Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Thinking About Rudy Guede, Raffaele Sollecito, and Amanda Knox: What Might Have Been

Posted by Ergon





This is my post on my website Man From Atlan of June 26, 2011 cross-posted here at the invitation of TJMK.

Due to my Scorpionic nature, I think, I come across a great many criminal and legal cases that grab the public attention.

It seems, also, that I get involved in the case in one way or the other, and, a great number of coincidences seem to er, follow me. Psychologists call that the ‘I was there syndrome’ and that’s fine, it’s a form of mental illness, and you can decide if I have it, or not!

But I have spent a lifetime studying the fine line between Psychic Sensitivity and Schizophrenia, and what interests me here is not only how we identify with the crime and the individuals involved, but how these cases establish themselves in the public consciousness.

And yes, I want to write about the lives wasted, and what might have been.

Whenever a person dies, there is a break in the fabric of consciousness, and all of humanity is affected. Most people learn to ignore it; some, more sensitive, get consumed by it, but we are all affected by it at some level.

A murder case may be just one individual; the devastation of an earthquake or tsunami may affect hundreds of thousands. As for me, I am an observer, but also in a way, a catalyst.

Look, you know my spiritual claims. Forget that for a moment. What I do is warn people about the fateful consequences of the psychic and spiritual damage done to our souls (or psyche) and environment, and if you don’t listen, if you don’t change, then so be it. What will be, will be. But a part of me, having seen what would happen, mourns for what might have been.

One of my patients was a girl who had Rhett’s Syndrome, a severe form of Autism. She came to my clinic and the treatments really helped, yet it was the mother who also needed help. In the end, suffering from depression, she killed her child and tried to commit suicide.

A woman two streets down from us, suffering from post partum depression, killed her husband and stabbed her two children as well. My son used to play with their dog at the local park, but curiously, I never met them.

I worked on a mayoralty campaign. The candidate, a lovely soul, came second. At the farewell party I saw something dark around him. I told his partner that he needed help, and offered. It wasn’t heard because they were, I think, already caught up in their karma. A year later he jumped off a bridge and killed himself.

Then, going from the personal to the ‘famous’ cases, and the ‘coincidences’ and lessons thereof.

I wrote in “Michael Jackson, the Drowning Man” about how I helped a famous musician with his Parkinson’s Disease in 1994 but when I asked him to introduce me to Michael Jackson, he didn’t. I was too controversial. Pity, I could have helped him before he descended into his inappropriate behavior.

OJ Simpson was the first criminal case. I lived in Santa Monica almost equidistant between him and his ex-wife Nicole Brown. I had driven around the neighborhood enough times to know the story had some inconsistencies, but I believed he was guilty. I also accepted the jury’s verdict of Not Guilty, because the principle of reasonable doubt, in American law, had to be upheld.

There also was the fact I had closed my practice in Toronto and moved to Los Angeles just to help people there, arriving in 1993 in time for the Malibu Fires and Northridge Earthquake (written in “A Spiritual Journey To The United States”) and once I knew my work was done left for Texas. And a few months later, the murder, the White Bronco slowly driving down the freeway, the media circus and all of LA enjoying a mass catharsis.

After I left the US in 1995 I shifted my focus to Europe, though Canada remained my home base. I still looked back to the US with fondness, and sadness for what was yet to come.

I was in England in 2005 when the Terri Schiavo case gripped the nation. She was in a lengthy coma, with most of her brain destroyed. Her parents were fighting to keep her on life support, while her husband wanted to pull the plug and let her die.

I tried to stay uninvolved, even though I knew her spirit wanted to be free. I felt this was wrong, for parents to keep holding on to their child. So one day, when Chloe called me about the latest developments, I said enough was enough, and helped her spirit pass on. She died that evening. And shortly after I left England, there was the London Tube bombing. Coincidence, or catharsis?

Madeleine McCann, a little girl from the U.K., disappeared from her holiday bedroom in Portugal just a few days before her 4th birthday, in May of 2007. Her parents were dining some distance away with their friends and inexplicably had left the children unattended and the door to their villa unlocked. The investigators never found Madeleine. The conclusion, absent a body, was that she had been kidnapped. There were many false sightings after that, as people assumed she had been kidnapped by child traders.

This was two months before I went to the UK with my family on holiday. I was asked what I thought about Madeleine. Would she be found? I replied that she had died that first night, and the parents were involved in a cover up. The person who asked me that question then consulted a psychic, who of course said what everyone wanted to hear: Madeleine was alive.

