Richard Cheney, the Chief Hegemon of the Oligarchy of the United States also known as the Vice President, is feeling a little off balance. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing…I know you’re thinking “Well we don’t want him getting cranky and sending in his sappers to plant thermate in the Sears Tower too,” which is understandable under the circumstances, but I mean that he’s off balance because it seems for once things aren’t going his way, aren’t going as planned, hence the headline in Raw Story this morning that reflects his statement at a Coast Guard grad ceremony—quoting here—“The only way to lose this fight is to quit. That would be irresponsible," Cheney said. "More than that, quitting would be an act of betrayal and dishonor. And it's not going to happen on our watch."
Betrayal? Dishonor? Disloyalty? Did somebody say the ‘q’ word?
Oh yeah, maybe I did, a few zillion times, and maybe you were with me chanting it past the robo-cop assemblies. Dick never took notice, though, because at that time we were rather isolated and ignored, weren’t we? But the times seem to be a-changin,’ and it seems some more politicians might be heading for office who have less enthusiasm for imperialism than Dick has. And he isn’t happy about that.
Of course, you might wonder why Dick was addressing the Coast Guard—don’t they guard the Coast? Well, yes and no. Being in the Coast Guard gives no guarantee of staying out of Iraq these days, as the Armed Forces in their desperation are likely to send you Over There with a gun and a pat on the back for good luck. Of course I’m kidding about the pat on the back.
That Darn-those-disloyal-whoevers attitude has been heard before, and yes I’m thinking about Tricky Dick Nixon bemoaning the lack of fervor for his doomed and violent machinations in Vietnam. That other Tricky Dick was rather alarmed at times that people just weren’t saluting when he said to, and he sensed that a seachange was afoot, long before he go shoved out of office. Well, maybe Tricky Dick Cheney is feeling that squeeze—though without progress towards impeachment, I doubt he stays up nights.
There’s a reason he rails about loyalty, though; American blind loyalty has been the stock-in-trade for Dick’s fearmongering Administration. And he has a rich vein of the stuff to mine, which is why he and his minions have elevated the fundamentalists and the military to their current favored status. Just to hedge his bets, fundamentalism and militarism have been increasingly combined, and veterans report that they were under constant pressure to give in to evangelical Christian chaplains while in uniform. Remember all those silly damned plastic flags that everyone displayed—well, almost everyone—in the months and years following September ’01? Maybe you remember how the flag was incorporated into every newscast thereafter, on lapels, on the screen, behind the podium, decorating the background—everywhere. And maybe you know now that the true meaning of the US flag is mind control. Or maybe you don’t.
My point is that there are certain US thought habits that are easily and constantly exploited by hegemons like Cheney. As long as we keep thinking in certain ways, we can be led around by our noses. Take the US judgmental attitude, for example. When we’re confronted (as we rarely are) with the fact that we have more people in prison –total- than Communist China, the usual response devolves towards blaming the inmates. Yet if everyone who ever broke a drug law was imprisoned, we’d have sixty million in prison, not 2.3 million. And if we could break away from judgmentalism, we’d collectively say “hold on, we’ve been duped, there’s no reason to plunge millions into misery for the sake of hypocritical drug laws.” And then we’d have that much more peace—because the Jim Crow drug war is a civil war, you know—and we’d have that much more strength. But we remain loyal to judgmentalism.
Or I could say, we’re passively loyal to judgmentalism—because passivity is an American thought flaw, too. Some of it comes from despair after all these years of trying to get change in a system that is designed to resist change, from corporate campaign contributions to the bicameral legislature. There’s progress, we sigh, and congress.
Certainly the corporate-owned media build up a mighty wall of passivity in every aspect of political decision-making. In part they do this by simply taking issues off the agenda, by not mentioning certain things like our absurd and horrifying prison state, our 2.3 or however many tortured souls in chains. Global warming is another example--quick, what’s the latest on clathrate releases, or what’s you position on the debate in the scientific community on emergency global sun blocking? I’ll bet you never heard of either issue, but they’re both real and are going to affect you soon, maybe affect you right into your grave. By finding quack scientists to obfuscate the issue, and mentioning the whole topic only rarely, you’re being led by that same nose into a catastrophe of—well—global proportions.
And there are other thought habits that imprison us. That is the nature of prisons, by the way—they’re not really made of walls, they’re made of fear and passivity. I remember a case a few years back in which an inmate convinced ten other inmates to slam a metal table –one, two, three, all together now—into a brick wall, which collapsed, liberating the lot of them. But what are those other habits? Well, have you ever noticed how much your femininity is insulted and degraded, particularly in times of war? And here I’m talking about the femininity of men as well as that of women. Suddenly it’s bad to be feminine, or rather worse than usual. It works so well that some of you men are already confused—did I say the femininity of men? Yes, I did. You were raised by a mother, weren’t you? You men have a feminine side, it’s part of your humanity. But if you can be made to fear and deny your own feminine feelings, you can be led straight into the boot camp. It takes a cattle prod to lead farm animals to slaughter, but you men are easy. All I have to do is insult you by putting down your feminine nature. As if you didn’t have any. Easy. Always works.
So since this is the News You’re Not Supposed To Know, let’s get right into one of those off-the-agenda topics, shall we?
……………………
Alan Robock writes in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that geoengineering has its drawbacks—twenty of them at least. What the heck is geoengineering, anyway? Well might you ask…it is the science of dealing with the global climate directly, on an emergency basis. Geoengineering exists because the corporate-owned media, responding to Dick Cheney’s fellow oligarchs in the oil industry, have succeeded in accelerating global warming to the point that we all face death by starvation, storms, or possibly by asphyxiation by ocean methane held in clathrates. Huh?—you say. What? –yeah, it’s like that.
To be more specific about your impending doom, Robock points out that the globe is rapidly approaching the 450ppm of carbon pollution that would signal rapid biosystem failure—moving up from the 385 ppm we currently measure. That’s up from 280ppm prior to the Industrial Revolution. So we’re moving rapidly towards what scientists like to call “screwed.”
Some of the proposals include dumping iron-based fertilizer into the oceans to create algal blooms, to suck up carbon. Others say there should be giant sprayers to create clouds from seawater. And there are proposals to launch mirrors into orbit, or to dust the upper atmosphere with sulfur to block the sun.
These proposals might make things worse, Robock notes. And I’m sure he’s right. No doubt you’ve seen the pros and cons of these proposals on endless lengthy television programs and newspaper specials. What’s that, you haven’t? Nothing at all? Funny that.
Maybe you haven’t heard that the oceans sit on to of a layer of methane-bearing substances called clathrates, and that once a certain threshold of temperature is breached, the clathrates will burst to the surface, releasing so much methane that it will displace oxygen in your lungs, simulating the amount of oxygen now available at sixteen thousand feet altitude. What’s that, you think you might have trouble breathing at sixteen thousand feet? Well, I know I would. It’s kind of a problem. I’d say it’s the sort of thing one would seek to avoid, something that one might take precautions against, whatever the actual probability. But that’s just me. I’m just kinda extreme in that pro-breathing sort of way.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Thursday, April 3, 2008
michiokakucomingtoKBOO
Here are some of the questions I'm lining up for physicist Michio Kaku's upcoming (next week interview!
