PROBLEMS WITH SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 28 OCT 2014

How Science & Technology are controlled & flawed. Science & technology (applied science) create unhealthy dependencies, have multiple negative side effects, and are used to perpetuate the power (the wealth & control of the elite). My first attempt to explain these negatives was at West Point with classmates forty yrs. ago, and brought blank stares easily interpreted as, “What the heck are you talking about?” Now, 40 yrs. later my concern for the problems science & technology bring us has not changed.

Last Friday (10/24/14), the Sunspot AR12192 highlighted how overly dependent our world has become on electricity & electronics. This sunspot emitted solar flares (powerful bursts of radiation) that if they had been pointed at the earth would have simply wiped out civilization. If such a major solar flare hits us, which could have happened recently if the sunspot had been facing the earth, our dependence upon electricity & electronics would have meant banks, vehicles, stores & computers would all have been fried & quit working. Wall St., govt. and commerce would be shut down. A couple of commenters on the recent large solar flares mentioned that only the Amish are set up to continue without electronics & electricity. That is true; for instance, they have water pumped by windmills or by hand, while modern cities without electric pumps would soon run out of drinkable water. There is no question that technology & science have helped mankind, the problem is the uncritical adoption of applied science without wisdom…for instance, our govt. could have hardened the electrical system to make it less catastrophic if we are hit by a solar EMP or a military launched EMP by Russia, China or No. Korea. Scientists say it is WHEN, not IF, a solar EMP hits us! Such complete dependence upon such a vulnerable technology is setting us up for failure.

SAME SPIRIT OF CONTROL. The same Spirit of Control that had slaves build pyramids and the great wonders of Babylon is the power behind modernization which is based on money & military power. The money behind science is almost entirely coming from the government & the power elite (foundational grants from tax free foundations). This means that what science & applied science (technology) spend their time on will benefit those in power. Scientists & technicians are being compromised, and our trust in them as neutral purveyors of truth is abused. Facts are misreported, evidence is suppressed, and “facts” are cooked up. In ’67, an English doctor exposed how many people were experimented on in British hospitals without their knowledge or consent in his book Human Guinea Pigs. In ’66, an Amer. doctor of Harvard Med. School had exposed a similar thing happening in their medical school. In recent years, it’s been inserting the VeriChip into 27 million Americans without their consent during surgery.

COSPUP. As you might have guessed, science does not search for answers wherever curiosity takes it, but science & technology are steered by the controllers. The 15 to 16 member COSPUP (the govt.’s Committee on Science & Public Policy) meets monthly to guide science. The Committee’s job is “to deliberate on initiatives for new studies in the area of science & technology policy, taking especially into account the concerns and requests of the President’s Science Advisor, the Director of the NSF, the Chairman of the National Science Board, and the chairmen of key science and technology-related committees of the Congress.” At least 2 of the committee’s chrmn. Harvey Brooks & Robert McCormick Adams are CFR members. Another one, Isadore Manuel Singer, is a member of the Amer. Philos. Soc. and illustrates how widespread a chairman’s influence can go in science, for not only was he chrmn. of COSPUP, but a member of the White House Science Council (1982–88), & on the Governing Board of the U.S. National Research Council (1995–99).

INDUSTRY & CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. Govt. oversight groups are compromised by industry & elite money. The head of the antibiotic division of U.S. Food & Drug Admin.—you know the person assigned to protect us against abuse in drug marketing– was making money marketing drugs as the editor of magazine Antibiotics & Chemotherapy. He made over $250,000 as its editor, & the magazine showed its colors by promoting prescription drugs that were opposed by scientists familiar with them. Another example is how the govt. hired people from Shell Chemical to administer the Fed. Insecticide, Fungicide & Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Let’s hire the wolf to guard the chicken house.

UTOPIA? Technology has been advertised as the means to achieve happiness & social utopia, or as one writer called it “an engineered millennium”. This vision of technology has caught on since the founding of the U.S.A. Socialist presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche is a believer that technology can bring us utopia. It has had two centuries to prove itself in America, and has been a mixed blessing.

It certainly has not brought the social utopia many thinkers were sure it would bring. Many immigrants to America had to work in unhealthy industrial sweatshops. In the USSR, they often had tiny shacks around big factories…in the U.S., they at least got trailer houses, apts. or prefabs. Technology brought an industrial revolution which in turn, due to how worker’s were exploited, brought the various communist revolutions. Workers became cogs in the new technological order. There have been many costs to “progress”, incl. severe environmental damage, and the breakdown of society. On the other hand, who would want a hand-pulled old fire machine like Currier & Ives portrayed to come to your house on fire instead of a modern fire truck? I am going to use this hi-tech Internet to spread this article about the drawbacks to science & technology! The automobile reduced the isolation that farm folk lived with,… but it came with deaths from accidents, the encouragement of materialism, escapism & exploitation, as well as the disintegration of close families & communities. Assembly lines produced cheap products but helped phase out the craftsman. Large factories created large centralized cities, with their own set of problems. In recent years, the corporations are viewed as opposing the environmentalists. Brave New World and Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano are classics which warn about the nightmare that technology controlled by the elite to control us will bring. Future Shock by Tofler reminded us that the speed of tech. change may challenge our ability to adapt, much as a tidal wave overwhelms a swimmer. I noted how the slow rate of change among the Amish created social stability & endowed their elders with valuable experience that made them esteemed.

THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX is a big promoter of the benefits of technology. During the Gulf War they advertised their new high-tech smart weapons. Americans have traditionally liked glitzy gadgets with all the bells & whistles, while the Russians & Germans have focused on what was practical. The high-tech weapons proved that they were not all they were cracked up to be in reliability. But the war temporarily got Americans excited about the possibilities of technology.

This article has been a reminder that we need to wisely think about the consequences of bringing new technologies into our lives, and what the consequences will be that science & technology are run by the elite for their own agendas. Have a great day my friend.