Then further reports came out, and we found that special police dogs, trained to sniff for evidence of death, had indicated she had died inside the bedroom that very night. Nothing further came to light, as political interference corrupted the whole process, and police investigators were sacked for ‘unfairly blaming the parents’

Yet, there’s a website that does just that; you be the judge. See here and here and here.

This was another example of a case that would consume the public, as so many identified with the missing child, or the parents. And, as always, my presence seemed coincidental to a whole series of events. A few weeks before we arrived in Glasgow, bombers hit Glasgow airport with a van loaded to the top with propane cylinders, the rains hit the whole country for three months straight, and the biggest floods in over a century inundated large parts of Southern England. Yet wherever we went, there was sunshine…This is the dichotomy of healing, that there can be sunshine, but also, darkness.

I had already arranged to go back to the UK for a month as a consultant. I returned to Canada on October 31.

The very next day, on November 1, 2007, British student Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher, was murdered in Perugia, Italy. Her roommate, Amanda Marie Knox, was convicted of the murder, as was her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and Rudy Hermann Guede, a drifter from the Cote de Ivoire in Africa.

I hadn’t read much about the case and trial, but came across it on the pages of Huffington Post, the social news website. Here was a full blown narrative: Amanda Knox was innocent of the crime, she was the victim of a corrupt Italian prosecutor, and Rudy Guede was the sole perpetrator (All untrue, btw)

What piqued me was the fingerprints of an extensive PR campaign to manipulate public opinion so as to influence the outcome of a trial in another country. Appearances by Knox’s family on Oprah, calls to boycott Italy, politicians trying to intervene in a judicial process, oh my.

And the comments on the numerous Amanda threads were funny, and so sad. These people were, in a word, disturbed. They were even foul mouthed about the victims parents, for daring to say they felt justice had been served. And they had no compunction about blatant lying and slander either.

I’d seen this so many times, the ease with which people could be led to believe, on the basis of something they saw or read, the most outlandish things.

Now I really do believe that trying to convince True Believers is a waste of time. (But arguing with them can be er, illuminating:) I’m interested in the process by which they come to that belief, but any good book on mob psychology can give you the basics, and of course, you must always read Orwell’s 1984. The same principles of propaganda used to create support for war can also be used to support a position, no matter how wrong it might seem to the intelligent observer.

So I looked at the facts of the case. Amanda Knox had falsely accused her black boss, Patrick Lumumba of the crime, she and her boyfriend had provided alibis that were later disproved, there was a staged break in to mislead the investigation, and there was sufficient DNA, blood and foot prints to prove the complicity of the other two accused.

Two courts, led by Judges Micheli and Massei, had already looked at over 10,000 pages of evidence to conclude that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito had also been involved in the murder. And, the most compelling DNA evidence, Raffaele’s DNA on the victims bra, and Amanda’s DNA mixed with Meredith’s on the murder knife found in Raffaele’s flat.

The Supreme Court of Italy, while affirming Rudy Guede’s conviction, had already established that more than one attacker had been involved, and that DNA attributed to Knox and Sollecito had already been found.

I also noted that the Wikipedia page on Meredith Kercher, once reflecting the findings of guilt against all three accused, had now been hijacked by, let’s say, Amanda Knox partisans.

I have to thank the two websites TJMK and PMF for the fine work they have done compiling and translating the vast volume of Italian language transcripts of the trial and summaries of evidence. Without them, my technical knowledge of the case would have been quite inadequate. I can’t recommend them highly enough for anyone interested in learning about the case.

But I formed my opinions way before I found their sites, and I say this out of respect: I don’t want their work compromised by association with my own views.

What I write about here is first and always, spiritual in nature. I may use logic to confirm something, I will look at evidence, but ultimately I look at disturbances in the fabric to search out imbalance and untruth. And I learn to trust my instincts. It is only afterwards that I look at other factors, and if I need to adjust my views, so be it. But the patterns and the coincidences, are fascinating.

First, the Astrology. Meredith Kercher, born Dec. 28, 1985, and Rudy Guede, December 26, 1986, are both Capricorns. Raffaele Sollecito, March 26, 1984, is Aries, and Amanda Knox, July 09, 1987, a Cancer. Their signs form a T-Square, at 90 degrees to each other, which are widely seen as indicators of stress and incompatibility. The day of the murder saw widespread stressors on all their horoscopes which would lead to murder, detection, conviction and imprisonment. The Astrology even shows Raffaele’s drug dependency and mental confusion on the night of the murder, the conflict between Amanda and Meredith, and the violence and rage that simmered just below the surface of Amanda Knox’s psyche.

