Friday, April 18, 2014

The War of the Warms - 2

Downtown Denial City
Several years ago on this date Dredd Blog took a glance at the warming wars (The War of the Warms), a little scandal about ignorance (Agnotology: The Surge - 7).

This particular war takes place inside the mysteriously growing skulls of Americans (some of them anyway).

Which ideologically isolates Americans further, since most of the world now accepts the reality of global warming induced climate change (Scientists Urge Rejection of Keystone XL Pipeline).

Additionally, the scientific data and consensus gets stronger and stronger every day (What We Know).

But, like a certain date that a convict on death row tries to be unaware of, the criminal Oil-Qaeda delves deeper and deeper into denial while the authoritarians and Stockholm Syndrome sufferers grow more certain that the day of reckoning will never come.

Anyway, here is the post from today's date in 2010, just to show once again that when some folks enter a trance they do not come out of it:

Yesterday Ecocosmology Blog had a post about a global warming scientist, a geologist, who had predicted, over 2.5 years before it erupted, the current volcanic eruption in Iceland that has shut down air traffic in Europe.

A while back Dredd Blog had a post about a lawsuit concerning global warming, where the plaintiffs won a temporary appellate victory against oil companies.

They had sued oil companies for causing global warming, which caused storms to increase in severity, damaging their properties when hurricane Katrina hit the coast.

They had lost in the federal district court, had won the appeal heard by three judges of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but had lost in their opposition to having it re-heard en banc (before all the judges on that court).

The case is now pending an oral argument hearing before all of the judges of the Fifth Circuit, while both sides prepare their briefs and prepare for that oral argument.

It seems to me that if the Fifth Circuit judges knew of the scientist who predicted catastrophe in the exact place it happened with the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, the case could be made stronger that environmental damage was foreseeable to oil companies, like cancer was foreseeable by tobacco and asbestos companies.

The tobacco and asbestos companies historically had lied under oath before congress, their lawyers had continually argued that the damage to individuals was not foreseeable, and therefore not a "proximate cause" of the injuries which the plaintiffs suing them had suffered.

The tobacco and asbestos companies eventually lost that argument so their practices were modified by the judicial system.

This would be a good time for that to happen to the oil complex because they are stuck in the exact same mindset as the tobacco and asbestos companies were ... "what damages ... what proximate cause".


It is still National Poetry Month, so ....

The Drunken Boat
by Arthur Rimbaud

As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets
Nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews,
Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons.
When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with
The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Into the ferocious tide-rips
Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children,
I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas
Never endured more triumphant clamourings

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
Which men call eternal rollers of victims,
For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
The green water penetrated my pinewood hull
And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit,
Carrying away both rudder and anchor.

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;

Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums
And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music
Ferment the bitter rednesses of love!

I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts
And the breakers and currents; I know the evening,
And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors.
Lighting up long violet coagulations,
Like the performers in very-antique dramas
Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows
The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
The circulation of undreamed-of saps,
And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!

I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells
Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans!

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas
Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers
In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles
Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds!

I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps
Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm
And distances cataracting down into abysses!

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin
Fall from the twisted trees with black odours!

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes.
- Foam of flowers rocked my driftings
And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me
And I hung there like a kneeling woman...

Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls
And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds,
And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage
Drowned men sank backwards into sleep!

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether,
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up;

Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky
Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious,
Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot,

Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity,
A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort,
When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;

I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance
The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets!

I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor:
- Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? -

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons,
Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants,
Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.



Thursday, April 17, 2014

American Feudalism - 10

"clique" to enlarge
The graphic to the left, from National Priorities Project, says a lot.

There has been a surge in military spending for wars since circa 2000, leading to a doubling of military expenditures.

Excluding classified (secret) budget amounts, the known military spending is still the largest single expenditure in the U.S. budget, which, as has been pointed out in this series already, is the dark-ages foundation of feudalism --a militaristic economic structure that eventually enslaves the citizenry (see e.g. American Feudalism - 6).

