Scottish Parliament: NO MORE TRIDENT!

The Scottish Parliament has voted to oppose Westminster’s [UK government] plan to renew Trident.

Let’s hope this is a lasting decision [with no devil in the details!]

Scotland4Peace

Out of Control: War Costs May Total $2.4 Trillion

“The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade, or nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate scheduled for release Wednesday.” By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY. Read more…

The real costs of the fraudulent ‘war on terror’ in monetary terms are Immeasurable!

A number of major items are missing from the $2.4 trillion war account, namely the enormous ecological, social and human costs of the catastrophes caused by the fraudulent “war on terror.”

1. Total cost (!) of killing the future by NOT replacing the current “laws of jungle” rules of cannibalistic hegemony with a sustainable economy.

2. The sum values of irreplaceable ecosystems in Iraq and Persian Gulf that have been destroyed as a result of Mr. Bush’s fraudulent “war on terror.”

3. Full cost of NOT educating the nation to offset the widespread ignorance among this and the next generations because all the money was misappropriated under the guise of the fraudulent war and there was nothing left for education.

4. The cost of NOT fighting the onset and reemergence of various viral and infectious diseases caused by war, poverty, man-made climatic catastrophes and the crumbling social and economic infrastructure, all of which could have been prevented by spending the nation’s wealth [and credit] wisely to addressing the critical issues instead of diverting all the money to the fraudulent war. These are the manifestations of a hijacked government riddled with racketeering, deception and outright larceny by the elite and special interest groups.

5. Full cost of all future consequence arising from genocide of Iraqis, including rehabilitating surviving war victims.

6. The cost of “re-humanizing” the American [and British] image in the minds of the world’s “other” 6.2 billion peoples.

Related Links:

War Costs Spiral Out of Control

Domination by Disinformation

The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 2)
Perpetuating Domination by Disseminating Disinformation

To illuminate Ed Crane’s findings about the ‘ruling elite’ (see Part 1) and the cabal’s strategies of using academics, scholars and ‘experts’ to legitimize their domination over the populace, the author’s quick search for a few examples included the following case, probably the most egregious example of how ‘experts’ dupe the populace.

Need more abstractions? Try science fiction! So many academics, scholars and ‘experts’ cannot possibly be wrong.

Enter the cosmologist extraordinaire, ‘animated’ Lucasian Professor of Mathematics and ‘perfect wheelchair figure,’ academic, scholar and ‘expert’, Stephen Hawking.

Hospitable Planet Ahoy!

Hawking, the ultimate authority on how the Almighty’s mind works [sic], says humans must colonize other planets to avoid extinction. “Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe.” Note how easily the slick ‘expert’ hides behind science fiction to distract attention from the impending threat of runaway Global Warming as a pressing reason to evacuate our home planet and “to boldly go where no man has gone before!”

How do we get there, Mr. Spock? Exactly, which alien star system did you say we were heading?

Here is a myth created by the cabal with the crafty professor’s woven narrative serving to legitimize it. A natural disaster such as an asteroid collision [a very low probability event, since no one has detected an asteroid heading our way—save for Hollywood] is sandwiched together with another event of higher probability, a human-made disaster like a nuclear war that “could wipe us all out,” to create a ‘confusion combo’ for the mind. The narrative, which reinforces the myth, warns us that one way or another Earth will blow up. The ‘expert’ then invokes science fiction to offer the only possible way out [sic] of humanity’s dilemma: Colonize other ‘hospitable’ planets—an event with a near zero probability of occurring in our lifetime [there are no means available to travel to any such necessarily distant planet, even if one was observed.]

Would nuclear Armageddon mind waiting a ‘jiffy,’ while we tank up, load our gear into the spacecraft and get our backside in gear [and bid farewell to the zombies who wish to stay behind and blow each other to kingdom come?] How many people are going, by the way, Scotty? Has the Federation authorized us to beam up any ‘black,’ ‘brown,’ ‘red,’ or ‘yellow’ aliens aboard the craft, Mr. O’Brien? Have the pioneers been screened by the Israeli security? Is any passenger carrying liquids? Will the ailing commander in chief be going with us, Bones?’

Hell hath no fury like a soul tortured!

