Embryonic Look At Civilization's Future

The climate is acting up around the world. Russia burning like southern California, China floods; 55 out of 99 counties declared disaster areas in Iowa; Tennessee, Arkansas, and other places around the U.S. have had severe flooding and other severe weather; there is flooding in Europe; cyclones in Japan, China, and droughts are in other places; large Greenland iceberg heads south as the ice caps melt. Each month has seen record warming this year. And now the Pakistan Floods are threatening to bring down the government there:

The humanitarian and economic disaster caused by the worst floods in Pakistan's history could spark political unrest that could destabilize the government, dealing a major blow to the Obama administration's efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism. The government's shambling response to floods that have affected a third of the country has some analysts saying that President Asif Ali Zardari could be forced from office, possibly by the military, which has ruled Pakistan for more than half its 63-year history.

(McClatchy). This is the pattern global warming / climate change disasters are likely to continue to follow in the years and decades ahead. The military have plans in place to bring on martial law and military rule in these types of scenarios, because it drives the population into hysteria. After being deceived by the civilian governments and climate change deniers, when folks find out how things really are they turn on those civilian governments and climate change deniers, and all hell will break loose, ending that nation in some cases. This pattern is what to expect on a global scale when the full force of a raging planet is felt after it is converted into a killing machine by the environment destroying civilization. The warlord governments around the world can do little more than count and bury the bodies, as militarism of the N. Korean type emerges from the chaos. The phenomenon called "global wierding" is not going unnoticed:

HuffPost's Ryan Grim and Lucia Graves recently tackled the issue, and discussed the strange occurrences happening worldwide with David Orr, a professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College. Speaking on the dramatic climate records being set as of late, Orr said, "If you ask is this evidence of climate destabilization, the only scientific answer you can give is: It is consistent with what we can expect." 17 countries have experienced new record highs so far this year, according to The Guardian, and scientists have confirmed that 2010 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded. Russia has suffered its hottest summer on record this year, with multiple days of Moscow temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Pakistan hit the highest temperature ever recorded in Asia on May 26 at 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit. The Eastern United States cooked in a stifling wave of heat, as well. The AP reports that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long predicted heat waves to become more common and intense, and has already observed an increasing pattern since the 1950s.

(Huffington Post, emphasis added). The nay sayers would be embarrassed by their denial behaviour if they were intellectually honest. The next post in this series is here.

War Street, Main Street, or Broadway?

The graphic to the left is a War College map of the way out of Afghanistan, which is remarkably unlike the simple way in.

I guess the birds ate all the bread crumbs that Hansel and Gretel dropped to mark the way back, especially if we recall some of the original maps that were displayed to show us how easy it would be, in the Wayback machine, for ingress and egress.

Evidently the White House has been quite impressed with the intellectual aura of it all.

Today Margaret Carlson on MSNBC's Morning Joe said that General Patraeus "owns the White House" when it comes to Afghanistan, and everyone chimed in to acknowledge that factoid.

On Sunday David Spin will interview David Commander (in Chief) in Afghanistan to explore the Broadway approach to "withdrawal".

The interview was fronted as if they were talking about kicking a habit down the road, because we know that Broadway is the street that leads to War Street, which leads to Wall Street, where the pavement, lights, side walks, homes, jobs, and everything else that used to be on Main Street have been taken.

Dr. Hawking Backs Up Ecocosmology

The Ecocosmology Blog has pointed out for some time that the human species must become space travelers or perish, along with all the other life on planet Earth, when the Sun changes from the life supporter into the death bringer.

In the mean time, those Tenets of Ecocosmology also indicate that we must take care of the Earth, or we will not last long enough to develop space travel, because, since that task is larger than life at the moment, it will take more time than we may have.

None other than Dr. Stephen Hawking is in agreement with the Tenets of Ecocosmology, and has gone on record to point that out:

Stephen Hawking: I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.

I see great dangers for the human race. There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go.

(Big Think, emphasis added). This kind of language is enough to get Dr. Hawking branded as a "professional lefty" by White House Press Secretary Gibbs, because denial and spin seems to be the Gibbs illusion of choice.

Such denial for adults of government calibre really is negligence that borders on, or crosses over the border into elite criminal insanity.

It does not matter that much when one can argue that Gibbs, Obama, and other world leaders are the best that humanity has to offer, or that climate change deniers and neoCon warmongers are much worse than them.

No, what really matters is that when even the best are criminally insane, Dr. Hawking's pointing out of the obvious becomes little more than "useless wisdom".

The Peak Of The Oil Wars

Lloyd's of London and The Guardian are not "professional lefty" agitators whom White House Press Secretary Gibbs was talking about in one of his glib fibs that outraged a lot of the president's election campaign supporters recently.