And the night of the murder, November 1, 2007, saw Saturn and Venus in the house of emotional excess, Uranus in the house of sudden death, and Jupiter/Pluto, in the sexual house, in an almost exact T-Square to each other. The close conjunction of Pluto to the Milky Way’s Galactic Center shows the potency of this murder in attracting the public imagination, and also, the trigger for the murder.

But Astrology is just one of many tools in Humanistic psychology. It shows patterns, yes, but mainly it gives a picture of motivations and stages of development. And sometimes, it tells us what might happen. For me, there are many tools: Psychism to know, and other tools to understand.

So I will say this about all four:

Amanda Knox’s profile is that of the self destructive individual who will fall from ‘the shattered tower’ due to her associations with others. Btw, her July 09 birthday is the same as OJ Simpson’s and they Both Wielded Knives, hmmm!

Raffaele Sollecito has powerful friends who won’t be able to help him. He almost had it too easy, and his drug use took him into some deep dark spaces. Note he wasn’t just using cannabis, but more likely a potent form called skunk weed, plus heroin and cocaine.

Rudy Guede may actually turn out to be a sympathetic individual. His is the one chart I see that leads to redemption and indescribable potential. He is, quite frankly, the most believable of the three, even though he did lie, and he was rightly found guilty.

Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher was greatly loved, had the intellectual capability to go far, and would have, if she hadn’t been murdered, been a bright blazing star. RIP Meredith.

I hate to make predictions. Human beings will always have the capacity to alter the future (though truth be told, not as much as they like to think) My prophecies have to do with the future of this planet and humanity’s ability to survive and regenerate itself.

But on June 27, Rudy Guede will face Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in their appeals trial, and for the first time, be forced to answer questions directly. I believe this will be the day he begins to redeem himself.

(Update: And on that day, he placed Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito at the crime scene)

On June 30th, the DNA experts will present their findings. This will be one day before the solar eclipse in Cancer. I predict bombshells in court.

(Update: the expert’s report was presented a day earlier, on June 29, and it was interesting, to say the least. It disputed some of the DNA findings accepted by the previous court and one would think from the media reporting they prove Knox and Sollecito’s innocence. From my reading of the report, it does no such thing, only places ambiguities on some of the evidence. There definitely will be fireworks in court, as the prosecution tears into the many errors of the report)

I am struck by the coincidences of the cases I outlined: allegations of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, disputed forensic and DNA evidence, racism and political interference, your standard trial. But they all, held a special place in the public imagination.

But in spiritism we see that it is the unquiet spirit of the victim that calls to us, and we can only hope and pray for their peace. Justice is always done.

And one can only look back at them with sadness, for what might have been.

Posted by Ergon on 07/06/11 at 07:36 PM in Various hypothesesThe psychologyThe officially involved

Comments

7/21/11
Ergon, “how these cases establish themselves in the public consciousness” is intriguing to me, also. Why does one story capture the world’s attention and hold it for months or years? That’s what I can’t answer to my satisfaction very often.

I do not subscribe to astrology, as a Christian. I believe it tempts us with a dab of truth but is filled with error.

Your sensitivity to what is happening with human beings is a rare gift. It might also be similar to “discerning of spirits”. You must be unusually brave and patient to help people with Rhett’s syndrome, autism, Parkinsons’ and to face the extreme emotions; and to try to warn others when you sense they are heading for danger. It can be a thankless task showing humans that their acts have powerful consequences. I’m sorry you were not introduced to help Michael Jackson.

You have put your finger on the pulse of many of the high profile events of the last few years, aiming to put the history of our day into a larger context of personal philosophy. Thanks for sharing so honestly. Your concern that TJMK and PMF not be compromised by association with your views is humble and wise. I likewise have some rarified views that are probably not shared by the mainstream supporter of these sites; I could use the same disclaimer.

I appreciate the legwork and brainwork these two sites have done to bring us indisputable facts. The readership will end up with individual opinions, no two alike.

Thank you for a thought provoking post. I’m glad you do see the case for guilt, on that we agree.

The “what might have been” intrigues me, too. For most people who land in the prison system, the experience of incarceration and court trials affects them tremendously. After this, they diverge from life’s normal paths for the rest of their lives.