Why does our ‘expert’ tout nuclear Armageddon as inevitable [sic], yet leaves out of his narrative the man-made environmental catastrophes, including the runaway global warming, triggered by the excessive energy consumption that have already driven 15 of the 24 ecosystems to the verge of collapse and threaten to destroy the remaining life support systems imminently? Whose interest is he serving?

Why does the professor portray human race as one incapable of impeaching and incarcerating a handful of genocidal psychos who live among them to stop a potential nuclear war, yet he expects them to find phantom planets in ‘Deep Space Nine’ and travel there by science fiction means to colonize them?

Reading Between the Lines

The myth tells us that human race was destined to fail monumentally on Earth. Humans could not quite ‘hack’ it here (perhaps because on Freud’s advice they attacked nature with their techniques guided by science until they drove life to the verge of extinction, see Part 1); however, the same species can avoid extinction if they ‘warp drive’ [science fiction speed] to ‘alien stars’ and colonize ‘hospitable’ planets that orbit them. This unadulterated Orwellian doublethink is fallacious ‘antimatter’ even by Hollywood science fiction standards.

[Note Orwell’s description of ‘doublethink’ in his dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four: “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. … To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient”.]

The mythmakers aim to demoralize and dissuade the audience from changing their ways, looking for alternative, engaging in less environmentally destructive activities [environment-friendly activities pose a serious threat to the cabals’ perceived interests] or taking restorative measures where possible to help save what is left of the dying ecosystems. The doom scenario suggests since ‘the end is nigh’ we might as well carry on with business as usual—more cars on the roads and more flying lavatories in our skies. Homo economicus model does not allow value judgments!

The professor is trying to ‘pull the wool over our eyes’ by keeping the events timeline, the key item of information, out of the fabric of his narrative. Which of the two events happens first, professor, the nuclear Armageddon, or the salvation of humanity on a phantom planet? When will the nuclear war happen? How long would it take before the techniques guided by science could eventually ‘matter-antimatter’ humans into deep space?

[How much time have we left before the environmental catastrophes including Global Warming (caused by techniques guided by science) deliver our eviction notice? How many hospitable planets are out there orbiting alien stars did you say?]

To further reinforce the myth, in January 2007, Stephen Hawking and fellow academics at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and other scholars who had worked on the Manhattan Project building the atom bomb, but were deeply concerned about atomic bombs—another glaring example of Orwell’s doublethink?] moved the hand of their symbolic Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight, their imagery of the Apocalypse [note the connotation of Rapture!]

Lord Martin Rees, another of the ‘experts’ who is also president of The Royal Society (surprise, surprise!) and a fellow sponsor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists fears that the terrorist will detonate a nuclear weapon [the only terrorist who is threatening WW III by way of Nuclear Armageddon right now is non other than the madman George W. Bush] in a large city “killing tens of thousands along with themselves, and millions around the world would acclaim them as heroes.” [He dose not specify, however, which of the two vile acts he fears more!]

Interestingly, the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology by the terrorist state of Israel and their growing stockpile of nuclear warheads did not compel the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to readjust their clock.

As Captains sea-Cook and Flint might attest with significant hubris, ‘them’ folks at the Royal Society, Britain’s ‘elite’ scientific academy do not dish out their Copley medal to just any expert!

Why Not Use a More Conventional Technology?

The ‘old-fashioned’ chemical-propelled rockets are out, of course, you will have noticed. Not because enormous quantities of chemicals (oil) would be required for the rocket fuel (and most everyone knows by now we are running out of oil and opportunity), but because the professor’s snake oil must offer a proportionately extreme remedy [sic] that is in line with and does not belie or belittle enormity of the ‘problem.’ So, we are told to use the much faster matter-antimatter annihilation technology propulsion system, like the Star Trek’s Enterprise, to beam human race up and out, before ‘fit hits the shan’ here on Earth!

The less technologically prohibiting alternative [sic] of terraforming Mars, which other ‘experts’ have previously suggested, is no longer ‘hip,’ of course, because most everyone dislikes lackluster science fiction!

Beam Us Up Ricky!

On who will beam us up, the professor’s natural choice is the one and only, larger than life swashbuckling tycoon, Virgin’s immaculate buccaneer, Sir Richard Branson, of course [who else in the world would have a bigger ego or the monetary incentive to save homo economicus?)

