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| Oilandia 2.0 |
That seems reasonable in theory.
However, it has oft been observed that a problem arises, for those who have not arrived on planet Earth yet (You Are Here), when it comes to defining what is "a winning game" and what is "a losing game."
Oil-Qaeda (MOMCOM's team) has been warned for years that fossil fuels are not a winning game, yet they now root for the death juice louder than ever.
They "won" the recent election, then vowed surreptitiously to bring in The Keystone Pipeline,
That is why many folks believe that they think the game being played on Earth is "Pact Man does Mass Murder & Suicide" (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact, 2, 3, 4, 5).
And it is being played, they surmise, for kicks and grins ("There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke" - All Along The Watchtower, Bob Dylan).
It must be something they learned (The Peak Of The Oil Wars, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) from MOMCOM, which somehow got wired into their cultural circuitry (Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala) somewhere along the way.
One activist mentioned that there are two ways toward the current demise of human civilization:
I’ve kept to domestic issues, but there are two dangerous developments in the international arena, which are a kind of shadow that hangs over everything we’ve discussed. There are, for the first time in human history, real threats to the decent survival of the species.(Later Than We Think?, emphasis added). The nuclear-toy game has been in the cognitive arsenal of the ignoratti for a long time.
One has been hanging around since 1945. It’s kind of a miracle that we’ve escaped it. That’s the threat of nuclear war and nuclear weapons. Though it isn’t being much discussed, that threat is, in fact, being escalated by the policies of this administration and its allies. And something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble.
The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps towards trying to do something about it. The United States is also taking steps, mainly to accelerate the threat. It is the only major country that is not only not doing something constructive to protect the environment, it’s not even climbing on the train. In some ways, it’s pulling it backwards.
And this is connected to a huge propaganda system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. “Why pay attention to these scientists?”
We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke. And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted -- and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.
Since at least when Saint Ayn Rand (Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy, 2, 3, 4) first descended to Earth from on high:
How did this [nuclear war advocacy] all start? From Rand's own papers and journals, we learn that when she accepted the assignment from Wallis she said she'd only do it if she could express her own political and philosophical views, which might clash with the studio's. She then interviewed many of the leading figures in the Bomb's development, including Oppenheimer.(Ayn Rand's ... Glorifying the Atomic Bomb, emphasis added). The right-wing followers of Saint Ayn Rand are planning for one hell of a holy nuclear war:
Many years later she revealed that the character Robert Stadler in Atlas Shrugged was based on Oppenheimer. The papers also show that after MGM bought out Wallis, Rand was then free to work full-time on Atlas Shrugged.
She also wrote for Wallis an amazing and quite lengthy memo, An Analysis of the Proper Approach to a Picture on the Atomic Bomb.
Rand's memo opens with the astounding claim that it was not the bomb itself, a mere "inanimate" object, but a bad movie about it that could turn out to be the "greatest moral crime in the history of civilization." After all, whether the Bomb is used again depends on the "thinking of men," and movies were now the most influential elements in all of society. So she aimed for an "immortal
achievement" that would prevent the result of "millions of charred bodies -- those of our children."
Poof the Magic Dragon
The real danger was posed by the world's decline into "Statism" at the expense of "free enterprise." And "Statism leads to war." Now, with the atomic bomb in the world and Statism on the march our days were literally numbered -- unless the "trend" to Statism was "reversed." Because: "An atomic bomb is safe only in a free society."
But does that mean Rand hated the Bomb? Hardly. In fact, she extols its [nuclear weaponry] creation as "an eloquent example of, argument for and tribute to free enterprise." As evidence she cites the fact that despite its massive state power, Germany could not create the weapon but the United States did.
In an article published by Op-Ed News, Eric Zuesse supports my reports of indications that Washington is preparing for a nuclear first strike against Russia.(Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch - 2). The politicians are having a difficult time with the struggle to come up with a bi-partisan agreement as to which method of mass murder-suicide of this society should be used.