Kaku Michio, physics professor and TV and media science commentator, is the author of several academic textbooks on string theory and quantum field theory, and has had more than 70 articles published in respected journals, covering superstring theory, supergravity supersymmetry, and hadronic physics. He is also author of several popular books, Visions, Hyperspace, and Parallel Worlds, and he co-authored Beyond Einstein with Jennifer Thompson. Hyperspace was a best-seller and was voted one of the best science books of the year by both the New York Times[1] and the Washington Post. Parallel Worlds was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in Great Britain.
His latest book, Physics of the Impossible, examines the technologies of invisibility, teleportation, telepathy, star ships, anti-matter engines, time travel, all regarded as not possible today, but might be feasible in future. In Physics of the Impossible, he ranks these subjects according to when, if ever, these technologies might become reality. In March, Physics of the Impossible hit the New York Times Best-seller list.
Welcome back to KBOO, Dr. Kaku! Our previous discussion sparked a great deal of enthusiastic discussion in the KBOO community.
Class I ideas -- -- force fields, invisibility, phasers and death stars, teleportation, telepathy, psychokinesis, robots, extraterrestrials and UFOs, starships, antimatter and anti-universes -- could come true within a hundred years. Class II impossibilities, such as travel faster than light, time travel and parallel universes, may be possible in the next millennium. Class III ideas, like perpetual motion machines and precognition, may never be possible, given the underlying science.
As Kaku explores his subjects, he uses references anyone can understand: Star Trek, Back to the Future, The Wizard of Oz, Flash Gordon, Men in Black. The result is an imminently readable physics primer.
How would a force field work? Wouldn’t it just fry anyone entering it?
Is the human brain a purely Cartesian, Newtonian biological thinking device, or is it in part a conversion device for a thinking mind that exceeds current measurement abilities?
Would an artificial intelligence take on the same characteristics as a human mind?
Dr. Kaku, is there a relationship between the observer effect noted in the famous photon gun diffraction experiments, and psychokinesis? Isn’t the observer effect instantaneous over distance? How could this be true, and have no corollary possibilities of the development of extrasensory perception? What is the power of consciousness?
What’s the difference between string theory and moving dimensions theory? How do these fit into the theory of everything?
Has time been visibly altered in experiments? Doesn’t gravity alter perceived time, so that a person on the surface of the Earth experiences slower time? Is this due to the acceleration-like aspects of gravity?
(much of this is from wikkipedia, like the following (slightly altered):
Kaku has been vocal with his concerns and criticism over social concerns including the anthropogenic cause of global warming; also nuclear armament, nuclear power, and the general misuse of science.[2] He was a staunch opponent of the Cassini-Huygens space probe because of the plutonium contained in the craft for use by its radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Fearing the possibility that its fuel should somehow be dispersed into the environment, and the significant health effects and thousands of casualties caused by the resulting contamination, he charged NASA's risk assessment with scientific dishonesty.[3] Despite his and other objections, the probe was launched and went on to complete its mission without incident so far.
Kaku Michio, physics professor and TV and media science commentator, is the author of several academic textbooks on string theory and quantum field theory, and has had more than 70 articles published in respected journals, covering superstring theory, supergravity supersymmetry, and hadronic physics. He is also author of several popular books, Visions, Hyperspace, and Parallel Worlds, and he co-authored Beyond Einstein with Jennifer Thompson. Hyperspace was a best-seller and was voted one of the best science books of the year by both the New York Times[1] and the Washington Post. Parallel Worlds was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in Great Britain.
His latest book, Physics of the Impossible, examines the technologies of invisibility, teleportation, telepathy, star ships, anti-matter engines, time travel, all regarded as not possible today, but might be feasible in future. In Physics of the Impossible, he ranks these subjects according to when, if ever, these technologies might become reality. In March, Physics of the Impossible hit the New York Times Best-seller list.
Welcome back to KBOO, Dr. Kaku! Our previous discussion sparked a great deal of enthusiastic discussion in the KBOO community.
Class I ideas -- -- force fields, invisibility, phasers and death stars, teleportation, telepathy, psychokinesis, robots, extraterrestrials and UFOs, starships, antimatter and anti-universes -- could come true within a hundred years. Class II impossibilities, such as travel faster than light, time travel and parallel universes, may be possible in the next millennium. Class III ideas, like perpetual motion machines and precognition, may never be possible, given the underlying science.
As Kaku explores his subjects, he uses references anyone can understand: Star Trek, Back to the Future, The Wizard of Oz, Flash Gordon, Men in Black. The result is an imminently readable physics primer.
How would a force field work? Wouldn’t it just fry anyone entering it?
Is the human brain a purely Cartesian, Newtonian biological thinking device, or is it in part a conversion device for a thinking mind that exceeds current measurement abilities?
Would an artificial intelligence take on the same characteristics as a human mind?
Dr. Kaku, is there a relationship between the observer effect noted in the famous photon gun diffraction experiments, and psychokinesis? Isn’t the observer effect instantaneous over distance? How could this be true, and have no corollary possibilities of the development of extrasensory perception? What is the power of consciousness?
What’s the difference between string theory and moving dimensions theory? How do these fit into the theory of everything?
Has time been visibly altered in experiments? Doesn’t gravity alter perceived time, so that a person on the surface of the Earth experiences slower time? Is this due to the acceleration-like aspects of gravity?
(much of this is from wikkipedia, like the following (slightly altered):
Kaku has been vocal with his concerns and criticism over social concerns including the anthropogenic cause of global warming; also nuclear armament, nuclear power, and the general misuse of science.[2] He was a staunch opponent of the Cassini-Huygens space probe because of the plutonium contained in the craft for use by its radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Fearing the possibility that its fuel should somehow be dispersed into the environment, and the significant health effects and thousands of casualties caused by the resulting contamination, he charged NASA's risk assessment with scientific dishonesty.[3] Despite his and other objections, the probe was launched and went on to complete its mission without incident so far.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
theBarackbomb
Hey, maybe if I type the title without spaces it won't convert to Hindi....
I expect political speeches to be shallow. This expectation could be characterized as cynicism, but it derives from conditioning. The shallowness comes from the American politicians’ desire to manipulate, and from their cold indifference to the needs of the masses. It comes from megalomaniac personalities and an inability to analyze political dynamics outside the accepted parameters. This is doubly true for speeches from the winnowed few who curry the favor of the multinational corporations.
Imagine my surprise and relief, then, to hear Barack Obama’s Nation United speech, delivered in Philadelphia earlier this week. Instead of cant, I heard careful analysis. In place of manipulation, I heard compassion, and an effective gesture of healing. This speech was intended to heal America’s racial divide, and it actually opened a door to doing just that. It was more than a speech—it was an historic event.
So again, imagine my surprise. I could not believe my ears. We have great analytical minds in US politics, people like Karl Rove, who sensitively divine every turn of the zeitgeist, and use it for their advantage. Senator Obama’s speech revealed keen insight, but unlike Rove and his ilk, Obama used that insight as a healing scalpel. The speech was a response to constant attacks from the corporate right media to smear him as a hater of Whites. Obama didn’t just respond, he cleared the deck.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of getting your own copy of the speech, and listening or reading the whole thing. It is best to listen to it. It is readily available –it’s on truthout.org, it’s on youtube, it’s printed on the local chain daily’s website. This speech has the legs of a colossus and will keep walking across the landscape whether I recommend it or not. With the Nation United speech, Obama changed the discourse, marginalized the sniping Right, and won the Presidency. The speech made me weep with long-denied relief and happiness. This man actually intends to set things right.
