Saturday, April 9, 2011

New White Trash: Doublewide Doublespeak

New York Before The Steroids
I found an old photo of New York City before the steroids, so I thought I would share it with you.

A post over at The Ecocosmology Blog points out that the survival of the human species requires that we move into a mobile home of sorts to then travel to another home world.

The reason that post was published is because scientists tell us that our star The Sun will utterly destroy this planet Earth in the future.

The theme song for that future adventure into space was written by New White Trash ("music of the post paradigm"), which some of our best scientist astronauts listen to as they orbit the Earth in a mobile home we call The Space Station.

Yes, as they practice to be ready for that long haul down Highway 61 someday in the future, a trip to be taken in a thin-skinned metal container not attached to real estate.

Cosmic Double-Wide
Don't be too surprised that most people of the earth have no clue that the cosmos has scheduled their utter destruction if they do not move into a space trailer to get on down Highway 61 to find the next homeland.

Or that NASA is looking for the human boll weevil's next home world, or that the problem is not finding one, it is finding something to pull the doublewide there before the wheels fall off, since the trip is a hideously long one (over 700,000 years with current technology).

One facet of this lack of knowledge was mentioned in a test of Americans that Newsweek did a while back.

Bill Maher mentioned that Newsweek test, along with the results, on last week's show, since he had an editor at Newsweek on as a guest.

Bill pointed out that Americans did not do too well on the test, if you consider failing to be "not doing too well."

The Dredd Blog theory for this reality, this dumbing down of the populace, is that doublewide doublespeak is the primary product of homeland security MOMCOM:
One professor calls this doublespeak, and has written a book "Why No One Knows What Anyone Is Saying Anymore". He points out:

"A Bird That Flew ..."
With doublespeak, banks don't have "bad loans" or "bad debts"; they have "nonperforming assets" or "nonperforming credits" which are "rolled over" or "rescheduled." Corporations never lose money; they just experience "negative cash flow," "deficit enhancement," "net profit revenue deficiencies," or "negative contributions to profits."

(William Lutz, Rutgers University). What is forgotten is that this propaganda is not harmless but is toxic ...
(Etiology of Social Dementia). The flight-plight of all of us who are members of humanity is also probably represented by another song, other lyrics:
And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew
Tangled up in blue
(Tangled Up In Blue, Bob Dylan, emphasis added). The show tonight has been brought to you by the makers of "Our Plight", The Virgin MOMCOM.





Friday, April 8, 2011

Economy of Destruction Reaps Poverty - 2

Two years ago on this date Dredd Blog focused on a subject that only seems to have gotten worse.

Here is that post:



How much would you pay a hurricane to come through your town or city and wreak havoc, destruction, and death?

Or an earthquake?

Or a flood?

Did you know that modern armies can wreak more havoc, destruction, and death than all of those combined?

In the USA's arsenal alone is enough WMD to destroy all human life on earth several times over:
However, what's different about this weapon? In our past, we've discovered gunpowder, rocketry and TNT - but they've never threatened all life on Earth as we know it. This is because all weapons in the past have never had the capacity to act on such a global scale, where as weapons based on Element 92 - nuclear weapons - can quite easily cause a 'nuclear winter' by throwing up enough dust into the atmosphere to prevent light from the sun reaching us. There are still close to 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world. More than enough to finish off the entire human race.
(Think Quest, emphasis added). That considers only the nuclear destructive capacity. There are biological, chemical, and other WMD that can do total annihilation too.

Yet each year the United States still pays more money for armies than all the rest of the world combined.

So what does an investment in havoc, destruction, and death produce ... homes, stores, clothing, food, roads, infrastructure, or compassion for the weak among us?

No, instead the purpose of havoc, destruction, and death is to destroy those things.

So why does the US spend $623,000,000,000 EVERY YEAR [it is up to a trillion now - Dredd] on destruction, then wonder why it is having financial problems?