Posted by Hopeful on 07/21/11 at 04:35 PM | #

Thank you for your reply, Hopeful. I do respect that many faithful and not-so faithful disagree with the practice; Genesis 1:14 (lights and signs)might be contradicted by Deuteronomy 4:19 (but do not worship them) and one must not practice divination, but the ‘wise men’ who came to Bethlehem certainly were such beings.

But we might agree that everyone has free will, and karma and sin are not dissimilar. So here we concur, that we see the case for guilt, and that is due to the evidence already presented in court, and not Astrology, of course 😊

I think the way these cases affect the public imagination does indeed have a connection with the history of our times, and the damage done to so many lives by the loss of spirituality and descent into drugs and madness.

But I am also intrigued by the possibility of redemption for all the guilty. One can wish that for anyone, and the sooner justice is done, the sooner redemption can come into being.

Posted by Ergon on 07/21/11 at 10:54 PM | #

Ergon, it was your line above regarding propaganda (used to support a position , no matter how wrong) that particularly strikes a chord with me. I am neither a follower of astrology or religion, though I recognise their importance, but propaganda is designed to sway, and their is no question that it works, at times frighteningly well.

The convicts and their parents use it daily to convince themselves that this crime had little to do with them, or, even if it did, it is of no significance compared with their struggle to be free of its stigma and its consequences. The defence attorneys are doing precisely what they are being called upon to do : promote the innocence of their clients, however stained their hands clearly appear to be. It is propaganda at its finest.

If one is drowning, even having jumped into the water in an attempted suicide, the body will still naturally struggle and gasp for air in an irresistible attempt to keep the soul within.If one is wrestling with guilt and tempted to blurt out a confession (as it almost appeared Guede wanted to do, if you look at his apologies in court and his self berating journal comments) the drive for self- preservation will still come out stronger. Why resign themselves to serving out the sentence, when their are still voices cheering them on from beyond the iron bars?

In a secular society, the strongest protocols we have for preserving civilisation are to be found within the legal system. If the police and courts don’t do their jobs as written we have mayhem. Our Government leaders seem to be challenged by the protocols they are entrusted to uphold. The journalists entrusted to keep tabs on our politicians are flailing under flagrant corruption charges. We are, therefore, left with our own intelligence and instincts to examine and call out where we see a red flag or small a rat.

No, Amanda, no, Rafaele, we will not weigh as mitigating circumstances the fact of your age (legal ADULT). the fact that you had no prior record of violence (animal abuse has been proven to lead to an escalation to violence against humans—you enjoyed bestiality porn—do you suppose the animals depicted enjoyed it?) aaaaand AK relished a good hazing. The judges are not stupid. They cannot be duped or charmed. The gods are not smiling down upon you, and neither are the stars.

Posted by mimi on 07/22/11 at 08:50 AM | #

Very interesting above. Well done Ergon and Hopeful and Mimi. The dialectic continues.

Paradigms - mental models - are something we have often touched on here on TJMK. Stilicho’s very good post on conspiracy theorists was all about that, so too were Miss Represented’s posts on clinical psychology. Both essentially focussed on paradigms gone haywire, one at society level and one at the individual psychology level.

I encounter unhelpful paradigms all the time in development and growth processes and the bad ones are not always impervious to change if one knows how,  though the worst of them probably are gonners.

We all form mental models from before we learn to speak. Usually it is a question of the more & better the education and family and reading and spiritual education of some kind (as above) and what one picks up from one’s friends and the workplace and peer groups and leaders and the media, the more closely paradigms will align to an “objective reality”.

Joel Barker is the best guy to read on paradigms and his work is quite essential to a full model of development processes that work and keep working. Thousands of individual paradigms must somehow come to be aligned in key ways.

http://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Discovering-Joel-Arthur-Barker/dp/0887306470

The other two conceptual breakthrough guys that are vital for people in successful processes, up to and including world leaders, to read are Clayton Christensen and Geoffrey Moore.

Clayton Christensen is at Harvard Business School. His core insight was vitally important at breaking a conceptual logjam at all levels from small sub-units of business all the way up to global growth. This insight is worth literally trillions a year when full propagated (which will take many years).

It was known long ago from the time of the economist Schumpeter (died 1950) that growth is a process of creative destruction - that in effect all growth is a series of rockets that then fade and need to be junked and followed by more rockets.

But it was not known how to climb off the fading rocket (of which the “advanced” world is now too full) and fire up the initially-small new fast ones that must break through to create more new growth.

Christensen showed that the ONLY way for a big company to continue its success is to take a team offsite and start over on a new rocket with no pre-existing mindsets (paradigms) or established ways of doing things or reward systems. (Skunk works.) Offisite and unencumbered by old models and systems they are then enabled to throw things in the air and see what works and zero in. 