Did you hear that from me, the cynic, the anarcho-socialist who scoffs at the corporate charade of US presidential politics? Yes you did, and I haven’t changed a bit. I don’t expect Obama to make any changes that his psyche and political education are not ready for. There’s no single-payer health plan in his platform. He probably has no idea of the advanced nature of the climate crisis. But this is not the same man who won the Illinois Senate seat, and I’m not sure if it’s the same man who started the run for the Oval Office. Whoever he is, he has changed the game, and he has done so with a great heart, a greater leadership than anything that has appeared in the A-list presidential dock since 1968. Suddenly, a great light has spread over the continent, one that reveals Barack’s competitors as the scurrying mice that they are. Suddenly, a great light….
…………
You’ll be pleased to know that Dick Cheney has been having a good time in the Middle East, fishing from the Sultan of Oman’s private yacht, and ginning up a war against Iran. Scott Ritter, the former arms inspector in Baghdad, and Sy Hersh, the great American journalist, have both written whole books revealing that the buildup of war materiel and constant vast war exercises aimed at Iran have made war all but inevitable. Indeed the pile of equipment grows larger, as for example with the addition of the USS Wasp and its complement of vertical take-off planes (which are as dangerous to its pilots and crew as to anyone else). I have also pointed to this military mobbing, but I wonder if it is as Noam Chomsky has been saying for more than a year now, that the US intends to confront Iran as it has North Korea, constantly threatening in order to wear down the society with constant defense expenses and procedures, and with all the stress that accompanies such preparations. Be that as it may, it is my duty to point to these extensive war preparations, especially as the election grow nearer. Even the success of Barack Obama makes the likelihood of war grow nearer, not by his intention of course, but by the nature of the fascist manipulators who stole the Presidency eight years ago. They face an interesting set of challenges. Clearly they have a deal with the collaborators like Nancy Pelosi not to hold them accountable for false war, invasion, occupation, torture, spying, and outrageous corruption. But will Pelosi maintain power in the same way? How can they guarantee that they will not face some new power arrangement that will throw them into their own Guantanamo?
It seems from Cheney’s peregrinations that the answer is more war—specifically, an extensive aerial bombardment of Iranian cities. The fact that Iran is innocent of any attack against the US matters nothing. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel will need to cooperate for such an atrocity, and that’s exactly where Cheney has been. The former US Captain Eric May and his Ghost Troop organization continue to call for vigilance against a false flag attack, and May further speculates that the date may have a numerological resonance like 7/7 or 9/11; hence March 22nd, for example, becomes a date to look at. I think it is probably still true that such an attack would frighten US citizens into mindless compliance. I was wrong about Obama, so maybe I’m wrong about the American people. Maybe people would see right through some further 9/11 atrocity, and would rise up in anger against the bloody-handed fascists. Who knows? I can only hope.
Here's an email comment that came in during the KBOO PressWatch broadcast:
"The one thing that worries me about Barack is his
proximity to
Brzezinski - the infamous co-author of the Middle
East as we know it -
sole author of "The Grand Chessboard" - a
descendant of Polish faux
aristocrats whose life-long mission is to destroy
Russia
jtg"
--That worries me, too, jtg.
I expect political speeches to be shallow. This expectation could be characterized as cynicism, but it derives from conditioning. The shallowness comes from the American politicians’ desire to manipulate, and from their cold indifference to the needs of the masses. It comes from megalomaniac personalities and an inability to analyze political dynamics outside the accepted parameters. This is doubly true for speeches from the winnowed few who curry the favor of the multinational corporations.
Imagine my surprise and relief, then, to hear Barack Obama’s Nation United speech, delivered in Philadelphia earlier this week. Instead of cant, I heard careful analysis. In place of manipulation, I heard compassion, and an effective gesture of healing. This speech was intended to heal America’s racial divide, and it actually opened a door to doing just that. It was more than a speech—it was an historic event.
So again, imagine my surprise. I could not believe my ears. We have great analytical minds in US politics, people like Karl Rove, who sensitively divine every turn of the zeitgeist, and use it for their advantage. Senator Obama’s speech revealed keen insight, but unlike Rove and his ilk, Obama used that insight as a healing scalpel. The speech was a response to constant attacks from the corporate right media to smear him as a hater of Whites. Obama didn’t just respond, he cleared the deck.
I cannot overemphasize the importance of getting your own copy of the speech, and listening or reading the whole thing. It is best to listen to it. It is readily available –it’s on truthout.org, it’s on youtube, it’s printed on the local chain daily’s website. This speech has the legs of a colossus and will keep walking across the landscape whether I recommend it or not. With the Nation United speech, Obama changed the discourse, marginalized the sniping Right, and won the Presidency. The speech made me weep with long-denied relief and happiness. This man actually intends to set things right.
Did you hear that from me, the cynic, the anarcho-socialist who scoffs at the corporate charade of US presidential politics? Yes you did, and I haven’t changed a bit. I don’t expect Obama to make any changes that his psyche and political education are not ready for. There’s no single-payer health plan in his platform. He probably has no idea of the advanced nature of the climate crisis. But this is not the same man who won the Illinois Senate seat, and I’m not sure if it’s the same man who started the run for the Oval Office. Whoever he is, he has changed the game, and he has done so with a great heart, a greater leadership than anything that has appeared in the A-list presidential dock since 1968. Suddenly, a great light has spread over the continent, one that reveals Barack’s competitors as the scurrying mice that they are. Suddenly, a great light….
…………
You’ll be pleased to know that Dick Cheney has been having a good time in the Middle East, fishing from the Sultan of Oman’s private yacht, and ginning up a war against Iran. Scott Ritter, the former arms inspector in Baghdad, and Sy Hersh, the great American journalist, have both written whole books revealing that the buildup of war materiel and constant vast war exercises aimed at Iran have made war all but inevitable. Indeed the pile of equipment grows larger, as for example with the addition of the USS Wasp and its complement of vertical take-off planes (which are as dangerous to its pilots and crew as to anyone else). I have also pointed to this military mobbing, but I wonder if it is as Noam Chomsky has been saying for more than a year now, that the US intends to confront Iran as it has North Korea, constantly threatening in order to wear down the society with constant defense expenses and procedures, and with all the stress that accompanies such preparations. Be that as it may, it is my duty to point to these extensive war preparations, especially as the election grow nearer. Even the success of Barack Obama makes the likelihood of war grow nearer, not by his intention of course, but by the nature of the fascist manipulators who stole the Presidency eight years ago. They face an interesting set of challenges. Clearly they have a deal with the collaborators like Nancy Pelosi not to hold them accountable for false war, invasion, occupation, torture, spying, and outrageous corruption. But will Pelosi maintain power in the same way? How can they guarantee that they will not face some new power arrangement that will throw them into their own Guantanamo?
It seems from Cheney’s peregrinations that the answer is more war—specifically, an extensive aerial bombardment of Iranian cities. The fact that Iran is innocent of any attack against the US matters nothing. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel will need to cooperate for such an atrocity, and that’s exactly where Cheney has been. The former US Captain Eric May and his Ghost Troop organization continue to call for vigilance against a false flag attack, and May further speculates that the date may have a numerological resonance like 7/7 or 9/11; hence March 22nd, for example, becomes a date to look at. I think it is probably still true that such an attack would frighten US citizens into mindless compliance. I was wrong about Obama, so maybe I’m wrong about the American people. Maybe people would see right through some further 9/11 atrocity, and would rise up in anger against the bloody-handed fascists. Who knows? I can only hope.