The answer is because of deceit and propaganda. See posts here, here, here, and here.

A substantial portion of that money is used to sell people on the need for the capacity to wreak havoc, destruction, and death.

If we don't have the capacity to destroy, they say, we will suffer havoc, destruction, and death. MAD ... mutually assured destruction ... is the only way to stop destruction. Which is a tad disingenuous isn't it?

They scare us with propaganda against "the axis of evil" and dangerous enemies.

For example remember that dangerous enemy Russia? Russia spends $50 billion a year, and China spends $65 billion a year on the military.

Those two big military powers, which the propagandists have used to scare the willies out of us, together only spend $115 billion a year to our $653 billion a year.

We spend 5.7 times more than the both of them combined, so their people must be really, really scared of us!?

All the world together, besides the USA, spends $500 billion annually on their military. The USA spends $653 billion annually on the military.

The whole world can't keep up with our insatiable spending spree on WMD. Six billion people can't outspend 300 million people. Twenty people can't outspend 1 person?

During the Bush II years we spent $5,000,000,000,000 on destructive things. That is enough to build about 33,400,000 homes at $150,000 each. Or enough to do a lot of good instead of a lot of destruction.

The share of each American each year is roughly $2,000.00; yes, an amount in effect paid by each man woman and child; but it is much more per person if only working people are considered for the source of those taxes.

There is little wonder that a people who spend so much on destructive machines, which have no other economic worth, would have financial problems is there?



The bleep goes on.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Logical Fallacy: Argument From MOMCOM

This post deals with the confusion MOMCOM has created through propaganda.

It is a confusion that has contributed to causing the populace to be unable to properly contemplate the difference, in the sense of capacity, between the issues "we can't" vs. "we won't".

Now some background.

An astute, long time blogger, poster, and commenter here at Dredd Blog at one time, disaffected, exploded into the nether world over this issue and has not been seen since, after making these comments:
Yes indeed, oil - the concentrated energy of millions of years of sunlight - is indeed the most intoxicating of drugs ... Even if there were a viable alternative(s) on the horizon (which there isn't, nothing even remotely close) ...
(Sickology vs. Penology, comment section). To which I hastily replied:
I can't agree with you there.

That is the feeling any addict has and it is as real as withdrawal or the dread of withdrawal, but it is also an illusion as much as the fear that real pain and discomfort will never go away once withdrawal sets in is an illusion.

We can do it with a plethora of real energy sources as soon as we drop the "alternative" energy, which is oil.

I say there is an alternative energy source, and that it is oil, but there is also a one and only lasting source in the sense that it allows civilization to last along with it.

It is not oil.

The real energy is wonderfully multifaceted and waiting for our minds to grasp and use it abundantly.
(ibid). Then, in response, disaffected appealed to authority, which can be the exercise of false logic:
Well, I'm simply going with the experts in the field (the physics guys), almost all of whom say that there is nothing even remotely close to oil in terms of the amount of useful energy it provides from such a compact source. Which really shouldn't be surprising to anyone. If there were, we surely would have at least discovered it by now.
(ibid). That comment episode clearly included a resort to what those who study logic describe as:
Argument from authority (also known as appeal to authority) is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative. The most general structure of this argument is:

1. Source A says that p is true.
2. Source A is authoritative.
3. Therefore, p is true.

This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of a claim is not related to the authority of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false). It is also known as argumentum ad verecundiam (Latin: argument to respect), argumentum ad potentiam (Latin: argument to power), or ipse dixit (Latin: he himself said it).

On the other hand, arguments from authority are an important part of informal logic. Since we cannot have expert knowledge of many subjects, we often rely on the judgments of those who do. There is no fallacy involved in simply arguing that the assertion made by an authority is true. The fallacy only arises when it is claimed or implied that the authority is infallible in principle and can hence be exempted from criticism.
(Argument From Authority). The argument disaffected presented was "we can't" convert to green/alternative/renewable energy sources because "the experts say so".