Meanwhile, ‘Ricky’ the mass aviation ‘expert’ who is responsible for a generous share of CO2e pollution and, arguably, the spread of various communicable diseases globally, is waiting tickets in hand outside his ‘Galactic Spaceliner’ ready to scalp the J.Q. Public.

We truly sympathize with Stephen Hawking because of his unfortunate affliction with Lou Gehrig’s disease (aka Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS) which takes a tremendous toll on its victims’ emotional and financial resources; however, we do not believe that the distorted narrative emanates from his disability, nor the copious medication administered to keep him alive. [We have also ruled out pesticide poisoning caused by ingesting New Zealand wine-he does not drink New Zealand wine!]

Hawking’s carefully formulated narrative is tantamount to wartime propaganda prepared by the cabal’s disinformation apparatus. The cabal is hiding behind the professor’s disability using his silent, priestly gaze to reinforce their myth. The disinformation must not go challenged.

As for our message to Kaptain Kirk: Keep your flying lavatories off our skies!

The Death of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Part 1)

Killed by Homo Economicus

Our lives are based on an abstraction that forms the basis of the modern economic theory. Homo economicus model tells us that our total wants are insatiable, that we can make no value judgments and that whatever we desire must be normative. To ensure that the theory stands, however, we are bombarded with advertising.

Our hard-earned incomes pay for items whose advertisements promise to enhance our life quality. Most of these products live ephemerally, however, on their way to the landfill, or incinerator.

The Homo economicus abstraction is viciously attacking against nature through its inordinate consumption of energy, especially oil. The abstraction has driven our ecosystems (life support systems) to the verge of imminent collapse. The ‘experts’ assure us that the modern economic theory is the best there is. The theory is “carefully designed,” they tell us, but so was the Titanic.

E. F. Schumacher, in ‘Small is Beautiful,’ enumerated what he called the six leading ideas, a toolbox of ideas stemming from the nineteenth century by which the civilization interprets the world:

– Systemic application of the theory of evolution;

– Natural selection, which insures the survival of the fittest through competition;

– Suppression of spirituality, religion, philosophy, art and culture in favor of economic gains;

– Relativism, which denies all absolutes and negates the idea of truth in pragmatism;

– Positivism, which states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge and such knowledge can only come through empirical sciences (i.e., positive affirmation of scientific theories via exact scientific observations);

– Freud’s theory of unconscious mind, unconscious desire and repression.

Freud on Taming Nature

Freud said, “Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself. There is, indeed, another and a better path: that of becoming a member of human community, and, with the help of a technique guided by science, going over to attack against nature and subjecting her to human will. [And if the technique guided by science fail to reverse the ‘marsification’ of Earth that it started in the first place, you can always hide behind more abstractions!]”

Not surprisingly, the economic model with its Freudian framework has created a throwaway culture of obese, indolent and dumbed down insatiable consumers who, consciously or unconsciously, serve the [perceived] interest of a small cabal of international gangsters. Meantime, the economic abstractions are committing many species, including humans, to extinction.

The Oil Addiction

In For the Common Good Herman Daly reminds us of Pimples Carson, a John Steinbeck’s protagonist in The Wayward Bus. Pimples “spent half of his income on doctors and salves whose advertisements promised to cure his acne, and the other half on candy bars and sugary pies whose advertisements told him that a workingman needs quick food energy. Thus Pimples Carson becomes the insatiable consumer, much to the benefit of the makers of candy bars and acne ointments but to his own personal detriment.”

Unfortunately, the ‘Pimples Carson syndrome’ has affected the entire developed world, much to the benefit of the cabal [whose interests do not coincide with the interest of 98 percent of Americans and most others elsewhere], but to the detriment of the ecosystems. The United States government spends half of it income (and the lives of many of its sons and daughters) on the military to ‘protect’ a fraction of its oil imports that come from the Middle East, and the other half on consuming more oil to make America even more dependent on foreign oil!

Ironically, the United States can reduce its oil consumption by at least more than the amount it imports from the Middle East, and could even become completely independent of all foreign oil imports, by promoting non-carbon renewable sources, and by curbing waste.

