Is 'Insanity' A Valid Defense To Ecocide?

Do you remember the science fiction movie The Minority Report?

In that scenario people were prosecuted for crimes they were going to commit in the future!

Those future crimes were "envisioned" by several future predicting mutant "precogs", who could detect what people would do during their lifetimes, and if a crime was detected, those people living in the here and now were prosecuted in the here and now, the present.

Currently there is abundant ecological, climate disaster misinformation or myth, which posits that all the ecological, climate change induced death or destruction is going to happen in the future, that it will happen to "our children", not to this generation.

To be sure, there is a reality close to that, in the sense that the results of ecological crimes happen in very slow motion as it were, or in the sense that climate change as a result of human activity in the here and now, seems to us to be very, very slow to take place.

The result is that when some types of ecological wrong are done, when pollution actually takes place at a specific time in the here and now, there can be a long span of time before the results are readily visible.

Add to that the fact that the Earth's ecosystem tends to spread the damage in an attempt to insure dilution of the damage, to spread it among the many so to speak, it can appear to be even more of a slow motion process, in terms of human capacity to detect those effects.

All these difficulties come into play when one considers ecocide to be a future event, because the question arises: "Is ecocide a future crime or a crime in the here and now?"

Because these activities of pollution are conducted in the here and now, but the resulting ecocide is going to happen in the future, we sometimes have a difficult nexus to prove.

The lesson comes home when we realize that many deaths, along with incredible destruction, is happening now, has happened for a generation or so, and therefore our grandfathers and grandmothers did us much wrong.

If ultimate Ecocide happens it may well be in the future generation where billions of people perish as a result of acts that began to be done before they were born, acts that continued for decade upon decade, and in many cases acts still taking place in the world they will be born into.

This issue is more than science fiction in some experts' minds, because not only do they see the damage being done now, as a result of crimes committed decades ago, they also see that the deadly results will only get worse.

One Dredd Blog post deals with an actual case in a civil court, not a criminal court, in the here and now, titled "A Case of Big Oil vs. Climate Change", where polluting companies were held to be a potential cause of climate change damage.

The Dredd Blog System has also considered some aspects of this legal issue over the years, in posts such as The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises, Ecocide: Evidence Of Toxins of Power, Dumb & Dumber & Bleak & Bleeker, and The Peak of Sanity.

Now, a mock trial, of the type law schools hold every year, is taking place in England's Supreme Court:

Top lawyers put fossil fuel bosses on trial in the UK's supreme court in a mock case to explore the crime of ecocide - environmental destruction - which is being considered by the UN ... It's a grim list: genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression (such as unprovoked invasions) and war crimes. All are recognised by the UN as crimes against peace and prosecuted through the international criminal court.

But should the bosses of polluting companies and the leaders of environmentally-unfriendly states join those responsible for mass murder in the dock. They could if a fifth crime against peace - ecocide - joined that list of human evils? The United Nations is now considering the proposal and the first test of how a prosecution for ecocide would work takes place on Friday, with fossil fuel bosses in the dock at the UK supreme court in London. It is a mock trial of course, but with real top-flight lawyers and judges and a jury made up of members of the public. The corporate CEOs will be played by actors briefed by their legal teams.

(Ecocide ... Global Crime?). The issue considers what is literally the largest life and death case on the planet.

The stakes could not be greater, so stay tuned.

The next post in this series is here.

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The Bleep Goes On

It was eerily soon after Dredd Blog had posted The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy when the Occupy Wall Street Protests began. And soon after that the police brutality, which Dredd Blog anticipated in that post, began. In this case the media is doing a more respectful job of reporting the Orwellian attacks on peaceful protesters, who have the support of The Court of Public Opinion. Yesterday, we posted a video of Lawrence O' Donnell on MSNBC's Last Word, condemning the fascist attacks on American citizens. The international media is also picking up on the brutality of the police who are doing the puppet work of the plutocracy:

According to recent statistics, 1722 people complained of being wrongfully pepper-sprayed by New York police officers between 2006 and 2010. Of that number, the civilian review board substantiated just 22 complaints.

(Guardian). The following videos are more instances of police brutality committed against American citizens doing peaceful demonstrations:

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The protests have gained some new support from substantial sources.

Wall Street Peaceful Demonstrations

Everyone was peaceful except the police:

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The Damage Has Been Done - 3

Two years ago on this date, a Dredd Blog post delved into the concept of "too late".

"Too late" is a reality that goes across many aspects of the landscape of life and of death.