Historical scholarship confirms this generally unknown reality of history:
Warfare was endemic in the feudal period, but feudalism did not cause warfare; warfare caused feudalism.
...
Feudalism was the medieval model of government predating the birth of the modern nation-state. Feudal society is a military hierarchy in which a ruler or lord offers mounted fighters a fief (medieval beneficium), a unit of land to control in exchange for a military service. The individual who accepted this land became a vassal, and the man who granted the land become known as his liege or his lord. The deal was often sealed by swearing oaths on the Bible or on the relics of saints.
US v Them: Click to Enlarge (Global Security)
...
Before a lord could grant land (a fief) to someone, he had to make that person a vassal. This was done at a formal and symbolic ceremony called a commendation ceremony, which was composed of the two-part act of homage and oath of fealty. During homage, the lord and vassal entered into a contract in which the vassal promised to fight for the lord at his command, whilst the lord agreed to protect the vassal from external forces.
...
Feudalism was a political system which was dominant in Europe during the Middle Ages. First used in the 1600s, the term refers to a hierarchy of reciprocal military and legal obligations among the nobility. In simplified terms, a lesser noble (the vassal) would pledge his loyalty (fealty) to a higher noble (the lord) in exchange for land (a fief). In return, the vassal gave military service to the lord. As armies were expensive to raise and maintain, a lord was able to distribute the cost (in men and money) among his vassals.
...
Feudalism was based on the exchange of land for military service. King William the Conqueror used the concept of feudalism to reward his Norman supporters for their help in the conquest of England. Life lived under the Medieval Feudal System, or Feudalism, demanded that everyone owed allegiance to the King and their immediate superior.
...
The feudal society was constructed for one reason: security. The nobles wanted the security of maintaining control over their far-reaching kingdoms, so they were forced to delegate power to local control. The peasants wanted security from marauders and barbarians from neighboring lands. They also wanted security from invading armies. And thus the development of the feudal system and the fief structure was almost inevitable. However, all this came at the great expense of the common man. He gave up many freedoms for his security. The question we ask you is: Was it worth it?
(American Feudalism). It is not worth it to destroy the fabric of a nation along with its constitutional democracy, which is what we have been warned of for over 200 years:
"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Those truths are well established."
(ibid). We are told the opposite by the doublespeak media, that is, we are told that we must have continual warfare to preserve freedom.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 10

Military NSA headquarters
Regular readers know that we have been taking note of various lawsuits against the military NSA secret and untreated habit of spying on all Americans (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller).

The ACLU v Clapper case was filed in a federal district court in New York.

As it turns out, that case was eventually dismissed by the federal district court judge in New York, thereafter it was appealed to the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8).

Since this series began, the world has pretty much turned against the military NSA, not because of the case, but because of the odious nature of the military NSA (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 9).

The ACLU has already filed its opening brief in the appellate court (Brief PDF).

Now the military NSA has filed its reply brief (Brief PDF).

Here is a page that has all of the ACLU v Clapper documents in this case.

If we lose in that appellate court, it is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If we lose there, we are in very dire straits indeed.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Dire Straits




Tuesday, April 15, 2014

On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 8

NASA: "Hand of God" supernova
I. Introduction

Current theories of abiotic evolution (a.k.a. "cosmology" or "cosmic evolution") tell us that supernovas, like the one depicted in the photo to the left, take place when large stars naturally explode.

They then eject molecular clouds into space, including carbon that they have produced internally.

Those molecular clouds are then manipulated by gravitational forces that once again conform, collapse, and condense that vast molecular cloud into yet another star with planets that will eventually be in orbits around that next star.

Eventually, the third iteration of this abiotic replication phenomenon will bring about the evolution of a different star like the Sun, and will also bring about the evolution of planets, some like the Earth.

Our current solar system is one of those third generation abiotic evolutionary results (see On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 5, On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 6).

II. Abiotic Mutation & Abiotic Selection

One thing that was mentioned in previous posts still remains to be addressed in this series:
Yes, abiotic evolution via abiotic mutation and abiotic-selection (before Darwinian "natural selection" yet existed) is to be explored further in future posts ...
(On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 4). To give the general idea of "abiotic selection", I will modify the following natural selection text accordingly:
Natural [Abiotic] selection is the gradual process by which biological [abiological] traits become either more or less common in a population [of cosmic abiotic entities] as a function of the effect of inherited [replicated] traits on the differential reproductive [replicative] success of organisms [abiotic entities] interacting with their environment. It is a key mechanism of evolution. The term "natural selection" was popularized by Charles Darwin who intended it to be compared with artificial selection, now more commonly referred to as selective breeding. [abiotic selection was not considered by Darwin because he was in reference only to the biotic evolution on Earth which followed ~10.21 billion years of abiotic evolution which produced the Sun and other abiotic entities that biotic evolution requires. Abiotic evolution preceded all biotic evolution.]