Here's an email comment that came in during the KBOO PressWatch broadcast:
"The one thing that worries me about Barack is his
proximity to
Brzezinski - the infamous co-author of the Middle
East as we know it -
sole author of "The Grand Chessboard" - a
descendant of Polish faux
aristocrats whose life-long mission is to destroy
Russia
jtg"
--That worries me, too, jtg.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
she said what?
[thurs AM update: go to antiwar.com (not otherwise endorsed) to find stories on the US/Venezuela/Ecuador/Colombia saber rattling (remembering that Colombia is a US client state and recently received 400 main battle tanks), and also note the article on the US naval buildup opposite Lebanon....]
I’ve noticed that all the discussions about the Presidential candidates are done with chains on brains. That is, the context in which these people seek political power is not to be discussed. So naturally I would like to bring out some of that context.
The fascist coup which destroyed Constitutional rule in this nation took place in the Supreme Court; five justices selected a dictator against the expressed will of the people. Although there was protest at the time it was not nationally organized. I admit I did not recognize the coup for what it was, since at the time an unreformed Al Gore, the one who sneered at the Congressional Black Caucus as they pled for Constitutional rule, had run for president with Joe Lieberman, now revealed to be the Republican representative for Israel. Indeed I think had the Supremes not shredded the Constitution in that way, the fascists would have found some other way to implement rule by fiat, perhaps in some variation of the empty Cessna which reminded the former President Clinton that he had gone to far. The corporate press keeps the issues shallow, and roars with rage when anyone points out that the World Trade Centers were obviously detonated, as the Vice President illegally directed military air traffic on that day in 2001.
The Presidential vote fraud of 2004 is not mentioned, either, so that the millions are encouraged to believe that a vote is still a vote in this country.
All unacceptable discussion has been purged from the Primaries, through the icy rejection by the corporate-controlled cameras. We may gingerly discuss how long to carry out our wars, but we dare not speak of withdrawal and war reparations. Impeachment is off the table. Prosecutions for torture and war crimes are off the table. Single payer health care has been skillfully excluded.
Given these circumstances, I would like to present an unhampered exhibition of what I would like to see as a change. The remaining campaigns all talk about change, but by that they mean superficial change.
I would like to limit wealth to one million dollars income annually, and two million dollars property. This would be a substantial change for multi-billionaires like Warren Buffet, but he would be guided through the shock by the free single-payer health care that we could thereby afford. I want a restoral of the dynasty tax, wrongly called the death tax; we need no dynasties, and the Constitution writers were right to take steps against them. We should also confiscate the wealth of repeat-offender corporations and take away their human status. So Exxon-Mobil, and Archer Daniels Midland and hundreds of others could cough up their wealth, even and especially the trillions hidden in semilegal tax dodge accounts in the Caribbean. This might require a show of force in Barbados and Aruba, but I’m okay with that. It could be fun, we could run a Jolly Roger flag up the masts of the big missile ships and aircraft carriers.
Oh yeah, and I would tax churches and force them to open their books. Repeat child offender churches would be disbanded as a menace to society.
My campaign platform, then, is total destruction of corporate rule, seizure of their assets, and movement towards a just society. I would free all nonviolent criminals from our astonishing, record-breaking, racist, three-million-strong prison state, and repeal all minimum-sentence rules. Since we would have plenty of money from the long-overdue confiscations, we could use the liberated labor to perform useful green infrastructure rebuilding—at family wages, of course. There is much to be done, including emergency weather remediation efforts to save the North Pole ice and the Greenland ice cap and of course out precious inland glaciers. No time like the present.
Naturally my Administration demands immediate withdrawal from invaded countries and the payment of substantial war reparations. This would traumatize our soldiers who have been lied into committing terrible acts of violence, but as I said, after confiscating criminal corporate wealth, we can afford to restore their sanity.
If this seems whimsical I would remind you that all freedoms and reforms seem like fairy tales until someone actually thinks the concepts true, and then takes steps to make it reality. The defiance of the idea is the groundbreaking start. If we agree to confine our thoughts and words to meek acceptance, then all we can hope for is mercy from the oppressors. I propose we overthrow the state instead.
I’ll give you an example of this paradigm from my own experience this week. I was driving my municipal bus through an area where three or four young men keep a sort of bus-riding tradition going. I had not driven the route for years and was surprised to see the same guys; I recognized them when they recognized me, and engaged in their time-honored tradition of fingering their genitalia while glaring at me. Since I am a transwoman and they have expressed their violent contempt in the past, their message is clear enough. It is a rapist gesture, intended to get under my skin. It works. I haven’t asked these guys what they do for a living, but it evidently has to do with prison-walking, cell phones, swift package exchanges in the back of the bus, and women who walk three steps behind them with their heads down.
So what to do? Nothing? I’m not Supertrans. There’s only so much I can do. So I got a marker pen, and wrote on the outside of my right arm the phrase “death to rapists.”
This put an immediate end to the crotch-feeling. Instead, two young men read the phrase out loud as they stepped on the bus. I smiled and nodded. Who wants to stand up for rapists? But the funny thing was, as I drove on through the morning, how many men were shaken by the phrase. One young man said, and I quote, “Bor-uh-buh--…as he pointed to my arm, and then recovering, said “two zones please.” I gave him his ticket with a warm smile. It seems a lot of young (and not so young) men have an unconscious or at least unexamined identification with the concept “rapist.”
As a pitiful aside, I also remember that several women spoke to me with real gratitude. Are we --as a society--sick, or what? And yes, I was raped at the age of twelve, by –of course—a Boy Scout leader.
Back to the larger political point, we have to be able to think in terms of what we want, and we have to be able to accept that what we want is legitimate. We have to be able to say “Capitalist” and “Imperialist” or equivalent words. We have to acknowledge that a society ruled by signing statements, manufactured fear, militarization of air and rail terminals, unprecedented prison-packing, and endless pointless war is a fascist society. Say it. Say “I live in a fascist society.” Now I ask you, what sort of society would you like to live in?
I’ve noticed that all the discussions about the Presidential candidates are done with chains on brains. That is, the context in which these people seek political power is not to be discussed. So naturally I would like to bring out some of that context.
The fascist coup which destroyed Constitutional rule in this nation took place in the Supreme Court; five justices selected a dictator against the expressed will of the people. Although there was protest at the time it was not nationally organized. I admit I did not recognize the coup for what it was, since at the time an unreformed Al Gore, the one who sneered at the Congressional Black Caucus as they pled for Constitutional rule, had run for president with Joe Lieberman, now revealed to be the Republican representative for Israel. Indeed I think had the Supremes not shredded the Constitution in that way, the fascists would have found some other way to implement rule by fiat, perhaps in some variation of the empty Cessna which reminded the former President Clinton that he had gone to far. The corporate press keeps the issues shallow, and roars with rage when anyone points out that the World Trade Centers were obviously detonated, as the Vice President illegally directed military air traffic on that day in 2001.
The Presidential vote fraud of 2004 is not mentioned, either, so that the millions are encouraged to believe that a vote is still a vote in this country.
All unacceptable discussion has been purged from the Primaries, through the icy rejection by the corporate-controlled cameras. We may gingerly discuss how long to carry out our wars, but we dare not speak of withdrawal and war reparations. Impeachment is off the table. Prosecutions for torture and war crimes are off the table. Single payer health care has been skillfully excluded.
Given these circumstances, I would like to present an unhampered exhibition of what I would like to see as a change. The remaining campaigns all talk about change, but by that they mean superficial change.
