Drugspeak: Language of BP

BP stands for Big Petroleum, Big Pollution, Big Problems, and Big Propaganda.

The world can't seem to deal with fossil fuel problems, because civilization, for the most part, is not dealing with it as an addiction.

Furthermore, political dogma within some nations is corrupting the science to the point that people seem to be willing to enter into the growing denial, giving in to the falsehood that global warming and climate change are not really happening.

One presidential candidate in the U.S.A. recently cut a chapter on global warming from a soon to be released book, because of criticism from Rush Limbaugh and other deniers in the GOP.

Effects of Oil Abuse and Addiction

What makes oil addiction problems so challenging to face, as opposed to other national problems? Oil abuse affects the nation’s life in many ways, including health, finances and stability. It also affects the world community. What’s more, the strong denial and rationalization of the nation using oil makes it extremely difficult to implement renewable energy remedies, and can even make those who are concerned about oil addiction sometimes feel like they are the problem.

Health, Employment and Crime

Those nations that abuse oil have a greater risk for health problems down the road, from the risk of increasing disease, climate catastrophe, to eventual ecocide. Heavy oil use by one nation directly affects the health of other nations as well, including lung disease, brain damage, and even death from spills, air pollution, and accidents. Productivity decrease during the peak oil demise phase can also lead to oil wars, as nations fight over their share of the diminishing supply of the oil drug.

Staying Addicted: Denial and Rationalization

One of the most powerful effects of oil abuse and addiction is denial. The need to use oil is so strong that the oil barons use many tricks to rationalize oil use. Nations abusing oil may drastically underestimate the quantity of oil they are using, the quantity available, how much it is costing them, and how much it actually takes away from economies. The oil barons may lash out at concerned citizens, making the concerned activists sometimes feel like they are exaggerating or overstating the problem. What makes this so frustrating for concerned members of society is that the nation abusing oil often sincerely believes it does not have a problem, and will try to make the concerned citizen feel like they are the dysfunctional ones.

This denial and rationalization can lead to increased problems with political and governmental relationships. The nations abusing oil may blame political opponents by calling them promoters of the greatest hoax ever. While difficult stresses happen to every nation, an overall pattern of deterioration and blaming others may be a sign of further national trouble.

The Climate Catastrophes Are Here Now

Everyone knows that 2011 was a year of climate catastrophe, but some don't know that 2012 is off to a less than hopeful start. A year or so ago there was 55 feet of snow pack in some areas, but things have changed:

The snow drought across the U.S. so far this winter has raised questions about impacts on water supply, ski resorts and agriculture.

Only 22 percent of the nation was covered by snow on Jan. 4, 2012.

A snow depth analysis on Jan. 4 from 2004-2012 reveals the smallest area of the U.S. is covered by snow this year. The year 2007 ranks as the second smallest area of the U.S. with snowcover of about 27 percent.

The Intermountain West, especially the Sierra of California and the mountains of Nevada and Utah, shows a substantial snow drought this year when compared to normal and past years. The northern Plains and the upper Great Lakes are other areas that have little snowcover compared to past years.

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According to the California Department of Water Resources, a snow survey on Jan. 3, 2012, suggests one of the lowest mountain snowpacks on record for the date.

(Scientific American). A sudden reversal like that should raise flags. The U.N. should begin to treat the oil problem as an addiction, and member nations should do likewise.

GWOT: In The "Eye" Of The Beholder? - 3

On this date two years ago a Dredd Blog post pondered the meaning, in the real sense, of the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

GWOT sounds like a concept that a world empire would have, rather than a concept that an individual country would have, in the sense that all countries could be expected to fight terrorism within that country's own borders.

Anyway, here is the text of that post of two years ago on this date:

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The GWOT, or global war on terror, is a military doctrine which some observers see as false propaganda.

Why not take a look at that assertion?

One of the reasons listed in The Declaration of Independence, for breaking away from King George III of England to become The United States, was:

He [the king] has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

(Independence From What). The early presidents explained why civilian over military was an integral part of freedom:

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.

(Greatest Source, emphasis added). Some academics, diplomats, and leaders of various sorts say that the U.S. has returned to that once-rejected reality:

The Worldwide control of humanity's economic, social and political activities is under the helm of US corporate and military power. Underlying this process are various schemes of direct and indirect military intervention. These US sponsored strategies ultimately consist in a process of global subordination ... US strategists, in an attempt to justify their military interventions in different parts of the World, have conceptualised the greatest fraud in US history, namely "the Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT). The latter, using a fabricated pretext constitutes a global war against all those who oppose US hegemony ... The US has established its control over 191 governments which are members of the United Nations. The conquest, occupation and/or otherwise supervision of these various regions of the World is supported by an integrated network of military bases and installations which covers the entire Planet (Continents, Oceans and Outer Space). All this pertains to the workings of an extensive Empire, the exact dimensions of which are not always easy to ascertain ... The main sources of information on these military installations (e.g. C. Johnson, the NATO Watch Committee, the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases) reveal that the US operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases Worldwide ... In this regard, Hugh d’Andrade and Bob Wing's 2002 Map 1 entitled "U.S. Military Troops and Bases around the World, The Cost of 'Permanent War'", confirms the presence of US military personnel in 156 countries ... The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries ... In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide ... These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide (Gelman, J., 2007).

(Canadian Professor, emphasis added). U.S. observers during the era of WW II noticed that the military was in firm control even then:

"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells."

(Wikipedia, John T. Flynn's As We Go Marching, 1944, emphasis added). Other academics of our own system have even shown when and how the military media oil complex began to take over.