Variation exists within all populations of organisms. [abiotic entities, whether they are forces, atoms, molecules, stars, planets, etc.] This occurs partly because random mutations occur in the genome of an individual organism, [atoms and molecules,] and these mutations can be passed to offspring. [replicated.] Throughout the individuals’ lives, their genomes [existence of abiotic entities, they] interact with their environments to cause variations in traits. (The environment of a genome includes the molecular biology in the cell, other cells, other individuals, [abiotic] populations, species, [etc.,] as well as the abiotic environment.) Individuals with certain variants of the trait may survive and reproduce more than individuals with other variants. [Cosmic abiotic forces such as gravity act on abiotic entities.] Therefore the [abiotic] population evolves. Factors that affect reproductive success [of replication] are also important, [such as stellar formation,] an issue that Charles Darwin developed in his ideas on sexual selection, for example. Natural [Abiotic] selection acts on the phenotype[type], or the observable characteristics of an organism [abiotic entity such as a star, altering its longevity eventually, through several iterations of formation and restructuring.] but the genetic (heritable) basis of any phenotype that gives a reproductive advantage may become more common in a population (see allele frequency). Over time, this [abiotic evolutionary] process can result in [abiotic] populations that specialize for particular ecological [cosmic] niches and may eventually result in the emergence of new species [of white dwarf stars that are more stable than their predecessors over a longer period of time]. In other words, natural [abiotic] selection is an important process (though not the only process) by which evolution takes place within a population of organisms [abiotic entities, such as forces, quanta, atoms, molecules, molecular clouds, stars, and planets]. Natural [Abiotic] selection can be contrasted with artificial selection, in which [such as Dyson Spheres and Dyson Grids, where] humans intentionally choose specific traits (although they may not always get what they want). In natural [abiotic] selection there is no intentional choice. In other words, artificial selection is teleological and natural [abiotic] selection is not teleological.
(With apologies to Wikipedia, "Natural Selection"). The gist of it is that abiotic evolution through abiotic mutation, and abiotic selection of various sorts, always precedes biotic evolution.

III. The Consequences of Premature Biotic Evolution

Biological evolution may or may not take place prior to the evolution of a fourth generation white dwarf star in a given solar system during abiotic evolution.

A white dwarf is a type of star that can offer orders of magnitude more time and abiotic stability for biological evolution to take place on a planet near it, than does the first, second, and third generation stars produced during the abiotic evolution of a solar system.

Our Sun and its planets in our solar system are the products of a third generation in the sequence of abiotic evolution.

Thus, if biological life does evolve prior to the fourth generation, when a stable white dwarf evolves, as it did in our solar system, it is a premature mutation in an important sense (e.g. What Kind of Intelligence Is A Lethal Mutation?).

Further, that premature mutation presents very substantial difficulties for the continued existence of that biological realm which evolved by biotic evolution "too early" in the stellar sequence (see The Tenets of Ecocosmology).

Thus, all species on the Earth in order to continue to exist as species, must avoid the solar induced death, which abiotic evolution is slated to bring to the inner planets when further evolution of the third generation star takes place (ibid, The Tenets of Ecocosmology).

Any continued existence of biotic species produced by such a mutation, as has happened on Earth, involves those biological species becoming space nomads.

It involves traveling to another solar system, or instead it involves risky hiding-out, from the slowly inflating Sun, within the confines of our outer solar system.

Hiding out on planets and/or moons further out from the Earth (further away from the Sun) in our own solar system (the risk is guessing which planets will be safe from the affects of the new-rage Sun during that time frame).

This nomadic existence is non-negotiable when the Sun begins to evolve into a Red Giant, and then destroys the inner planets --including the Earth (see On The Origin and Future of Nomads).

Eons later, when the juvenile Sun has finally evolved back down into a White Dwarf, a more stable ("Making Solar Systems For Dummies") solar system is thereafter in the offering (see On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 5, On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 6, Evolution of White Dwarf Stars).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

This is still National Poetry Month ... so ...
 