[Note: China, Japan, India, Brazil… continue to buy oil at prevailing market prices–averaged at about $55 per barrel in February 2007–without loosing a single citizen or killing an Iraqi.]

Drowning in Cheap Oil

After air and water, oil is arguably the most vital resource on Earth on which our lives have become dependent. Why is this most precious commodity trading at giveaway prices? Why and how are the oil pumping countries forced to underselling their lifeblood?

Oil is food. Our food system almost entirely depends on oil. To produce 1,000 kcal of food energy, the food production industry in the developed world uses up to 22,000 kcal almost entirely derived from cheap oil. [Typical figures for the energy markup for each 1,000 kcal of food from production until the food reaches our mouths include agricultural production, 2,800 kcal; transportation, up to 10,000kcal (depending on the country); food processing, 2,000 kcal; packaging material, 1,500 kcal; food retail, 1,200 kcal; advertising and commercial food service, 1,200 kcal; household storage and preparation, 3,300 kcal.]

Our weekly shopping basket includes items that would have flown more air miles than the average family fly in their lifetime! A 1kg (2.2lb) bag of New Zealand kiwifruit (in any of its cadmium, arsenic, lead, mercury… or organochlorine varieties) produces about 142kg (313lb) of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent gases) pollution flying to the US, or 188.7kg (416lb) of CO2e to Europe.

We use cheap oil to make more than 500,000 products: antiseptics, asphalt, battery cases, boats, cables, carpets, cars bodies, CDs, clothes, computers, containers, detergents, DVDs, fabrics, Fertilizers, glues, home appliances, insulation, medicines, office equipment, paints, pipes, plastics, printers, refrigerators, shoes, solvents, sports gears, tires, tools, toys, trash bags… The list covers more than two thousand pages.

We are told the market economy decides what is needed, and rejects what is not. If this is true, why must the market economy resort to blanket advertising, brainwashing its Homo economicus subjects by exposing them to 3,000 advertising messages each, day in day out?

Why must market economy rely on in-built redundancy features to sell more of the same products at the expense of wasting tremendous amounts of energy? Why does the free market economy’s supply and demand interplay suppress the price of oil (usually through gunboat diplomacy), fail to recognize oil as a finite commodity and refuse to internalize environmental cost of the oil gluttony? Why the Homo economicus subjects have to resort to military force to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of human beings so that they could feed their life-destroying addiction?

Our slaveholder, the car, is taking the food right out of our mouths. The late Ivan Illich, a renowned sociologist, reported in the 1970s that when the miles Americans drive are divided by the time spent in the car (sitting on congested roadways, driving, parking, and servicing) and paying for it, they average 5 mph-about twice slower than riding a bike. Today, the cars are getting fatter and running even slower.

Cheap oil has distorted the notion of creating ‘economic gains’ to such great extents that governments subsidize the industry to export and import the same product, often in similar quantities, within the same fiscal period. Country A exports Q tons of product P to country B, while it imports Q tons of the same product P from country B at the same time, with a net zero gain in commodity exchange for either country. However, the exchange produces about 9Q tons of CO2e pollution, nine times the weight of the commodity that was flown in either direction, for every 1,000 miles that the consignment is airborne.

No doubt, their economic model registers this Enronesque racketeering in phantom GDP as a rise in the national wealth for both countries, but to the detriment of our environment and at the expense of poor countries.

So how do the captains of industry, governments, economic gurus and the ‘Andersonian’ crooks who cook their books account for their misadventure? How does the economic model explain, justify or excuse the pillage of cheap oil that has driven the ecosystems to the verge of collapse? What happens when the reality of ecocide finally begins to sink in?

Ed Crane of Cato Institute wrote, “The history of mankind is a history of the subjugation and exploitation of a great majority of people by an elite few by what has been appropriately termed the ‘ruling class’. The ruling class has many manifestations. It can take the form of a religious orthodoxy, a monarchy, a dictatorship of the proletariat, outright fascism, or, in the case of the United States, corporate statism. In each instance the ruling class [more precisely, the cabal] relies on academics, scholars and ‘experts’ to legitimize and provide moral authority for its hegemony over the masses.”

Related Links: Poverty Index