The Earth's population has gone from something under six billion in 1998 to about six and a half billion in 2008, accompanied by a strong increase in utilization of resources per person (the "Western standard of living" model).

As a handy example --

Lifelines from Our Past
by L.S. Stavrianos
Online. Page 177 here, Page 178 here.

"Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping reversed China's priorities (beginning in the 1980s and ongoing), placing expertness before redness ["being red" defined elsewhere in the text as being "a 'comrade' who did manual as well as intellectual work, and who focussed on serving society rather than self"]. Government slogans no longer called on the people to "Fight Self"; rather, they assured citizens that "To Get Rich Is Glorious." Consumer expectations rose accordingly --from the "big four" (bicycle, sewing machine, radio, and watch) to the "big six" (color TV, washing machine, radio-cassette player, refrigerator, electric fan, and motorcycle) and most recently to the "eight big things" comprising the "big six" plus modern furniture and a camera."

And of course, now add to the list a cellphone, computer/Internet, for the ambitious a car ...

In Riding the Iron Rooster (p 167), Paul Theroux quotes the 1986 short story "The Wind on the Plateau" by Wang Meng:

"He wanted video equipment, a musical door-chime, a motorcycle and a rubber dinghy. Why not go out and get an air-conditioner made in Australia?"

Middle America comes to China, indeed.

Links are mine - ed.
- A page on this site on / China /

"During the time the AR (Animal Rights) movement has been visible in the U.S. (since ~1980), AR activists have stopped some abuses, received media attention, and become a fixture of pop culture. Yet after two decades, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent and possibly a similar number of hours of work devoted, almost twice as many animals will be killed in the U.S. this year (2000, as far as I can tell) as were killed in 1980."

The USA:

- has initiated two unjust wars (against Afghanistan and Iraq); directly killed thousands of civilians, including women, children, and the elderly

- additionally has directly caused thousands of "excess deaths" of civilian men, women, and children due to civil unrest, disruption of infrastructure, etc

- has imprisoned and tortured hundreds or thousands (obviously enough, the numbers are kept secret), often on very flimsy pretexts

- has continued to build astronomically expensive high-tech, capital-intensive, and often fuel-thirsty weapons systems (aircraft carriers, new jet fighter aircraft, nuclear ballistic missiles) of very questionable utility (unless we specifically do want to cause Armageddon).

- has developed various "crowd control" technologies such as the microwave-based "Active Denial System" (aka by more informal journalists "ray gun"), which causes "intolerable pain"

- has seen the explosive growth of "private military companies" providing (per SourceWatch) "risk advisory, training of local forces, armed site security, cash transport, intelligence services, workplace and building security, war zone security needs, weapons procurement, personnel and budget vetting, armed support, air support, logistical support, maritime security, cyber security, weapons destruction, prisons, surveillance, psychological warfare, propaganda tactics, covert operations, close protection and investigations", often in combat zomes, and which are specifically exempt from domestic and international laws regulating military forces.

"unitary executive"

The power of private corporations has continued to grow.

I'm a strong feminist, but I don't worry about this issue much. The progress of feminism in the USA and worldwide over the last ten years has been uneven, and I'd certainly like to see faster progress to smooth out the rough bits, but I think overall things have moved in the right direction.

Additionally, as I write this in September 2008 it seems entirely likely that Sarah Palin will become Vice President of the U.S. -- and further will become President due to the death or medical incapacity of John McCain. I personally feel that Palin is one of the worst candidates for the Executive branch of the U.S. government to come along in quite a while, but that has nothing to do with her gender, and obviously the fact that she is seriously considered for this position is evidence of the strength of feminism.

Some good news, some bad news.

- The traditional racial and ethnic antagonisms in the USA seem to have cooled during the last decadebut have been replaced by fear and hatred of Muslims and Arabs, and to a lesser extent suspicion of Latino immigration. The educational and economic status of African-Americans remains very bad by comparison with European-Americans.

- On the brighter side, acceptance of GLBT and "queer" persons has steadily moved further into the mainstream.

Some good news, some bad news, with I think the latter considerably outweighing the former. On the good side, public awareness of the importance of sustainability is considerably stronger. On the bad side, most people are still not taking any significant steps to translate the idea of sustainability into action, and government and big business continue to largely ignore (and indeed often to block) useful change.

The population increase noted above has made an already very serious problem that much worse.

- The U.S. primary and secondary school system exhibits very serious problems. It's "okay", but a great many people wonder why it isn't a lot better. I personally blame the fixation of young people on television and other "media culture": computer games, pop music, low-brow movies, etc, etc. -- as well as the acceptance by their elders of such fixation.

"Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great deal of their time not on the spot, not here and now (or) in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it."

Propaganda in a democratic society
by Aldous Huxley

"... in Huxley's vision (Brave New World), no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one."

Amusing Ourselves to Death : Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman
page vii

From Wikipedia -

"The rule of law, in its most basic form, is the principle that no one is above the law and that everyone must abide by the law. Thomas Paine stated in his pamphlet Common Sense (1776): "For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other." ...

Perhaps the most important application of the rule of law is the principle that governmental authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with written, publicly disclosed laws adopted and enforced in accordance with established procedural steps that are referred to as due process. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary governance, whether by a totalitarian leader or by mob rule. Thus, the rule of law is hostile both to dictatorship and to anarchy."