A Memorial of The Unmemorialized

Bombs Bursting Out Life?

Memorials are a function to insure the memory of things that we somehow think should be remembered.

But there are also some things that the powers that be do not want us to remember.

That self-inflicted amnesia, The Unmemorialized, raises some of the sayings of some of us that have been memorialized.

One such saying about our memory is: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", written and spoken by George Santayana, telling us that denying The Unmemorialized reality is a vain exercise.

Santayana advocated, in essence, that our memories should match our history.

So, today we remember the militarization of the United States, an event which our 4th President said would eventually lead to the removal of our public freedoms.

Nevertheless, the polls that show Americans think that the military is the most competent institution, have been cited a few times here on Dredd Blog.

For example, take a look if you want to, at the post Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids?

Today, since it is day one of Memorial Day Weekend, we want Dredd Blog readers to know that the powers that be are, in their own words, "not American."

And we should remember that the military is without a doubt most competent to most quickly cause the extinction of the human race, and nothing else - not even the Earth itself, can do that as quickly as those who see themselves as the arbiters of security can:

Both US and Russian land-based missiles remain constantly on high-alert status, ready to be launched within minutes. Because of the 30-minute flight times of these missiles, the presidents of both the US and Russia would have only approximately 12 minutes to decide whether to launch their missiles when presented by their military leaders with information indicating an imminent attack (after lower-level threat assessment conferences).

That’s only 12 minutes or less for the president to decide whether to launch global nuclear war. While this scenario is unlikely, it is definitely possible: Presidents have repeatedly rehearsed it, and it cannot be ruled out due to the graveness of its potential consequences.

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If all 450 US land-based Minuteman III missiles with thermonuclear warheads were ever launched at Russia – with many of the targets in or near cities, as now planned – most Americans would die as a result, along with most of humanity. Our own weapons would contribute as much or more to these deaths in America and the rest of the globe as any Russian warheads launched.

This is because smoke from the enormous nuclear firestorms created by even a “successful” US nuclear first-strike would cause catastrophic disruption of global climate and massive destruction of the Earth’s protective ozone layer, leading to global famine.

Recent peer-reviewed studies, done by atmospheric scientists Alan Robock (Rutgers), Brian Toon (University of Colorado-Boulder), Richard Turco (UCLA) and colleagues, predict that such an attack would create immense firestorms that would quickly surround the planet with a dense stratospheric smoke layer.

The black smoke would be heated by the sun, lofted like a hot air balloon, and would remain in the stratosphere for at least 10 years. There it would block and prevent a large fraction of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. The sharp reduction of warming sunlight would rapidly produce global Ice Age weather conditions. This would eliminate or dramatically reduce growing seasons for a decade and would likely cause the starvation of most or all humans.

Along with other effects – including prolonged destruction of the ozone layer – most complex life on Earth could be destroyed. Scientists say the process would be similar to when an asteroid hit the Earth some 65 million years ago, raising a global dust cloud that reduced sunlight, lowering temperatures and killing vegetation. That caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and 70 percent of the Earth’s species.

(Dan Ellsberg, emphasis added). The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that studies "how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction--the figurative midnight", and who maintain "The Doomsday Clock", have it set to 5 minutes until lights out.

This entire reality is an Unmemorial which the powers that be want us to forget so they can continue to, through The Ways of Bernays, convince us that they are "the most competent ones."

We need to redefine "competent" to mean "the ability to insure human life, not the ability to destroy it all."

It is way past time to Memorialize Peace by giving it a chance.

The next post in this series is here.

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The lyrics to this song, and the original Rolling Stones version, are here.

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Make Love, War, Wine, or Spacecraft? - 2

Homeworlds Aplenty?

One humorous event that arises, when the  subject of today's post is raised, boils down to "what is the hurry?"

Typically that is followed with "we have billions of years, so stop worrying."

It is as if there is only one way to think ahead.

Which is to worry about something that might happen in the future, rather than detailing all of the moving parts, all of the issues, then make that future a relevant part of now in an uplifting, competent way that adds a sense of long-term accomplishment to civilization and life.