Bloggers Randy and Dredd responded: it is not that we can't, the reality is that the authorities who are criminally insane won't.

The astute blogger disaffected then retorted:

"Once again, you hear what you want to hear. All I'm saying is that any sustainable society that exists post oil will be NOTHING like the one that now exists", which is not what the blogger disaffected had just written a few sentences before.

Blogger disaffected had written "... oil - the concentrated energy of millions of years of sunlight - is indeed the most intoxicating of drugs ... if there were a viable alternative(s) on the horizon ... which there isn't" ... then began diversions away from that statement when confronted.

The reality is that there are several ways out of the addiction to oil, like it was historically with civilization for thousands of years before oil was discovered and substituted for renewable energy.

The arts, literature, culture, music, peace, and democratic principles all flourished at various times and places just fine for billions of people for thousands of years.

In numerous locations humanity did fine around the earth well before BP (before Big Petroleum, before Big Pollution, and before Big Propaganda).

In fact, the short time that civilization has been addicted to dirty hydrocarbons (~200 years) can't compare to the thousands of years of healthy civilizations humanity lived in without BP.

The criminally insane leaders of the world (a.k.a. MOMCOM, e.g. see here and here) will not choose those ways that worked for thousands of years because they are criminally insane and they are making as many other people insane as they can.

That is how the toxins of power propagate after all.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Gadfly Polemics or Enlightened Dissent? - 2

The evolution of politics in the USA is a study of microcosm / macrocosm dynamics.

In broad general terms it is the diagnosis of national decline, the symptoms easily comparable to a nasty couple ("R & D") dying of cancer, yet unwilling to help each other as they go down.

They have evolved to the "enlightened" place where they cling to the disease as their savior even as they blame each other for causing the problems the disease produces.

Those who caused the problems are selected to be on a committee to solve the problems.

In short, they are "not taking their meds".

The Toxins of Power Blog gives some simple formulas listing antidotes ("the meds") or antitoxins to the disease toxins, but in a sicko society that system of cure has become anathema.

For example, the antitoxin to the germ of war is peace, the antitoxin to the germ of propaganda is honesty, and the antitoxin to pollution is clean environmental practices, none of which are any longer considered by R & D to be the composites of a healthy planet.

And so now, as a result of having passed the peak of sanity, we observe the budget wars soap opera, touted by some as the pinnacle of "democratic" ideology that has evolved within our society.

The script writers of this bad screenplay portray the enlightened debate as a struggle between taking more from the aged and feeble folk in society versus giving even more to the brute forces of MOMCOM.

The role the casting director MOMCOM has chosen for each party, and the scene the choreographer MOMCOM has framed, make the many of us ill, make others of us change the channel with denial, and make the rest of us angry or depressed.

One Dredd Blog theory for this, on the local scale, is that MOMCOM wants the populace to become so fed up that they are willing to embrace martial law as the solution.

"Nothing could be worse than this" will be famous last words if that happens.

UPDATE: Chris Martenson is giving an economic warning based on the impact the disaster in Japan will have on the world and US economy.

Add to that the impact the brats may bring to the US economy by shutting down the government, the recovery may get even harder to see (anyone seen it yet???).

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 4

One of the indicators for the current distance to the edge of the demise of current civilization, not unlike the doomsday clock scientists use, is the intensity of, or nearness to, the peak of the oil wars.

It would seem that we are now at the early stages of the oil wars, having been there for about ten years now, but not at the peak yet.

In Dredd Blog's estimation The Peak of Sanity of our current civilization was reached when the decision was made at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to switch to oil as the source of energy.

Flowing inevitably from that decision to become oil addicts to a finite source of the oil drug would be the day of The Peak Of Oil, when the supply begins to constantly diminish in quantity and in quality.

That peak of the availability of oil would then inevitably lead to the typical addict's reaction to any removal of the addict's supply of the drug of choice.