I would like to limit wealth to one million dollars income annually, and two million dollars property. This would be a substantial change for multi-billionaires like Warren Buffet, but he would be guided through the shock by the free single-payer health care that we could thereby afford. I want a restoral of the dynasty tax, wrongly called the death tax; we need no dynasties, and the Constitution writers were right to take steps against them. We should also confiscate the wealth of repeat-offender corporations and take away their human status. So Exxon-Mobil, and Archer Daniels Midland and hundreds of others could cough up their wealth, even and especially the trillions hidden in semilegal tax dodge accounts in the Caribbean. This might require a show of force in Barbados and Aruba, but I’m okay with that. It could be fun, we could run a Jolly Roger flag up the masts of the big missile ships and aircraft carriers.
Oh yeah, and I would tax churches and force them to open their books. Repeat child offender churches would be disbanded as a menace to society.
My campaign platform, then, is total destruction of corporate rule, seizure of their assets, and movement towards a just society. I would free all nonviolent criminals from our astonishing, record-breaking, racist, three-million-strong prison state, and repeal all minimum-sentence rules. Since we would have plenty of money from the long-overdue confiscations, we could use the liberated labor to perform useful green infrastructure rebuilding—at family wages, of course. There is much to be done, including emergency weather remediation efforts to save the North Pole ice and the Greenland ice cap and of course out precious inland glaciers. No time like the present.
Naturally my Administration demands immediate withdrawal from invaded countries and the payment of substantial war reparations. This would traumatize our soldiers who have been lied into committing terrible acts of violence, but as I said, after confiscating criminal corporate wealth, we can afford to restore their sanity.
If this seems whimsical I would remind you that all freedoms and reforms seem like fairy tales until someone actually thinks the concepts true, and then takes steps to make it reality. The defiance of the idea is the groundbreaking start. If we agree to confine our thoughts and words to meek acceptance, then all we can hope for is mercy from the oppressors. I propose we overthrow the state instead.
I’ll give you an example of this paradigm from my own experience this week. I was driving my municipal bus through an area where three or four young men keep a sort of bus-riding tradition going. I had not driven the route for years and was surprised to see the same guys; I recognized them when they recognized me, and engaged in their time-honored tradition of fingering their genitalia while glaring at me. Since I am a transwoman and they have expressed their violent contempt in the past, their message is clear enough. It is a rapist gesture, intended to get under my skin. It works. I haven’t asked these guys what they do for a living, but it evidently has to do with prison-walking, cell phones, swift package exchanges in the back of the bus, and women who walk three steps behind them with their heads down.
So what to do? Nothing? I’m not Supertrans. There’s only so much I can do. So I got a marker pen, and wrote on the outside of my right arm the phrase “death to rapists.”
This put an immediate end to the crotch-feeling. Instead, two young men read the phrase out loud as they stepped on the bus. I smiled and nodded. Who wants to stand up for rapists? But the funny thing was, as I drove on through the morning, how many men were shaken by the phrase. One young man said, and I quote, “Bor-uh-buh--…as he pointed to my arm, and then recovering, said “two zones please.” I gave him his ticket with a warm smile. It seems a lot of young (and not so young) men have an unconscious or at least unexamined identification with the concept “rapist.”
As a pitiful aside, I also remember that several women spoke to me with real gratitude. Are we --as a society--sick, or what? And yes, I was raped at the age of twelve, by –of course—a Boy Scout leader.
Back to the larger political point, we have to be able to think in terms of what we want, and we have to be able to accept that what we want is legitimate. We have to be able to say “Capitalist” and “Imperialist” or equivalent words. We have to acknowledge that a society ruled by signing statements, manufactured fear, militarization of air and rail terminals, unprecedented prison-packing, and endless pointless war is a fascist society. Say it. Say “I live in a fascist society.” Now I ask you, what sort of society would you like to live in?
Friday, February 29, 2008
a lovely day for revolution
Years after left commentators (like myself) began pointing out that we had a million people in prison--no, two million--no, more than any other country in history--no, two-point-two million--it's come out that one in a hundred persons is actually behind bars in this massive prison state:
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=9483
What's left to say? If punishment stopped drug use, it would have ended in the Seventies, and if capitalism were the ultimate system, it would not be constantly associated with crime. I maintain that a capitalist society deserves crime--especially a cruel capitalist nutcase society like this one, in which people must rob banks to pay for their young children's cancer treatments. Well, no one can argue now that we aren't getting what we deserve! One in a hundred--incredible! Nearly three million completely chained and enslaved!
This is not enough for the police-state mentality, which also wants to criminalize dissent. Dig this:
"DEVICE WILL HELP SAN JOSE CONTROL LOUD CROWDS
By Sean Webby
San Jose Mercury News (2/25/08)
Think louder than a jet engine. Think the front row of a Metallica concert. Think of the piercing scream of a smoke alarm - inches from your ear.
Now, imagine a bad guy, holed up with hostages, refusing to budge, surrounded by sharp-shooters and anxious neighbors. [notice how the discussion is immediately drawn to scary criminals rather than to the demonstrators this will be used on--tm]
Instead of bullets, San Jose police can blast him with the latest in high-tech cop gadgetry: a dish-shaped, sonic weapon.
This ear-splitting, mind-blowing device is growing in popularity around the globe, used by soldiers flushing terrorists out of caves in Afghanistan to cruise ships scaring off pirates in the sea off Somalia.
So why did San Jose plunk down $27,000 in state grant money for its own Long Range Acoustic Device?
Police say it will be used mostly as a high-grade sound system to clearly amplify a police officer's order at great distances. But it can also be used as another of the department's "less-lethal" weapons, along with Tasers and 40mm projectile guns.
....[more at san jose mercury news]
----------
Of course, LRAD is not just a loudspeaker, but a focused sound device that can torture an individual in a crowd or make her think the voice of God or demons or whatever is speaking only to her.
Our mental conditioning towards fascist collaboration is at an advanced stage. I had to attend a training class for security and safety on my job—I drive a municipal bus—and in stead of teaching us how to deal with the inevitable strong earthquake for this region, or how to manage after strong storms, we were shown pictures of bombs and told to sweep the bus after every trip. We were told about the appearance of weaponized anthrax, and warned to call if someone left their backpack on the bus.
I was furious at this blatant fearmongering and risked my job speaking out against it at the meeting. The response was interesting; it was as if I could not be heard. I was ignored studiously, as if I were the voice of Satan. “Anthrax?” I jeered, “there’s no anthrax.” And indeed the only weaponized anthrax available, Ft. Detrick’s special de-staticized powder, was unlikely to re-appear considering that Lt. Col Philip Zack is out of the country. But we were to pretend that the stuff could appear at any time, and we’re expected to help create a a hysteria, the next time someone spills their flour or Coffee-Mate or whatever.
If there were any truth to the post-9/11 fearmongering, one might expect some furious defense from the instructor of the class when I raised objections. But there is of course no reason to do all the ridiculous things we do in the name of security, because the threat is far less significant than the threat of car accidents, smoking-related disease and deaths, alcohol-related injury and deaths, and deaths from poor nutrition. Compare the numbers of deaths in the US over the past ten years, add in death and injury from crime, and the ratio is staggering. Terrorism is not a statistically significant problem in the US. The only reason to undertake all of these ridiculous measures is to keep the population fearful and under control. And it’s worked beautifully. I refused to let some poor shmo put his gasoline-powered scooter on the bus, because of course the potential gas spill could injure dozens. He was too dim to understand, and felt persecuted, but there was nothing I could do; as I drove away, another Einstein commented that it was a good thing I had not allowed the man on, because ‘he could be a terrorist and might have wanted to blow us up.’ I don’t blame people with mental disabilities for their condition; it’s shocking to think on, but nonetheless true, that half the population, by definition, has an IQ in the double digits. I blame vicious demagogues for taking advantage of them. And as the neocon demagogues know, there is a strong intimidation factor to a blatantly false idea, when it is repeated as gospel by the masses of weak-minded, politically uneducated people.