US war doctrine has been changed. US nuclear weapons are no longer restricted to a retaliatory force, but have been elevated to the role of preemptive nuclear attack. Washington pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and is developing and deploying an ABM shield. Washington is demonizing Russia and Russia’s President with shameless lies and propaganda, thus preparing the populations of the US and its client states for war with Russia.
Washington has been convinced by neoconservatives that Russian strategic nuclear forces are in run down and unprepared condition and are sitting ducks for attack. This false belief is based on out-of-date information, a decade old, such as the argument presented in “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy” by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press in the April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, a publication of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization of American elites.
Regardless of the condition of Russian nuclear forces, the success of Washington’s first strike and degree of protection provided by Washington’s ABM shield against retaliation, the article I posted by Steven Starr, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons,” makes clear that nuclear war has no winners. Everyone dies.
Both sides are so testy.
The pundits of McTell News are all aTwitter about a bi-partisan compromise agreement ("The Nukem First Act of 2015") to accomplish that number one priority.
Meanwhile, the previous post in this series is here.
Saint Ayn Rand's kid Slim:
Ode to Ayn Rand:
The fundies don't like "thou shalt not murder" because it is a regulation.
ReplyDeleteThey think the Earth is their bitch to do with as they please.
Whatever happened to "honor thy mother ... so you live a long life" and apple pie? link
It's too late to change the course of the sinking ship of civilization because we're toast within a decade or two from lack of habitat for humanity due to anthropogenic climate change effects. We've got deadly methane and hydrogen sulfide causing death and destruction now - and it's increasing each day - pluming from the ground and water sources; we have tropospheric ozone pollution as a result of fossil fuel use (killing the trees and vegetation); there's mosquito and tick borne diseases on the increase; add to that the ice caps and glaciers are in severe decline, effecting weather patterns and causing drought and flooding, heat waves and massive ice and snow storms, as well as giant cyclonic storms (like the one currently impacting Alaska); we've tipped at least 3 DOZEN self-reinforcing feedback loops on the climate front that are only going to make living here on Earth LESS likely as time goes on; and meanwhile PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS and have no idea what they're in for.
ReplyDeletei expect it to collapse any day of any year, but surely before 2020 civilization will implode from all of the damage we've done to our only home. There is no leadership, politics was corrupted by economics to the point that government is imbecilic, inane and ludicrous, and whatever intelligence people were supposed to have has vanished into the oblivion of distraction, mindlessness and psychosis.
Tom
here you go:
ReplyDeletehttp://billhicksisdead.blogspot.com/
Soviet America
Soviet America (Part 2)
"The Guardian published an interesting article the other day called, "As the Berlin Wall fell, checks on capitalism crumbled," the title of which pretty much tells the story "
[further down]
As it turned out, the end of the cold war was not unbridled good news for the citizens of the west. For a large part of the postwar era, the Soviet Union was seen as a real threat and even in the 1980s there was little inkling that it would disappear so quickly. A powerful country with a rival ideology and a strong military acted as a restraint on the west. The fear that workers could “go red” meant they had to be kept happy. The proceeds of growth were shared. Welfare benefits were generous. Investment in public infrastructure was high. There was no need to be so generous once the Soviet Union was no more. What was known as neoliberal economics was born in the 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that market forces reigned supreme. The free market spread to poorer parts of the world where it had previously been off limits, expanding the global workforce. That meant cheaper goods but it also put downward pressure on wages. What’s more, there was no longer any need to be inhibited. Those running companies could take a bigger slice of profits because there was nowhere else for workers to go. If citizens did not like “reform” of welfare states, they just had to lump it. [there's more]
Tom
Chomsky is picking up on the darkening vibe: (Dark Clouds Loom).
ReplyDeleteU.S. and China struggle to swim upstream ... an emissions agreement of sorts ... link
ReplyDelete