Otherwise, the type of approach which results is actually denial posing as an efficient grasp of time, summed up by the song "Don't Worry, Be Happy", as if that is the proper frame for those two issues.

The reality is that a sound mind, at the species level, i.e., at the level that considers what must be done for species to survive into the distant future, is both a mental, emotional, and spiritual food stock for the personal altruism that ensures longer lasting health.

Anyway, here is the text of a post from this date in 2009:

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The eye in the sky (Hubble Telescope) has been given more time to take a look "out there".

Look for what?

Since our science declares that our star, The Sun, will destroy us some time in the future, we must look for another home planet.

By "our" of course I mean the human race (the human species) if you will.

Our science, specifically our physics, does not tell us how to move matter at the speed of light ('c' in the equation e=mc²) in any realistic way.

When we talk about the speed of light we are talking about photons. But we must travel at that velocity, at a minimum, to effectively find a new home.

At that speed it would take four years to reach the nearest star, then 4 more years to return after staying a while.

But there is no habitable planet there.

We have the Kepler mission looking for potentially habitable planets, which are hundreds and thousands of years away, at the speed of light.

It will take perhaps thousands of years to learn the physics of that kind of space travel, after we develop that new physics which does not yet exist.

The bottom line is that we must stop being a hostile species, hostile to each other, hostile to our own home world, and hostile to the notion of what we must do to avoid a catastrophic death.

A very recent discovery indicates that we may not have an unimaginable amount of time before our Sun becomes the death of our planet by removing it from existence.

Another discovery shows a very large and well known red giant, Betelgeuse, is shrinking for an unknown reason.

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"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Remember that suicide is what individuals do, while Ecocide on a planetary scale (mass extinction) is what groups do.

White Collar Fraud Legislation Passed - 2

This Space Intentionally Blank

On this date, in 2009, Dredd Blog received an email from Senator Leahy.

 It contained, then, a photograph at a photo-op in the White House.

Since then the photo has been removed from its location on the Internet.

And since I know of no prosecutions of Wall Street people who have been charged with fraud, I left it blank for effect, because if it was an accurate photo now, it would show the government handing big bundles of money to those Dylan Ratigan calls Greedy Bastards:

It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the American (and global) financial sector has become criminalized, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behavior that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

It is important to understand that this behavior really is seriously criminal. We are not talking about neglecting some bureaucratic formality. We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in concealment of criminal assets and activities by others; and directly committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.

None of this conduct was punished in any significant way

(Huffpo, Charles Ferguson). Anyway, the text of that 2009 post follows:

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Dear [Dredd],

Check out the photo I snapped of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act at yesterday's White House signing ceremony!

It's time to crack down on the financial fraudsters who have wreaked havoc on our economy and America's hard-working families -- and now we have the tools to do it.

Yesterday I joined President Obama at the White House as he signed the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act into law, a bill I wrote to provide federal law enforcers with the resources they need to go after white-collar criminals.

With your help, and thanks to the support of more than 20,000 people who emailed their Senators and Representatives through the LeahyForVermont.com website, Congress passed a strong, bipartisan bill to tackle the scourge of fraud and recover taxpayer money lost due to illegal financial dealings.

The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act will protect Americans by:

* Increasing resources for federal investigators and prosecutors to go after cases of financial fraud,

* Modernizing fraud and money laundering statutes to deal with the growing wave of fraud,

* Strengthening the False Claims Act to better equip the Justice Department to recover the proceeds of fraud, and

* Establishing a Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to investigate the root causes of the economic and financial crisis.

Now that President Obama has signed this important bill into law, the LeahyForVermont.com community can chalk up yet another legislative victory for the American people.

Thank you for all that you have done to put the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act on the President's desk -- and on the books.

Sincerely,

Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator

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The series that deals with the plunder barons, i.e., wall street, can be found on the Series Posts Page under BANKSTERS.

New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 6

Can You Hear Me Now?

Yesterday the president was kind enough to encourage the people of Joplin, Missouri.

Those people were devastated last year by the uncanny tornado outbreak.

But, ignoring the scientists who say that the outbreak was due to global warming induced climate change, the president, other government officials, and big, dirty oil, are not treating the cause of global warming.