So in practice companies up through economies can NOT grow fast by making incremental changes from the inside. That way only leads to exhaustion - the exhaustion you now see pervasively in Japan and the US and Europe and in most large firms - and most consultants and change agents (me included!) had been promoting just that. (Most still do). .

What we really need desperately right now is new rockets (Apple with all of its innovative products has it about right).

http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining-Successful/dp/1578518520

What Geoffrey Moore showed is how marketing to the eager early adopters ONLY is the kiss of death to new rockets. They can not be fired up that way. It is vital to win over those in the broad middle. To do this Moore showed that you HAVE to start clean and reach over the early adopters and connect with the broad middle in different ways.

Quite key is to win over the hard-nosed opinion leaders in the broad middle - once they are won over (buy into the new paradigm) most of the others out there will follow too, and so another of those rockets will take off.

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Tornado-Strategies-Developing-Hypergrowth/dp/0060745819

Lessons for us? Well some in the FOA will believe all their lives that this was a railroading and wont look for any facts that contradict that. Clinical? Perhaps. I think so. Sad case.

But my overall experience (and Stilicho says this) suggests that that group will become increasingly small (and noisy and nasty, as Bruce Fisher is now) until they are all left muttering in a very small room.

Most who follow the Perugia situation will move to the middle - and come to learn some things that are really important if they did not know them already.

That constructive opinion leaders and good media and objective reporters (like Andrea Vogt and Barbie Nadeau and some others) and cool sites like this one explaining what objective reality really is vitally matter. That good respected professional-staffed public institutions and people working together on common interests vitally matter, and you embark on xenophobia and bigotry at everybody’s peril.  And that the personal qualities Meredith was striving to represent vitally matter.

The Meredith Effect, again.

http://truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/comments/part_of_merediths_emerging_legacy_a_kind_caring_safe_well_run_perugia/

 

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/22/11 at 03:08 PM | #

7/22/11
@mimi and Peter—
wow, I got so much out of your comments, great insights for personal growth as well as understanding this case.

Growth as a “series of rockets” that burn out and need to be replaced by offsite brainstorming versus tinkering on outmoded models which only leads to exhaustion, encapsulates a lot of truth.

I couldn’t agree more. FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE whether in withering businesses or families has to occur to create an energy explosion, just like fusion or fission, it has to be something that totally rearranges the very structure and essence of what a company is, or a group’s role, or a person’s sense of self. Scrap the past, move on, imagine greater.

That’s what I’m hearing from Peter, and to apply that to TJMK which is like a satellite of this principle. TJMK with hard cold facts draws in the big middle group of people who then detour around the pro-Knox extreme and biased factions and using the cold facts from TJMK can get over the useless rubble of past paradigms that have burnt out or were shown to be false. The broad middle uses TJMK like a pathway around the rubble or like a ladder over it to find the truth.

@mimi I especially like your analogy of drowning, that despite a suicide’s dive to fill his lungs with water and die, his own body fights to keep him alive. This the natural urge that Guede, Sollecito, and Knox have to fight for their personal survival even if they have to lie and break all the rules. So to counter this, it behooves legal institutions and courts which are based on ideals and truth, to stand firm against man’s natural urge to struggle against truth. Although lovely in the abstract, if truth threatens a man’s existence, he will abandon it. We are all susceptible.

Mimi reminds us that government leaders may fail, media who keep tabs on politicians (recent Murdoch scandal?), yes anything can fail. Then we’re left with only our instincts for right and wrong, to know what is true.

Mimi really understands the motive and passion of FOA propaganda: “The convicts and their parents use it (propaganda) daily to convince themselves that this crime has little to do with them, or, even if it did, IT IS OF NO SIGNIFICANCE COMPARED TO THEIR STRUGGLE TO BE FREE OF ITS STIGMA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.”  That statement clinches it, says it all. The fighting family are now the reverse heroes!
______________


Good stuff:
Paradigms and getting a lot of people to embrace the same paradigm


Peter’s ability to think on the broader plain is invigorating. Now I should investigate Christensen, Geoffrey Moore and Joel Barker at leisure. I’m getting an education. Thanks. I hear a slight echo of my son’s recent, “Go big or go home”.

Think big, dream big. No limits, a new paradigm is always possible.