Don't let it stand. Say something.
http://rawstory.com//printstory.php?story=9483
What's left to say? If punishment stopped drug use, it would have ended in the Seventies, and if capitalism were the ultimate system, it would not be constantly associated with crime. I maintain that a capitalist society deserves crime--especially a cruel capitalist nutcase society like this one, in which people must rob banks to pay for their young children's cancer treatments. Well, no one can argue now that we aren't getting what we deserve! One in a hundred--incredible! Nearly three million completely chained and enslaved!
This is not enough for the police-state mentality, which also wants to criminalize dissent. Dig this:
"DEVICE WILL HELP SAN JOSE CONTROL LOUD CROWDS
By Sean Webby
San Jose Mercury News (2/25/08)
Think louder than a jet engine. Think the front row of a Metallica concert. Think of the piercing scream of a smoke alarm - inches from your ear.
Now, imagine a bad guy, holed up with hostages, refusing to budge, surrounded by sharp-shooters and anxious neighbors. [notice how the discussion is immediately drawn to scary criminals rather than to the demonstrators this will be used on--tm]
Instead of bullets, San Jose police can blast him with the latest in high-tech cop gadgetry: a dish-shaped, sonic weapon.
This ear-splitting, mind-blowing device is growing in popularity around the globe, used by soldiers flushing terrorists out of caves in Afghanistan to cruise ships scaring off pirates in the sea off Somalia.
So why did San Jose plunk down $27,000 in state grant money for its own Long Range Acoustic Device?
Police say it will be used mostly as a high-grade sound system to clearly amplify a police officer's order at great distances. But it can also be used as another of the department's "less-lethal" weapons, along with Tasers and 40mm projectile guns.
....[more at san jose mercury news]
----------
Of course, LRAD is not just a loudspeaker, but a focused sound device that can torture an individual in a crowd or make her think the voice of God or demons or whatever is speaking only to her.
Our mental conditioning towards fascist collaboration is at an advanced stage. I had to attend a training class for security and safety on my job—I drive a municipal bus—and in stead of teaching us how to deal with the inevitable strong earthquake for this region, or how to manage after strong storms, we were shown pictures of bombs and told to sweep the bus after every trip. We were told about the appearance of weaponized anthrax, and warned to call if someone left their backpack on the bus.
I was furious at this blatant fearmongering and risked my job speaking out against it at the meeting. The response was interesting; it was as if I could not be heard. I was ignored studiously, as if I were the voice of Satan. “Anthrax?” I jeered, “there’s no anthrax.” And indeed the only weaponized anthrax available, Ft. Detrick’s special de-staticized powder, was unlikely to re-appear considering that Lt. Col Philip Zack is out of the country. But we were to pretend that the stuff could appear at any time, and we’re expected to help create a a hysteria, the next time someone spills their flour or Coffee-Mate or whatever.
If there were any truth to the post-9/11 fearmongering, one might expect some furious defense from the instructor of the class when I raised objections. But there is of course no reason to do all the ridiculous things we do in the name of security, because the threat is far less significant than the threat of car accidents, smoking-related disease and deaths, alcohol-related injury and deaths, and deaths from poor nutrition. Compare the numbers of deaths in the US over the past ten years, add in death and injury from crime, and the ratio is staggering. Terrorism is not a statistically significant problem in the US. The only reason to undertake all of these ridiculous measures is to keep the population fearful and under control. And it’s worked beautifully. I refused to let some poor shmo put his gasoline-powered scooter on the bus, because of course the potential gas spill could injure dozens. He was too dim to understand, and felt persecuted, but there was nothing I could do; as I drove away, another Einstein commented that it was a good thing I had not allowed the man on, because ‘he could be a terrorist and might have wanted to blow us up.’ I don’t blame people with mental disabilities for their condition; it’s shocking to think on, but nonetheless true, that half the population, by definition, has an IQ in the double digits. I blame vicious demagogues for taking advantage of them. And as the neocon demagogues know, there is a strong intimidation factor to a blatantly false idea, when it is repeated as gospel by the masses of weak-minded, politically uneducated people.
Don't let it stand. Say something.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
burp
Well I suppose you heard the great news that the dictator has resigned. Yep, and there are great hopes that reforms and even democracy will break out in the long-dominated nation—oh wait, that was Cuba. Damn.
Regarding the mysterious cuts in undersea communications cables, one may apply some basic logical tools—such as Occam’s razor. What is the simplest explanation for the cutting of six cables within weeks of each other, given that there was no seismic activity that could have rent the cables asunder? The cables all carried internet and, importantly, banking internet traffic for major Middle East countries, and their disfunction caused considerable consternation from Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Iran.
So, if not a seaquake, what cut them? Did a giant undersea-cable-chomping crab suddenly get hungry? Occam’s razor says no. Did six ships with six sharp anchors go adrift in heavy seas—over several hundred miles—and cut the cables as they fought to stay afloat? Well, there were no heavy seas. Occam’s razor says that explanation won’t cut it.
No, the simplest explanation is that a nation with advanced submarine assets operating in the area cut the cable. The US has several submarines in the area; they cut the cables.
As for motive for the crime, the other logical tool to apply is Cui Bono—who benefits? With the subprime mortgage sector spreading its disintegrating weight to several other financial instruments, the dollar has weakened considerably, and investors in Saudi and Iran were very interested in transferring their assets—via internet transactions carried by the cables—out of the dollar and into safer funds. After the cable cuts that process was very much slowed down, and an unmistakable threat was sent to the dollar-transferers: Slow down, or we’ll cut you off altogether. It was an act of war, an act of violence, from a humiliated George Dumbya Bush, whose pleadings and scrapings fell on deaf ears in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. Who benefits? US imperial power benefits; Exxon/Mobil and Texaco/BP benefit. The massive sell-off of dollars has been delayed, perhaps with the taint of intimidation in the air; maybe it’ll hold off until the elections. If I were Saudi I’d be interpreting it that way, but then if I were Saudi I’d be part of a movement against women, and who knows ho brains like that function.
We may apply like measures to the news that the US used an antisatellite missile this week. Here is the official lapdog press phrase, in this case the BBC’s: ”But it is not yet known how successful the operation was - the missile needed to pierce the bus-sized satellite's fuel tank, containing more than 450kg (1,000lbs) of toxic hydrazine, which would otherwise be expected to survive re-entry."
If the BBC reporter had done a bit of research on the pablum spouted by the US military instead of reporting it at face value, he would have discovered that the fuel tank was of necessity quite thin and would be rather unlikely to survive the heat and turbulence of a re-entry from space, and in any event its explosive hydrazine would have burned up in the crater. So it wasn’t any more of a threat than any of dozens of other satellites that have fallen in recent years. No, this was a gesture towards China not to bother developing more nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. It’s another sign of our lying military careening out of control. It seems lying is in season, as we are also to believe this week that a kangaroo court conducted on a no-man’s-land six years after the destruction of all evidence relating to charges and several years after the defendants were tortured, is instead a free and fair trial reflecting values of democracy. I am reminded of Khalil Gibran, and certain silver-plated commodities.