Yet they both warn of the dire consequences of ignoring the reality of peak oil:

One of the City's most respected institutions has warned of "catastrophic consequences" for businesses that fail to prepare for a world of increasing oil scarcity and a lower carbon economy.

The Lloyd's insurance market and the highly regarded Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, says Britain needs to be ready for "peak oil" and disrupted energy supplies ...

(The Guardian). The Lloyd's / Chatham House report quotes the U.S. Government treating peak oil as anything other than a conspiracy theory:

“Peak oil presents the world with a risk management problem of tremendous complexity.”

US Department of Energy 2007

(Lloyds / Chatham Report, page 15 of PDF). They go on to point out where the remaining oil will come from along with some reasons for the notion of "risk management":

Production from Iraq is the wild card. The current target of 12 million barrels a day by 2016 would make Iraq the world’s number one producer, potentially increasing global spare capacity and sending the oil price down. However, numerous legal, security and administrative problems hinder this development.

(ibid, page 16 of PDF, emphasis added). Dredd Blog has pointed out that the wars which are devastating the U.S. middle class but radically increasing the wealth of MOMCOM's one-percenter elites were and are being fought for oil.

I guess that puts us in The Gibbs Book of Lefties, but so be it, we "lefties" are spot on but he is developing a spotty record of fibs.

The left complains about a runaway military, runaway oil addiction, and a civilization based on oil that is doomed to cease to exist.

The military also agrees that global warming is a threat to natural security, so the lefties are not the problem.

The problem is the snoozers in government who do not have a clue, not the left.

The next post in this series is here.

The Graphs of Wrath

For those who have looked at the graphs displayed on Dredd Blog, it will be no surprise for you to learn that we think that there is a link between the rich and MOMCOM

Or that we think that there is a link between MOMCOM and the cause of the current impoverished state of the "economy".

The Wall Street Journal has an article which points out a growing probability.

That is, according to economists and reporters who follow economic trends and who report for the Wall Street Journal, if the rich do not spend it is quite possible that the U.S. "economy" will not recover to its historical level:

The data may be a further sign that the U.S. is becoming a Plutonomy – an economy dependent on the spending and investing of the wealthy. And Plutonomies are far less stable than economies built on more evenly distributed income and mass consumption. “I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy to be so dependent on the top 2% of the income distribution,” Mr. Zandi said. He added that, “In the near term it highlights the fragility of the recovery.”

(WSJ). They point out that the percentage of the GDP which the rich affect or control is growing.

What the media have not expressed for so very long is that the wars have decimated the U.S. "economy", because establishment economists do not fault the wars or the military.

Republicans fault the humane programs designed to relieve suffering in our nation, such as Social Security Insurance, calling it entitlements instead of calling it insurance we pay for all our working lives.

The press has long been a part of MOMCOM, the press has long been the play pretend story teller whose motto should be "yeah, that's the ticket" (often spoken by Jon Lovitz as he developed the character known as the President of Liars Anonymous, on Saturday Night Live), and the press has long been a captive puppet of the rich and powerful MOMCOM.

These two graphs above show that the recent acceleration of wealth accumulation among the powerful few 1% rich began at the same time the endless Iraq and Afghanistan wars began.

The reason for the wars is clear, to make the 1% elite richer via resource (oil) domination, while bringing down the middle class wealth in the United States.

It is anything but Mom and Apple pie, it is more like follow MOMCOM and economically you die.

Here are a few Dredd Blog posts that deal with this subject that you might find interesting:


Entitlement Wars - Guns vs. Butter

The U.S. Mythology Trance - Free Wars

Why Does MOMCOM Hate America?

MOMCOM - A Mean Welfare Queen

Bring The Economy Home - 3

Thanks Bill & Arianna

States of War Budgets

In a similar vein, the post "Destroy The U.S. In Order To Save It? - 2" shows that the spy business (spying on Americans) in the U.S. is a rich man's world ... meaning it is in the MOMCOM world because the military in uniform makes up over 40% of the spies in this rogue and runaway business of spying on Americans.

Their expenditures make three counties, where their HQ's are located, the top three richest counties in the country, not to mention that six counties out of the top ten have spy HQ's located so as to make those counties 6 out of the ten richest counties (See Destroy The U.S. In Order To Save It? - 2).

Their expenditures, although unknown in exact dollars, for sure are "interesting":

The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets [added together] of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

(NY Times, emphasis added). Another watchdog group puts it at more than that, when war spending is included to derive the total.

The next post in this series is here.

Open Thread

Weekend open thread ...

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Glenn Beck says conservative agenda is to dismantle federal government; Ronald Reagan said he wanted the government "small enough to drown in the bathtub".

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Elena Kagan is a Justice of The Supreme Court of The United States. She will be sworn in Saturday afternoon by the Chief Justice.

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An Island of ice broke away from Greenland. It has enough water, when melted, to supply every tap in the U.S. with running water 24/7 for 120 days.

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