Posted by Hopeful on 07/22/11 at 09:47 PM | #

Great discussion indeed. Yes, we’re all working from our own strengths to creating new paradigms, and I agree totally; we must have new groupings to supplant the old, since this brave new world we’re coming into REQUIRES it of us that we try to find common cause instead of focussing on the things that divide us.

But, with all due respect to Those Who Do Not See Things As I Do 😊 I should add that imo ‘objective reality’ is in itself a relative thing and we can’t use that to exclude those with let’s say, a maverick view of society.

Case in point: over the last more than four decades I’ve been observing at very close hand a huge panoply of social groups: New Age, Cults, Spiritual and Psychology based movements, religious, race and nationalistic -isms, and yes, patriot and conspirology based, not ‘theorists’, but people with their own paradigms or memes, and from my own observations, they are every bit as intelligent as everyone else, if a little um, unbalanced in their approach. So I won’t judge them, but just look for the kernel of truth in what they say, because I think divided we fall, and all that.

Posted by Ergon on 07/22/11 at 11:45 PM | #

First of all thank you Ergon for the fascinating read!

OT but Important - one of the most ridiculous reports on the case I have ever read!! Your blood will boil at Edda’s blatant lies in quotes on this article

http://www.smh.com.au/world/a-sexual-predator-or-victim-of-a-witchhunt-20110723-1hu1z.html?from=smh_sb

Posted by Giselle on 07/24/11 at 02:49 AM | #

Thank you, Giselle, my pleasure. Edda Mellas is so much in denial I actually feel sorry for her. But on the other hand, lying so blatantly just to deny justice, sorry, but my SUPPORT is for the Kerchers.

Posted by Ergon on 07/24/11 at 09:50 AM | #

Hi Hopeful. Yes you and your son have it about right. It is essentially what is new or different (or is in short supply) that leads people to be willing to pay a premium for it - to in effect say they will pay more for high perceived value. Then we see growth.

There are three “universes” of knowhow all necessary to making things work.

What I mentioned in the long comment above about paradigms fits in the universe of effective growth processes, and a number of other things need to be known in that universe for those processes to run their full effective course.

They include (1) people working effectively in groups and (2) strong visioning five to ten years out ahead. (Such visioning is the best way to get all onto one paradigm.) Another vital book if anyone wants to know how to do this:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Long-View-Planning-Uncertain/dp/0385267320

The other two “universes” of knowhow are (1) the mathematics and management of economic profit (stakeholder value) which took a huge but partial leap forward in the past 15 years; and (2) the actual systems change required to create what will result in that new value.

Systems change which is most of the work (and most of the cost) extends from individual skills up through units and corporations and on up through cities and industries to national and regional economies and even global.

American economists blindly take the view that if the government simply pulls the right levers (and economists have very few) and then stands back, the black box of the economy will somehow magically upgrade.

Don’t leave growth to those economists.

The reason China and the Asian “tiger” economies are doing relatively well is they IGNORED such advice, and their governments got heavily involved in making things work - in trying to spot future value and paying heavily to put systems (research, training, overseas marketing) in place.

US right wingers learned nothing from this, and so the simple minded mantra of the day is to cut cut cut. No-one in Washington has much of a clue (as many readily admit). In ignorance, America is killing its golden goose.

I have always thought economic insecurity (potential loss of her job, no work viza, and not enough saved to make it through to the following summer) was a strong driver in Amanda’s anger toward Meredith. (Erasmus ensured Meredith was very well funded.)

And I have always thought the PR campaign taps into and uses the same kind of underlying insecurity and anger now more and more widespread.. If you can’t build yourself up? Simple. Bring the other fellow down.

Posted by Peter Quennell on 07/24/11 at 02:18 PM | #

Pete, re: growth, many astrologers have been predicting the downward spiral of the US and
shifts in its economy since 2000.

Two books I recommend very highly are Time and Money-The Economy and the Planets by Robert Gover (2nd Edition)
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Money-Economy-Planets-second/dp/1933435364/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311687894&sr=1-1

“Best-selling author Robert Gover links certain planetary cycles to major turning points in US history, revealing why the 2000-teens are going to be the most revolutionary decade in US history”

and Bill Meridian’s Planetary Economic Forecasting
http://www.amazon.com/Planetary-Economic-Forecasting-Bill-Meridian/dp/B002L0HURI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311688406&sr=1-1

“the book that predicted the 2008 decline in commodity prices and the prolonged economic slump”

I agree there will be major changes, but not until there is a new spiritual paradigm will we be able to resolve these issues.

Posted by Ergon on 07/26/11 at 05:05 PM | #

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