes from those who seek to protect the status quo."
* "We should regulate based on science, not emotion."

Euphemisms are another problem; for instance, program cuts and layoffs at the US Park Service were at one point described as "service level adjustments."

The overall strategy of practitioners of environmental doublespeak is to soothe the public's concern about environmental problems while they quietly act to implement changes that please political patrons and weaken environmental protection. Here are a few additional phrases to beware of, either because they are meaningless without positive action to back them up or because they are code language designed to disguise true intent:

* "we're committed to the environment"
* "better ways to protect the environment"
* "reduce regulatory uncertainty"

WRAP-UP

This article is not meant to provide a definitive list of environmental doublespeak phrases. That would be impossible—the phrases themselves are relatively innocent; it's the duplicity behind their use that is the problem. Additionally, political spinmeisters are constantly coming up with new strategies for doublespeak. We simply urge a general attitude of suspicion towards language used to describe positions on the environment.

In fact, environmental doublespeak is a minor subset of a much broader suite of propagandistic tools covering the entire range of political topics. The oratorical tool kit includes...

* framing,
* phony research outfits and their junk science,
* mysteriously funded think tanks whose sole purpose is to craft propaganda and political strategies to advance agendas that serve to maximize corporate profits and serve the interests of wealthy elites,
* the general suppression of meaningful news on corporate-media outlets,
* video news releases ("fake news"),
* total saturation of our "thought space" with marketing and spin,
* cooption of university research programs and suppression of research results that don't conform to the desired outcome,
* "rewriting history" and controlling what is allowed in school text books.

We are constantly exposed to very carefully crafted programming designed to make us think the way The Powers That Be want us to think. A brief but fascinating history of such persuasion techniques is presented in this article by Dr. Tim O'Shea: The Doors Of Perception: Why Americans Will Believe Almost Anything.

So, the next time you hear a politician talking about the environment say something like "We have different solutions, better solutions," you might want to say, "Could you be a little more specific, Senator Smogg?"

Keep thinking, keep questioning!

Know someone who might like this Environmental Doublespeak article? Please forward it to them.

Resources:

* See books related to Environmental Doublespeak (on Grinning Planet)
* Article on general doublespeak (at SourceWatch/Disinfopedia web site)
* Scientific Integrity (at Union of Concerned Scientists web site)
* See Scientific Integrity Cartoon (on Grinning Planet)

Updated: 20-SEP-2008
(Originally published: 19-OCT-2004)

Whenever I am in the now, that means am connected, in the know and am home!

Spoke with my son Milind just before he went to bed. We talked about his homework over his one month vacation. I asked whether it was like last year in terms of load. He nodded with a grimace on his face. Then I asked whether he would do it by himself, unlike last year during our trip to USA when Mom had to nudge and guide him to do them. He just said emphatically "NO!"

He has argued over and over that the word vacation should be taken out of the dictionary by his school as it is not living up to the word's meaning. Well, Megh and I are in for another tough time, it seems - ha, ha, ha!

To be fearless is to be our divine selves in moments when we know and believe in our hearts that nothing is impossible, that there is nothing to be afraid of, that nothing can stop us from following our bliss and making a difference.

...only at being myself!

Here's one of  the best commentaries, outside the US, that I found on the financial events of the last two weeks.

A lack of guts let the spivs roam free

Simon Jenkins , The Sunday Times, 21 September 2008

You don't understand it either, do you? How could a clutch of dud mortgages somewhere in the American Midwest bring the mightiest financial centres on earth close to collapse? How could the esoteric practices of risk exchange sabotage what were, just six months ago, two smoothly performing capitalist economies?

Come to think of it, how could the most potent capitalist regimes in the world, which had defeated the might of communism, be felled in a week by the tuxedo Talibans of Wall Street? We understand war and peace. We grasp global warming and the rules of cricket. But economics is still a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

One thing I learnt at my mother's knee was that the great crash of 1929 was the result of human error. Understanding it was, as JK Galbraith wrote, "the best safeguard against its recurrence". Yet it recurred, and by last Thursday the motto on the American dollar, In God We Trust, had been rewritten. Since the Almighty had carelessly omitted toxic derivatives from the Ten Commandments, trust should now be placed in the Federal Reserve.

Never again let it be said that something "can't be done" by government. I was assured two weeks ago that there was no question of outlawing the short-selling of bank shares, the isolating of mortgage debt from the banking system or the nationalisation of US banks or insurance companies. Now the greatest nationaliser in the free world is a right-wing Republican president, George Bush. He is the biggest spender of taxpayers' money in peace-time. The weak no longer go to the wall but to the US (and UK) Treasury. Nemesis must be laughing herself sick.