Rather, the government policy is triage, not change to a curative policy.

The oil barons have committed billions to McTell News to finance a new propaganda campaign, under the guise of national security, using the catch phrase "energy independence", when the real catch phrase is dirty oil domination:

In blessing Shell’s move into the Arctic, Mr. Obama continues his efforts to balance business and environmental interests, seemingly project by project. He pleased environmentalists by delaying the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and by adopting tough air standards for power plants, yet he has also delighted business concerns by rejecting an ozone standard deemed too costly to the economy.

And now, the president is writing a new chapter in the nation’s unfolding energy transformation, in this case to the benefit of fossil fuel producers.

“We never would have expected a Democratic president — let alone one seeking to be ‘transformative’ — to open up the Arctic Ocean for drilling,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.

(NY Times). The "tar sands' oil flowing through pipelines will make us energy independent", "freedom", "patriotism", yada, yada, yada, is the mantra blasted on McTell News incessantly now.

Meanwhile, the president gives a rah rah rah speech to those people of Joplin, thinly couched in the words of war, struggle, almost "us versus nature", as if to place the blame on nature rather than the dirty oil addiction.

Are You In Good Hands With Oil State?

Yeah, that's the ticket, destroy the Earth's climate stability and security with dirty oil addiction, then when the catastrophes hit, help count the bodies, wave the flags, bury the dead, give .50 cents on the dollar in insurance coverage, give billions in subsidies to dirty oil barons, then finally tell the victims how strong Americans are.

On another duplicitous front, the chubbiness-induced diabetes epidemic has infected one out of four children, which increases cancer risk, health costs, will spread, and will be passed down to other generations.

Again, the government policy is triage, not change.

The McTell News advertises McFood all day long, as Big Farms Inc., along with big Pharma Inc., continue to destroy the health of the nation, even as they are rewarded with subsidies.

Meanwhile we have 800-1200 exotically expensive army bases around the world, naval bases around the globe, and wars, which are causing deficits.

To remedy this with triage, the government wants to cut expenditures for Americans in need, as they tell the weak how strong Americans are, take their money and give it to big dirty oil and big health inhibiting McFood corporations, then fly back to D.C. for a photo shoot.

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

Your God Wears Combat Boots - 2

On this date in 2009, Dredd Blog noticed how words all tend to change in meaning over time.

Some things change fast, some things not so fast, but reflecting on thoughts a few years old can give a clue or perspective into whether something has changed or not.

Here is the text of that 2009 post for you own perusal:

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It is interesting how words and phrases change meaning as empires and nations change who and what they are!

I once heard the saying "Your mother wears combat boots" as a child, and wondered what it really meant.

I detected that it could be derogatory but was not sure.

One source zeros in on the origin as:

Armys in the field used to have "camp followers" who were , in essence, prostitutes for the soldiers. The first thing they would bargain for was a good pair of boots because following an army involves walking through a lot of muck, as you can imagine!

So the insult evolved among soldiers and is like saying "You son of a whore!"

(AskVille; see also A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, Second Edition, by Eric Partridge & Paul Beale). Ouch! It was derogatory. Many sources come to the same conclusion that it originated about WW I, and was derogatory.

War was considered to be America's greatest enemy by great patriots of old, and thus the derogatory link.

To apply the saying to a deity would simply be another way of saying "My god is better than your god".

The Bush II regime, with Donald Rumsfeld at the Department of Defense, felt that its god wore combat boots and was better than the god of Muslims in Iraq.

Official memos quoted Bible verses in a cafeteria fashion designed to denigrate the Iraqi Muslims and celebrate and exalt Bush II's god, which is standard fare in the "My god is better than your god" world of things.

It was the same ideology, different direction, when hate filled individuals tried to blow up a Jewish worship building but were arrested.

They were in effect saying "my god is better than your god" so we are blowing up your worship building.

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The nation has undergone change from a peace loving nation to one run by a hidden-in-plain-sight group of warmongers. It is interesting to see that the change to the meanings of words reflects national change in a dangerous direction.

Which makes reading the book  "A Dictionary of Catch Phrases", Second Edition, by Eric Partridge & Paul Beale, a bit like reading history from another vantage point.