“By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent Mon Feb 4, 5:27 PM ET
OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming this century could trigger a runaway thaw of Greenland's ice sheet and other abrupt shifts such as a dieback of the Amazon rainforest, scientists said on Monday.
They urged governments to be more aware of "tipping points" in nature, tiny shifts that can bring big and almost always damaging changes such as a melt of Arctic summer sea ice or a collapse of the Indian monsoon.
"Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change," the scientists at British, German and U.S. institutes wrote in a report saying there were many little-understood thresholds in nature.
"Tipping elements in the tropics, the boreal zone, and west Antarctica are surrounded by large uncertainty," they wrote, pointing to more potential abrupt shifts than seen in a 2007 report by the U.N. Climate Panel.
A projected drying of the Amazon basin, linked both to logging and to global warming, could set off a dieback of the rainforest.
"Many of these tipping points could be closer than we thought," lead author Timothy Lenton, of the University of East Anglia in England, told Reuters of the study.
Other sudden changes linked to climate change, stoked by human use of fossil fuels, included a dieback of northern pine forests, or a stronger warming of the Pacific under El Nino weather events that can disrupt weather worldwide, they wrote.
[UN Climate Panel:] The report also identified risks such as damage to northern pine forests -- widely exploited by the pulp industry -- because of factors such as more frequent fires and vulnerability to pests in warmer, drier conditions.
But it played down some other fears, such as of a runaway melt of Siberian permafrost, releasing stores of methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas.”[end]
The fact that the UN climate change panel should play down the methane threat is not in itself comforting to me; quite the opposite, in fact. These are people who have staked their reputations on stating very little in terms of projections, and their profession demands that they make all such speculation highly conservative, no matter how dramatic the looming facts may be.
The Siberian peat fields are already offgassing, as we know from fist-hand reports. That tipping point has been reached, and passed. The North Pole very nearly melted just a few years ago and of course will follow its current mathematically predicable trajectory to Summer oblivion. That is another tipping point passed. The UN Climate panel will not say the obvious, that the barbarians have breached the gate and the city is doomed. That would be unprofessional.
Yet it is professionals who have cored the ancient glaciers and found evidence of sudden climate-borne extinctions. We don’t know the cause of the tipping points previously, but we do know that once the ball is rolling, we will suddenly find ourselves in a situation in which less than a quarter of the oxygen now available to us at every breath can be had. Once the oceanic clathrates boil up from their slumber, the methane will displace the oxygen and that will be that. At first you’ll get a shocking headache, and at some point you’ll want to go to sleep, You will awaken several times, each time more confused, and then you will not waken.
But that’s a kind and conservative view of climate-change clathrate eruption. It assumes that the methane will somehow get mixed evenly, right away. But that’s not physically possible. There will be places and times in which the bubble of methane will simply displace the rest of the atmosphere, and in those places—I assume hundreds if not thousands of miles wide—there will simply be no oxygen, and death will come far more quickly for you, me, everyone you love, the geese that decorate the field, the squirrel in the tree, this city, that elementary school—every breathing thing, dead.
But excuse me, I don’t want to get overdramatic here. No need to clamor for extraordinary or emergency measures here. I could be wrong. Even though one of the first clathrate burps was caught on video recently off Santa Barbara. Forget what I said. Forget now. Now you are forgetting. Hey, great eclipse last night.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080204/sc_nm/climate_tipping_dc_2
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.climate/
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/01/080115102706.htm
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:impIRiEdpikJ:oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03windows/background/education/media/03win_badday.pdf+clathrate+burp&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=safari
http://aphriza.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/pulling-the-clathrate-trigger/
Regarding the mysterious cuts in undersea communications cables, one may apply some basic logical tools—such as Occam’s razor. What is the simplest explanation for the cutting of six cables within weeks of each other, given that there was no seismic activity that could have rent the cables asunder? The cables all carried internet and, importantly, banking internet traffic for major Middle East countries, and their disfunction caused considerable consternation from Egypt to Saudi Arabia to Iran.
So, if not a seaquake, what cut them? Did a giant undersea-cable-chomping crab suddenly get hungry? Occam’s razor says no. Did six ships with six sharp anchors go adrift in heavy seas—over several hundred miles—and cut the cables as they fought to stay afloat? Well, there were no heavy seas. Occam’s razor says that explanation won’t cut it.
No, the simplest explanation is that a nation with advanced submarine assets operating in the area cut the cable. The US has several submarines in the area; they cut the cables.
As for motive for the crime, the other logical tool to apply is Cui Bono—who benefits? With the subprime mortgage sector spreading its disintegrating weight to several other financial instruments, the dollar has weakened considerably, and investors in Saudi and Iran were very interested in transferring their assets—via internet transactions carried by the cables—out of the dollar and into safer funds. After the cable cuts that process was very much slowed down, and an unmistakable threat was sent to the dollar-transferers: Slow down, or we’ll cut you off altogether. It was an act of war, an act of violence, from a humiliated George Dumbya Bush, whose pleadings and scrapings fell on deaf ears in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. Who benefits? US imperial power benefits; Exxon/Mobil and Texaco/BP benefit. The massive sell-off of dollars has been delayed, perhaps with the taint of intimidation in the air; maybe it’ll hold off until the elections. If I were Saudi I’d be interpreting it that way, but then if I were Saudi I’d be part of a movement against women, and who knows ho brains like that function.
We may apply like measures to the news that the US used an antisatellite missile this week. Here is the official lapdog press phrase, in this case the BBC’s: ”But it is not yet known how successful the operation was - the missile needed to pierce the bus-sized satellite's fuel tank, containing more than 450kg (1,000lbs) of toxic hydrazine, which would otherwise be expected to survive re-entry."
If the BBC reporter had done a bit of research on the pablum spouted by the US military instead of reporting it at face value, he would have discovered that the fuel tank was of necessity quite thin and would be rather unlikely to survive the heat and turbulence of a re-entry from space, and in any event its explosive hydrazine would have burned up in the crater. So it wasn’t any more of a threat than any of dozens of other satellites that have fallen in recent years. No, this was a gesture towards China not to bother developing more nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. It’s another sign of our lying military careening out of control. It seems lying is in season, as we are also to believe this week that a kangaroo court conducted on a no-man’s-land six years after the destruction of all evidence relating to charges and several years after the defendants were tortured, is instead a free and fair trial reflecting values of democracy. I am reminded of Khalil Gibran, and certain silver-plated commodities.
“By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent Mon Feb 4, 5:27 PM ET
OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming this century could trigger a runaway thaw of Greenland's ice sheet and other abrupt shifts such as a dieback of the Amazon rainforest, scientists said on Monday.
They urged governments to be more aware of "tipping points" in nature, tiny shifts that can bring big and almost always damaging changes such as a melt of Arctic summer sea ice or a collapse of the Indian monsoon.
"Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change," the scientists at British, German and U.S. institutes wrote in a report saying there were many little-understood thresholds in nature.
"Tipping elements in the tropics, the boreal zone, and west Antarctica are surrounded by large uncertainty," they wrote, pointing to more potential abrupt shifts than seen in a 2007 report by the U.N. Climate Panel.
A projected drying of the Amazon basin, linked both to logging and to global warming, could set off a dieback of the rainforest.