The crash of 2008 has not spelt the end of capitalism but has proved, as did the shock of 1929, that capitalism, like any system of human behaviour, needs policing. Money does not answer to the mathematical models that obsessed, and ultimately blinded, the old economists. It answers to the crooked timber of mankind and therefore needs rules, and rule-makers, clever enough to work with its grain.

Just as there are things diplomacy cannot do without calling on armies, so there are things markets cannot do without government. The market in credit, the lubricant of capitalist growth, depends on trust that debts will be repaid, which in turn depends on an economy continuing to grow. If it has grown too fast and collapses, trust evaporates.

The market cannot ultimately cover this position. That is why a prime duty of government is to do so. Guaranteeing bank deposits in a credit crisis is a proper function of a central bank, just as defending the nation's borders is a proper function of an army. When a failing bank comes rumbling down the high street, people turn to government for rescue since it wields the one sure defence against loss of trust. It can underpin trust with the future flow of taxes. There is nothing shaming or ignoble in this. Like war, it is the result of failure, but sometimes war, too, is necessary.

In the late 1980s, governments in Britain and America gambled on "modernising" the credit market by breaking down firewalls in the banking system. They left too few in place to stop a collapse in one sector, so-called toxic housing credit, polluting the rest. This was exacerbated by the failure of regulators, even after the Nick Leeson affair at Barings, to see how reckless traders, puffed up by lunatic incentive schemes, could gamble billions in pursuit of turnover-related bonuses. Coupled with the lax regulation of insider trading, risk-reward ratios and short-term market movements, this ensured the boom-bust conditions now seen. Needless to say, what was declared impossible to regulate in good times is suddenly regulatable in bad ones.

In such circumstances I cannot understand the idea of moral hazard, used to justify the initial inertia of the US Treasury and the Bank of England. The regulators decided to "punish" depositors and shareholders in some banks as a way of somehow purging capitalism of its sins. This was arbitrary and achieved the opposite of what was intended. It destabilised when stability should have been all.

This was not a moment for teaching lessons in the obligations of capitalism. Shareholders in Lehman Brothers, HBOS and, for that matter, Northern Rock were not market speculators risking their shirts on a quick buck. Most were pension-holders and hardly different from depositors. They assumed that the credit system underpinned their savings.

The authorities undermined markets at the moment when the duty of government was to calm them. Millions have lost money, and millions more will see a chunk of their incomes disappear in higher taxes as a result. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of people will have lost their jobs. And for what? For the pleasure of seeing a few spivs in tears at the Canary Wharf Starbucks while the guilty ones at the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority slink back to safe jobs?

Public comment last week greeted the downfall of the "masters of the universe" with undisguised glee, while the press descended to gloat over the poor little rich things and their wives stripped of nannies and skiing holidays. But what of the authorities? They deal in foreign exchange to stabilise market confidence, yet refused to do so in the mortgage or banking markets until forced to change their minds. A prime minister who has presided over the breakneck deregulation of the City for a decade now suddenly discovers a need to "clean up the City".

The casual ease with which ministers moved against share-shorting on Thursday too late to save HBOS must leave the nation gasping at why this was not done earlier. And when will they decide after all that they should have regulated the bonus culture? If a man is going to gamble away my savings, I would like to think my bank has not given him a financial incentive to do so, that he is a professional working on a salary.

It is by no means clear what really happened over the past two weeks or who was to blame. For all the schadenfreude that surrounds the collapse of a speculative bubble, it remains a mistake to let a bank fail.

Banks are the rocks on which capitalist enterprise is built. There must be a hundred ways of holding boards accountable for their decisions short of stripping the public of its savings. You could ban the directors for life. As for moral hazard, when a bank fails it means, by definition, that the concept has lost all deterrence. The horse has bolted.

Were this a military catastrophe or an intelligence failure or even a train crash, there would be a public inquiry. There would be one even if everyone knew what had happened and whom to blame. Neither is the case today. The crash of 2008 has been, for most people, an utter confusion leaving a nasty sense that those in power knew what was going on and were too spineless to control it.

I hate public inquiries, so often media kangaroo courts that merely enrich lawyers. But there cannot have been a fiasco more in need of illumination than the past two weeks in the City of London. Its decisions cry out for analysis; its lessons cry out for learning, and those in charge should render a public account. They have given the nation the most almighty shock and cost taxpayers a fortune.

Ken Blanchard...the best selling author of The One Minute Manager said this:

“Every once in a while a small book comes along that deals with a profound subject in a simple, elegant way.

A Peacock in a Land of Penguins is that book!”

So, if you're interested in creating a workplace where new ideas and innovation can flourish, take 3 minutes to watch our inspirational movie...A Peacock in a Land of Penguins.

from Simple Truths, Mac Anderson Founder