Dredd Blog calls that final reaction The Oil Wars (something like the opium drug wars of old, or the modern Mexican drug wars) on steroids.

Some history of posts at Dredd Blog dealing with the subject directly are as follows: The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 3, The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 2, The Peak Of The Oil Wars, Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer - 2?, or Iraq: World's Number One Oil Producer, among many others (see another blog's take on it: The War In Libya: It's Really About Broccoli).

Does anyone think it strange that not long ago the "Libyan rebels" were on the run in their rusted-out Toyota pickups, but are now on the road to becoming oil barons?

The "Libyan rebels" took an oil port and are beginning to export oil according to a report today:
Libyan rebels are set for their first oil export as soon as Tuesday as they seek funding to sustain their uprising against Muammer Gaddafi's rule.

The Liberia-flagged Equator tanker was off Port Said, Egypt, early on Monday and is expected to dock at the Marsa el-Hariga crude oil export terminal near Tubruq, in east Libya, on Tuesday morning, according to Lloyd's Intelligence, the shipping industry data provider.

The owner of the tanker, Greek-based Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd, declined to comment when contacted by the Financial Times. Dynacom is Greece's third-largest tanker operator.

Oil traders and tanker shipbrokers said they did not know who had chartered the vessel, a Suezmax built in 1996 capable of carrying about 1m barrels of oil. Qatar last week offered to market the Libyan rebels' oil. At current prices, 1m barrels of east Libyan oil should sell for about $125m.
(FT, and CNN link below). The world knows how dangerous a heavily armed Mexican marijuana/cocaine drug cartel can be.

But is the world ready to contemplate how dangerous a nuclear armed oil drug cartel can be when yet another nuclear armed drug cartel takes from it the drug it must have in order to survive?

Do the math and connect the dots.

Foreign Policy Mag. has some interesting math along with some interesting dots to ponder:
The United States started out as 13 small and vulnerable colonies clinging to the east coast of North America. Over the next century, those original 13 states expanded all the way across the continent, subjugating or exterminating the native population and wresting Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California from Mexico. It fought a bitter civil war, acquired a modest set of overseas colonies, and came late to both world wars. But since becoming a great power around 1900, it has fought nearly a dozen genuine wars and engaged in countless military interventions.
...
In 2008, Americans elected Barack Obama in part because they thought he would be different from his predecessor on a host of issues, but especially in his approach to the use of armed force. It was clear to nearly everyone that George W. Bush had launched a foolish and unnecessary war in Iraq, and then compounded the error by mismanaging it (and the war in Afghanistan too).
...
Yet a mere two years later, we find ourselves back in the fray once again. Since taking office, Obama has escalated U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and launched a new war against Libya.
...
Moreover, as Alan Kuperman of the University of Texas and Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune have now shown, the claim that the United States had to act to prevent Libyan tyrant Muammar al-Qaddafi from slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Benghazi does not stand up to even casual scrutiny.
(Is America Addicted to War?). "America" isn't addicted to war, MOMCOM is addicted to war, but since America is addicted to MOMCOM's oil and media the distinction is about the same as the difference.

Another post comes through to support Dredd Blog's theory for the reason Libya has been invaded:
Most of us have a low feeling that we are not being told the real reasons for the war in Libya. David Cameron's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to jump on a plane and tour the palaces of the region's dictators selling them the most high-tech weapons of repression available. Nicholas Sarkozy's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to offer urgent aid to the Tunisian tyrant in crushing his people. Barack Obama's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to refuse to trim the billions in aid going to Hosni Mubarak and his murderous secret police, and for his Vice-President to declare: "I would not refer to him as a dictator."

This isn't the distant past. This is a few months ago. Yet now we are told that these people have turned into the armed wing of Amnesty International. They are bombing Libya because they can't bear for innocent people to be tyrannized, by the tyrants they were arming and funding for years. As Obama put it: "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different." There was a time, a decade ago, when I took this rhetoric at face value. But I can't now, because I have looked too deeply into the real actions behind the honeyed words.
(Johann Hari, emphasis added). I noticed that the author said "most of us" do not buy into the propaganda.