The big picture here is that the right wing warsters are firmly in power, peace is a farce, along with peace movements, a kinder and gentler nation movements, as well as the green revolution.

These movements are engendered by a notion of natural human rights which tend to originate on the left.

They are not a farce in the eyes of the world in terms of what is best for the world of humanity, but rather they are a farce in terms of whether or not the civilian authorities are in control over military authorities.

The United States is now a warmonger nation ruled by the military media oil complex and its 1% who have plundered the money of the people for their own illegitimate purposes.

A large segment of the left and the right in the United States are deluded into not seeing what is not all that hard to see.

Concerning the "Canadian Professor" mentioned and linked to above:

"Jules Dufour is President of the United Nations Association of Canada (UNA-C) – Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean branch and Research Associate at the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Quebec, Chicoutimi.

In 2007, Professor Jules Dufour became Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Québec, a distinction conferred by the Quebec government, for his contributions to World peace and human rights, his numerous scholarly writings and the work he accomplished in the context of national and international commissions on issues pertaining to regional development, human rights and the protection of the environment."

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The Appendix of Vestigial Textbooks - 4

In this series we have been discussing the ever present need to recycle textbooks as new scientific discoveries are made.

As we have discussed textbook extinctions, we have also discussed a hypothesis here and there, because they are the culprits that may cause certain textbooks to become extinct.

In the first post of this series we discussed one such hypothesis set forth by Dr. William Parker, whose hypothesis was that Darwin was wrong when he used the term "vestigial appendix", a term still in the textbooks that deal with that subject matter.

Darwin, in using that description, was advancing the hypothesis that the human appendix served no useful purpose, was vestigial, yes, was a throw away.

Dr. Parker, a modern research scientist, countered Darwin's hypothesis by setting forth a counter hypothesis that the human appendix was a safe harbor for gut microbes, and was therefore not vestigial.

Dr. Parker asserted that Darwin was wrong, and that current textbooks are in error.

Either hypothesis can't go anywhere unless, based upon it's assertions or premises, it can predict the outcome of experiments and/or explain other phenomena:

Parker’s idea, his hypothesis, predicts individuals with their appendix should be more likely to recover from severe gut infections than those without. To test this prediction, one could compare the fate of individuals with and without their appendixes after being experimentally infected with a gut pathogen.

(Your Appendix Could Save Your Life, Scientific American). As it turns out, Dr. Parker's hypothesis has predicted results that have been verified to a useful degree:

And then, second, the big result …. Individuals without an appendix were four times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile, exactly as Parker’s hypothesis predicted. Recurrence in individuals with their appendix intact occurred in 11% of cases. Recurrence in individuals without their appendix occurred in 48% of cases.

(ibid). The data from that research strengthens Dr. Parker's hypothesis, even though it is not enough, yet, to move it into a theory, then later into a law.

But, due to those new research inroads (into the many benefits, values, and activity ongoing concerning human - microbe symbiosis) the future is more positive now than ever before for Dr. Parker's hypothesis.

There is a good chance it will be elevated to a theory, and thereafter cause changes to be made in the textbooks out there.

All Ocean Experience Is Local - 3

In the first post of this series we mentioned that ocean levels are rising. Like climate change, where one lives determines their observations about such changes. It is no different with ocean level rise, because like land weather, it is not a uniform experience. That is, some areas have experienced cooling, while others experienced warming, the net effect being warming when all the data are added together then averaged. Ocean level rise has similar characteristics, that is, in some areas the ocean level is decreasing, while at the same time in other areas the ocean level is rising:

In Alaska, Hill’s team estimates that the sea level has been decreasing by nearly 1 centimeter per year – which is good news for Alaska, but only worsens the sea level rise in the tropics. Elsewhere, the first GRACE results, announced five years ago, showed that Greenland is shedding ice much faster than expected. More recent findings suggest the melting both there and in Antarctica has been accelerating. Considering that melting ice caps are probably the single biggest climate threat, you’d think that governments would put a high priority on monitoring them.

(Scientific American). What an observer should take from this reality is that a person who says the Earth is cooling, and/or the ocean level is decreasing, can be correct as to a local area, but not correct as to global conditions. Eventually as the polar caps melt, the ocean level will rise everywhere over time, but due to currents and other factors, the level will rise in some places before it does in others, even though the difference in level will be slight. Be sure to look into the overall picture when researching such assertions.

The Government of the Government - 3

Two years ago, on this date, we discussed the issue of the government of the government.

Following is the text of that post:

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The government of the government is supposed to be the U.S. Constitution.

Many are of the opinion that the toxins of power have put a cloud upon the government.

To these observers the U.S. Government, which was framed to be a servant of the people, has become less recognizable than it once was in that role:

I'll take it all and keep right on moving -- one little ant doing his little bit among six billion other ants, because one day, you son's of bitches who talk peace and deliver war, who talk health and deliver illness, who talk good and do bad -- some day, mother f--ckers there will be peace on this planet -- real peace -- because time, real time, is on the side of evolution.

(Huffington Post). This frustration is one of the results of the failure of western educational systems.

The promulgation of the belief that biological evolution had its apex in Social Darwinism is the root cause.

"Too big to fail" is another way of saying "survival of the biggest", which is a distortion of "survival of the fittest".

Biological evolution at most is a beginning of a process, but it is sold like a product as the end of a process.

The tenets of Ecocosmology point out that memetic evolution takes over where biological evolution ends, and defines the meaning of "fit to survive".

Those tenets also point out what really governs the governments.

The previous post of this series is here.

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Don't take our lives away ...

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