If someone tells you a "bridge is out ahead" (a la "don't go there!") yet you speed towards your coveted destination anyway, because you are in a modern hurry, at some point in time and space you will reach a point where, even though all of a sudden you realize what was meant by "bridge is out ahead", and you then deeply regret your behavior up to that point (with fear and remorse flooding your emotions) you can no longer change the substance of what is going to happen.

All you can do, at that point, is to try to mitigate the inevitable damage.

Anyway, here is that post of two years ago:

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What remains to be seen now is how the planet is going to react to the damage:

Robert Corell, who chairs the Climate Action Initiative and reviewed the UNEP report's scientific findings, said the significant global temperature rise is likely to occur even if industrialized and developed countries enact every climate policy they have proposed at this point. The increase is nearly double what scientists and world policymakers have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert catastrophic climate change.

(Washington Post, emphasis added). The question is "how catastrophic" and when. Some scientists already see some damage.

Some islands are already being evacuated as the oceans rise, some villages in the Arctic are having to move because the permafrost is melting under them, reefs are dying as the oceans warm, and the melting of ice sheets is accelerating.

Remember that this prediction of double what was expected to cause some catastrophe is new, and is worse than expected by almost twice. Will it increase even more in the near future?

Legislators, military, and other government officials seem so oblivious to the realities, even as they give lip service to the dangers.

What will they say when millions die in this century and we move closer to failing as a fit species?

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What has happened since that post of two years ago?

What has happened is that the psychosis has engendered growing denial as a means of coping with the fact that we have the pedal to the metal, rushing to our demise like Thelma and Louise.

Meanwhile, many folks who look around them to see the eerie floods, droughts, tornado storms, hurricanes, wild fires, crop destruction, record breaking climate change, and everything else along that line, tend to want to stop the damn world so they can get off.

But our owners in this world are not going to allow that to happen.

So, buckle up and hunker down.

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

Mafia Contract Out - On Mother Earth - 2

Two years ago we published Mafia Contract Out - On Mother Earth to point out a practice that might as well be a mafia contract taken out on the Earth.

That post was moved to the Ecocosmology Blog for efficiency reasons.

Meanwhile, A Shadow of Time is emerging to try to govern our future, as more and more of the Earth is buried in Arlington National Dirt Daze.

These constitute more evidence that The Criminally Insane Epoch has really and truly arisen on our planet.

Anyway, here is the post from two years ago:

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The most disgusting microcosm of what our species is doing to the earth has recently surfaced.

The Sicilian mob is sinking ships in the Mediterranean Sea.

These are not normal ships that would potentially make a beneficial reef.

No, these are ships that contain deadly radioactive material on board:

Pressure is growing on the Italian government to act over revelations that 30 or more ships with radioactive cargoes, deliberately sunk by the Mafia, may be polluting the Mediterranean.

(The Independent). I think we can dispense with the "may be" and get right to the point.

This is a crime against humanity and should be dealt with as such.

There are reports that human skulls may be in the radioactive material so there is a possible murder case involved as well.

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Time for a new attitude and for denial to go.

Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 9

The Toxins of Power Blog is beginning a new series: Hypothesis: Microbes Generate Toxins of Power.

The first post sets forth initial views of the recent scientific research concerning human-microbe symbiosis.

The series promises to expound upon a hypothesis as to the origins of "the power that corrupts and the absolute power that corrupts absolutely", prevalent in western government theory.

The rebel scientist in me will avoid the impact that the new and developing human-microbe symbiosis science will have on textbook companies's stocks, as well as the widespread textbook shredding and recycling sure to take place (read that post to see what I mean).

But the rebel scientist in me can't pass on the fact that the wee people were spot on, while the medical, scientific world was wrong for about a century concerning the theory of "germs" (the establishment medical profession refused to "believe in germs").

Not only that, members of those elite professionals who took any steps toward that direction (the direction the "ignorant wee folk" believed in) were literally committed to an insane asylum:

Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings. Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory. In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died of septicemia, at age 47.

(Ignaz Semmelweis, emphasis added). Have you noticed that it has been fashionable of late to cite the flat earth syndrome as well as The Earth as the center of the Universe syndrome, as proof of how wrong science, religion, and bartenders have been at various times in the past?

This fashionable ploy operates as if those syndromes were something that was done a long time ago, but now in the present we have it all neatly, properly packaged.

The climate change deniers, who do not know that the debate is long over, humor me when they cite Flat Earth and Earth as the Center of the Universe history to support their assertions.

Well, our current science is not all neatly packaged, because we are in the first phases of a revolution in the understanding of human development.

Be sure to check out the Toxins of Power Blog post mentioned above to get a feel for the new discoveries in microbiology as well as the impact it will have on our understanding of human development.

Other interesting related readings: Wee people and Germ theory.

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