"Many of these tipping points could be closer than we thought," lead author Timothy Lenton, of the University of East Anglia in England, told Reuters of the study.
Other sudden changes linked to climate change, stoked by human use of fossil fuels, included a dieback of northern pine forests, or a stronger warming of the Pacific under El Nino weather events that can disrupt weather worldwide, they wrote.
[UN Climate Panel:] The report also identified risks such as damage to northern pine forests -- widely exploited by the pulp industry -- because of factors such as more frequent fires and vulnerability to pests in warmer, drier conditions.
But it played down some other fears, such as of a runaway melt of Siberian permafrost, releasing stores of methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas.”[end]
The fact that the UN climate change panel should play down the methane threat is not in itself comforting to me; quite the opposite, in fact. These are people who have staked their reputations on stating very little in terms of projections, and their profession demands that they make all such speculation highly conservative, no matter how dramatic the looming facts may be.
The Siberian peat fields are already offgassing, as we know from fist-hand reports. That tipping point has been reached, and passed. The North Pole very nearly melted just a few years ago and of course will follow its current mathematically predicable trajectory to Summer oblivion. That is another tipping point passed. The UN Climate panel will not say the obvious, that the barbarians have breached the gate and the city is doomed. That would be unprofessional.
Yet it is professionals who have cored the ancient glaciers and found evidence of sudden climate-borne extinctions. We don’t know the cause of the tipping points previously, but we do know that once the ball is rolling, we will suddenly find ourselves in a situation in which less than a quarter of the oxygen now available to us at every breath can be had. Once the oceanic clathrates boil up from their slumber, the methane will displace the oxygen and that will be that. At first you’ll get a shocking headache, and at some point you’ll want to go to sleep, You will awaken several times, each time more confused, and then you will not waken.
But that’s a kind and conservative view of climate-change clathrate eruption. It assumes that the methane will somehow get mixed evenly, right away. But that’s not physically possible. There will be places and times in which the bubble of methane will simply displace the rest of the atmosphere, and in those places—I assume hundreds if not thousands of miles wide—there will simply be no oxygen, and death will come far more quickly for you, me, everyone you love, the geese that decorate the field, the squirrel in the tree, this city, that elementary school—every breathing thing, dead.
But excuse me, I don’t want to get overdramatic here. No need to clamor for extraordinary or emergency measures here. I could be wrong. Even though one of the first clathrate burps was caught on video recently off Santa Barbara. Forget what I said. Forget now. Now you are forgetting. Hey, great eclipse last night.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080204/sc_nm/climate_tipping_dc_2
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/08/07/contrails.climate/
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/01/080115102706.htm
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:impIRiEdpikJ:oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03windows/background/education/media/03win_badday.pdf+clathrate+burp&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=safari
http://aphriza.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/pulling-the-clathrate-trigger/
Friday, February 15, 2008
हैप्पी कांतेम्प्त ऑफ़ कांग्रेस वीकएंड!
Hee-lariously, the headline above was transliterated into Bengali. I have no idea why. I don't remember what it said, either.
This week's PressWatch was able to take its first 'live' email (to theresa58x@yahoo.com) thanks to the generosity of Chris Andrae, who loaned me her laptop for half an hour.
I used the occasion to rant about Infragard--it's not something protecting InfraMan's crotch, but rather a James Bond Junior program for "corporate leaders." It's the weirdest, most fascist thing to come down the pike since Antonin Scalia--read more about it at the progressive.org website.
Get this--after all these months of delaying:
"The House voted Thursday to hold two of President Bush’s confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether a purge of federal prosecutors was politically motivated. Angry Republicans boycotted the vote and staged a walkout.
The vote was 223-32 Thursday to hold presidential chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt. The citations charge Miers with failing to testify and accuse her and Bolten of refusing Congress’ demands for documents related to the 2006-2007 [Federal Attorney] firings.....The White House said the Justice Department would not ask the U.S. attorney to pursue the House contempt charges."
That's a section of the mainstream media take on the contempt charges. I had given up on them, after all these months of sneaking one-month extensions at the last minute. Note that the last line says that the Bushites won't cooperate-- the arrogant swine.... Now it's time to contact Conyers (and the whole Gang That Can't Shoot Straight Because They Won't Even Load Their Damn Guns) that they should proceed with instructing the House Sergeant of Arms to ARREST THEIR SORRY ASSES ANYWAY and deputize anyone they need to get 'er done. (I volunteer.) To the tune of That's Entertainment: "That's Constitution...." La la la.
And in the meantime, I have some questions--just a few--about the Guantanamo trials: (1) Why six+ years later? (2) Why military trials when we all want to see the evidence? (3) Where is the evidence? (4) Why was the evidence (of the destroyed buildings, etc.) carted away and never examined forensically, in complete defiance of all laws of investigation? (5) How is Guantanamo gulag legal anyway? (6) How is it ok to torture and then try someone? (7) How is it American if it doesn’t use the Bill of Rights, particularly the 4th and 5th Amendments? (8) How is it 2008, if we’re going back to 1215 before King John signed the Magna Carta and allowed habeas corpus?
So long as I'm asking questions about torture and detentions: Where are the KBR detention camps that have been paid for by Congress, and what manner of transport has been devised to fill them up?
Oy.
This week's PressWatch was able to take its first 'live' email (to theresa58x@yahoo.com) thanks to the generosity of Chris Andrae, who loaned me her laptop for half an hour.
I used the occasion to rant about Infragard--it's not something protecting InfraMan's crotch, but rather a James Bond Junior program for "corporate leaders." It's the weirdest, most fascist thing to come down the pike since Antonin Scalia--read more about it at the progressive.org website.
Get this--after all these months of delaying:
"The House voted Thursday to hold two of President Bush’s confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether a purge of federal prosecutors was politically motivated. Angry Republicans boycotted the vote and staged a walkout.
The vote was 223-32 Thursday to hold presidential chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt. The citations charge Miers with failing to testify and accuse her and Bolten of refusing Congress’ demands for documents related to the 2006-2007 [Federal Attorney] firings.....The White House said the Justice Department would not ask the U.S. attorney to pursue the House contempt charges."
That's a section of the mainstream media take on the contempt charges. I had given up on them, after all these months of sneaking one-month extensions at the last minute. Note that the last line says that the Bushites won't cooperate-- the arrogant swine.... Now it's time to contact Conyers (and the whole Gang That Can't Shoot Straight Because They Won't Even Load Their Damn Guns) that they should proceed with instructing the House Sergeant of Arms to ARREST THEIR SORRY ASSES ANYWAY and deputize anyone they need to get 'er done. (I volunteer.) To the tune of That's Entertainment: "That's Constitution...." La la la.
And in the meantime, I have some questions--just a few--about the Guantanamo trials: (1) Why six+ years later? (2) Why military trials when we all want to see the evidence? (3) Where is the evidence? (4) Why was the evidence (of the destroyed buildings, etc.) carted away and never examined forensically, in complete defiance of all laws of investigation? (5) How is Guantanamo gulag legal anyway? (6) How is it ok to torture and then try someone? (7) How is it American if it doesn’t use the Bill of Rights, particularly the 4th and 5th Amendments? (8) How is it 2008, if we’re going back to 1215 before King John signed the Magna Carta and allowed habeas corpus?
So long as I'm asking questions about torture and detentions: Where are the KBR detention camps that have been paid for by Congress, and what manner of transport has been devised to fill them up?
Oy.
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