That is healthy for a change.

A British periodical indicates that Iraqi oil was discussed prior to the invasion of Iraq:
The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future ... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."
...
The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP ...
(Independent). Oh those darn conspiracy theorists should get a job.

Surprise! Surprise! The rebels in their rusted out Toyota pickups who started the Libya war "to gain their freedom" are selling the Libyan oil to the USA:
The rebel government in control of the eastern part of Libya has made its first sale of oil from territory it controls, the State Department confirmed Wednesday.

Tesoro, a U.S. oil refiner, entered into a deal May 25 with the Transitional National Council based in Benghazi, Libya for 1.2 million barrels of Libyan crude oil, the State Department said in a written statement. The shipment was scheduled to arrive aboard the MT Equator, a Liberian-flagged tanker, at the Single Point Mooring in Hawaii on Wednesday. The dollar value of the deal is not known.
(CNN). Do not, repeat do not think this war has anything to do with oil, it is about broccoli.

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

Monday, April 4, 2011

The Virgin MOMCOM - 2

Leiolepis Ngovantrii - Virgin Mother
In the first episode of Dredd Blog's Jabber the Whut? series, readers were introduced to the perplexing virgin species of reptile leiolepis ngovantrii.

A species that is composed of females only.

Virgin mothers are the sole source of the newborns in that population of reptiles, because Leiolepis reproduces by cloning! ... rather than by "normal, tension-oriented" sexual relations like other "inferior" species:
All-female species reproduces via virgin birth, new study says.

You could call it the surprise du jour: A popular food on Vietnamese menus has turned out to be a lizard previously unknown to science, scientists say.

What's more, the newfound Leiolepis ngovantrii is no run-of-the-mill reptile — the all-female species reproduces via cloning, without the need for male lizards.
(National Geographic, emphasis in original). In The Virgin MOMCOM post Dredd Blog begins to show that ideological cloning is the somewhat similar method which MOMCOM uses to reproduce, or should we say replicate.

That is, by manipulating the amydala, thus inducing fear and intimidation, MOMCOM spreads across the earth by the practice of hijacking the amygdala of both Americans and foreigners to propagate as an ever growing meme complex.

The camouflage-clothed, doublespeak meme that is used to rationalize and morph the meaning of naked imperialism into "nation building", "the war on terror", or "spreading democracy", reproduces "little democracies".

But the reality is that the entire operation of MOMCOM is an expansion for the empire so as to grab up oil reserves (a.k.a. broccoli).

It is a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable post-peak-oil era, which will be followed by the inevitable collapse of the oil-addicted civilization.

We can easily note that leiolepis ngovantrii is a strange species for evolutionary biology to contemplate, considering Dollo's Law as Dredd Blog did in The Peak of Evolution, and we can easily see that its existence engenders wonder, debate, and contemplation as to which technique of reproduction is the more advanced, in terms of evolution.

Further, considering what form of sanity might co-evolve, as Dredd Blog did in The Peak of Sanity series, the reality of leiolepis ngovantrii presents a difficult mind experiment.

Finally, it ends up that we can much more easily discern the nature of MOMCOM, because history tells us that empires come via war and go via hell on earth.

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

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Open Thread


Open
Thread



Science bites demented denial sufferers in House of Representatives ...
when their own puppy scientist's eyes are opened ... healed!

Latest nuclear lie from Japan "radiation would be quickly diluted in the ocean" ... guess what kiddies water becomes radioactive too ...
Latest Nuclear Status
Check Out The Post At Toxins of Power Blog
Saudi Oil Reserves Overestimated 40%???
"We Americans will trade you 1 Bahrain for 1 Libya - Hillary Clinton"
Asia Times
I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

dig it MOMCOM