Kodachrome
by Simon & Garfunkel

When I think back on all the crap I've learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all
Though my lack of education hasn't hurt me much
I can read the writings on the walls

Chorus:
Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
...



Monday, April 14, 2014

As The World Turns ... Against The U.S.eh?

The warmongering, hate-filled right-wing, together with the spineless "middle-of-the-roaders", a.k.a. spineless democrats, progressives, and independents who go along with the dark-minded, lost-in-ignorance, right-wing neoCons are in a trance (Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids? - 2).

Incessantly the McMedia induces, through its clueless trance-casters, the perpetuation of a five-decade-old mythology that was never true in the first place.

Polls and other revelations show that currently the U.S. is considered to be the number one threat to peace and stability in the world today:
"The rest of the world, almost unanimously, looks at America as the No. 1 warmonger. That we revert to armed conflict almost at the drop of a hat — and quite often it’s not only desired by the leaders of our country, but it’s also supported by the people of America." - President Carter
...
In 1999, political analyst Samuel P. Huntington warned that for much of the world, the U.S. is "becoming the rogue superpower," seen as "the single greatest external threat to their societies."

A few months into the Bush term, Robert Jervis, president of the American Political Science Association, warned that "In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States." Both Huntington and Jervis warned that such a course is unwise. The consequences for the U.S. could be harmful.

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the leading establishment journal, David
Prey for me
Kaye reviews one aspect of Washington's departure from the world: rejection of multilateral treaties "as if it were sport."
...
Becoming a treaty-worthy nation [at our founding] thus conferred multiple advantages: foreign recognition, and the freedom to act at home without interference. Hegemonic power [to the contrary] offers the opportunity to become a rogue state, freely defying international law and norms, while facing increased resistance abroad and contributing to its own decline through self-inflicted wounds. (A Decline Of The American Republic - 3)
...
He explains that some treaties are rejected outright, as when the U.S. Senate "voted against the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2012 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1999."

Others are dismissed by inaction, including "such subjects as labor, economic
"We create our own reality"
and cultural rights, endangered species, pollution, armed conflict, peacekeeping, nuclear weapons, the law of the sea, and discrimination against women."

Rejection of international obligations "has grown so entrenched," Kaye writes, "that foreign governments no longer expect Washington's ratification or its full participation in the institutions treaties create. The world is moving on; laws get made elsewhere, with limited (if any) American involvement."

While not new, the practice has indeed become more entrenched in recent years, along with quiet acceptance at home of the doctrine that the U.S. has every right to act as a rogue state. (Why the Rest of the World No Longer Wants to be Like U.S.)
The bully always feels safe inside because the bully's victims are weak in the bully's sight (On The Origin of The Bully Religion), which is why it is bully nations that have suffered and experienced the greatest surprise collapses and catastrophes in history (On The Origin of Catastrophe).

Denial is the oldest and most socially unfit dementia in the history of civilization (Not Da Momma).

It is still National Poetry Month ... so ...

Total Criminalization
- by Frank Zappa, 1979


Eventually it was discovered
That God
Did not want us to be all the same

This was
Bad news
For the government of the world
As it seemed contrary
To the doctrine of
Portion controlled servings.

Mankind must be made more
Uniformly if
The future
Was going to work

Various ways were sought
To bind us altogether
But, alas
Sameness was unenforceable

It was about this time
That someone
Came up with the idea of
TOTAL CRIMINALIZATION.

Based on the principle that
If we are all crooks
We could at least be uniform
To some degrees in the eyes of
The law

Shrewdly our legislators
Calculated
That most people were
Too lazy to perform a
REAL CRIME
So new laws were
Manufactured
Making it possible for
Anyone to violate them
Any time of the day or night,
And
Once we had all broken
Some kind of law
We all in the same
Big happy club
Right up there with the
President,
The most exalted industrialists,
And the clerical big shots
Of all your favorite religions.

Total criminalization
Was the greatest idea of its
Time and was vastly popular
Except with those people
Who didn't want to be crooks
Or outlaws.

So, of course, they had to be
TRICKED INTO IT...
Which is one of the reasons
Why
Music
Was eventually made
ILLEGAL.

(1991 Lost Interview of Frank Zappa)