text:
Business-As-Usual on a Dying Planet
Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil, Pollution
BP, British Petroleum, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Corexit, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate State, Dr. Wilma Subra, Eco-Apocalypse, Ecological Sacrifice Zones, Environmental Collapse, Gross Inequality, Gulf Oil Spill, Industrial Disease, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mass Die Off, Noam Chomsky, Peak Oil, Renfrey Clarke, Tragedy of the Commons, Vice Media: Crude Awakening
A recent investigative piece by Vice on the aftermath of the BP oil spill, America's most devastating environmental accident to date and the "largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry", shows that people are still getting sick and dying in the Gulf region.
Award winning chemist, Dr. Wilma Subra, conducted blood tests on Gulf Coast residents who were symptomatic with new illnesses and found that some of the cancer-causing agents were 65 times the expected level in the victims blood tests. Subra noted that Corexit is in the air, the water and the Gulf resident's blood.
"There's a whole population that's very sick and doesn't have access to medical care, and that's what we've been trying to work on now, from the very beginning, is getting them medical care so they will get better," says Subra. "How many people do you think we're talking about, do we have any guess?" "Hundreds of thousands along the whole coastal area," Subra says. "Hundreds of thousands of people?" "That are sick, yes."
It also is likely that the BP cleanup workers are going to suffer the same fate. Listen to what Dr. Wilma Subra had to say about the health of this group.
These findings can leave little doubt that BP's use of Corexit has seriously compromised the collective life span of Gulf Coast residents. This is a staggering implication for the collective longevity in the Gulf. – link
Nearly 2 millions gallons of Corexit were used to prevent the millions of barrels of leaked oil from hitting shorelines. Where did all that oil go? Once Corexit is dispersed over an oil slick, it causes the spilled oil to break apart and sink to the bottom of the ocean. In the case of the BP oil spill, this toxic material created massive kill zones on the Gulf floor. When oil and Corexit are mixed together, the resultant substance becomes 52 times more toxic and penetrates human skin much easier. The locals don't eat what they catch, but remember that Obama said it was safe.
Corexit has been banned in 18 countries, including the UK, because "it is a cancerous causing neurotoxin pesticide that is acutely toxic to both human and marine life." Every time there is a strong storm, the Corexit chemical and oil mixture gets swept up onto shore and enters the water cycle:
As of early October 2013, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website specifically stated that the spill should have no effect on drinking water, and that any questions residents might have about their water should be directed to their drinking water provider. The website fails to mention that water from the Gulf, mixed with oil and Corexit could make its way into the ecosystem eventually, washing up onto the Gulf's shores and seeping insidiously into the ground water. Florida's ground water aqueduct system provides drinking water to 18 million residents. – link
The happy motoring culture of suburban sprawl, bread & circus infotainment, and celebrity/wealth worship has long since forgotten what has been called "the biggest public health crisis from a chemical poisoning in the history of this country". Entrapped by poverty and lacking the means to escape the Gulf region, its residence have become part of the sacrifice zone offered up in the name of profit to the carbon-hungry God of industrial civilization.
None of the locals who took part in the clean-up effort were told of the dangers to their health, nor were they allowed to wear protective gear such as respiratory masks, suits, and gloves because it would have more accurately conveyed to the world the true nature of the disaster. More recently, BP has been accused of hiring internet trolls to threaten critics of its handling of the 2010 disaster. Surely the authorities were aware of the aftermath from the Exxon Valdez accident wherein the same dispersant was used by those clean-up workers who are now nearly all dead at the average age of 51. For BP and the U.S. government, image and corporate interests override the horrific realities of ecocide and corporate manslaughter. Better to sink the oil out of sight and mind in order to maintain the illusion that all is well rather than have a company pay the full cost for its recklessness. All that oil mixed with Corexit is now a 3 to 4 inch toxic layer blanketing the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, inhibiting its biodegradation by natural oil-consuming bacteria and prolonging the disaster for decades. And BP is once again allowed to bid for U.S. government contracts after having sued the EPA in 2013 to lift the suspension. Of course lots of conspiracy theories surrounded the BP oil spill, but the only real conspiracy here was the government/corporate collusion to hide and minimize the damage, control the public's perception of the disaster, and protect corporate profits over people and environment — nothing out of the ordinary for the corporatocracy we live under, here or abroad.
It's not just in the oceans that we have to worry about oil spills. If we look at just one set of data from one inland state, you can get an idea of the staggering scale of the fallout from the oil drenched machine of industrial civilization:
When you take into account all the global destruction that capitalist industrial civilization has wrought over the last few centuries, you realize no solution will ever be forthcoming from our corporate overlords. The idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is simply a PR and marketing ploy. CSR employs ineffective market-based solutions, making it appear that a corporation is addressing a social or environmental problem when in fact it only serves to protect corporate financial interests and shift the blame to the individual and elsewhere. Over decades, corporations have molded society into atomized, uninformed, and passive consumers who parrot the same talking points fed to them from the mainstream media. Those wielding the power in society and leading mankind over a cliff are the same ones that hide behind the moniker of CSR, a smokescreen for continuing the looting and polluting of the planet to the point of ecological collapse.
As the catastrophes of the BP oil spill and Fukushima illustrate, a bankrupt planet is preferable to them over a bankrupt corporation. The Tragedy of the commons, as Noam Chomsky points out, has been perverted and twisted by the widespread adoption of the capitalist ethos. It actually means the opposite of what most have been taught to believe:
…there is another part of Magna Carta which has been forgotten. It had two components. The one is the Charter of Liberties which is being dismantled. The other was called the Charter of the Forests. That called for protection of the commons from the depredations of authority. This is England of course. The commons were the traditional source of sustenance, of food and fuel and welfare as well. They were nurtured and sustained for centuries by traditional societies collectively. They have been steadily dismantled under the capitalist principle that everything has to be privately owned, which brought with it the perverse doctrine of – what is called the tragedy of the commons – a doctrine which holds that collective possessions will be despoiled so therefore everything has to be privately owned. The merest glance at the world shows that the opposite is true. It's privatization that is destroying the commons. That's why the indigenous populations of the world are in the lead in trying to save Magna Carta from final destruction by its inheritors…
I'm afraid we are light years away from the Charter of the Forests and any sort of bucolic utopias. As for the future, think moonscapes, tumbleweeds, and the creaking sheet metal of rusted-out cars. The hyper-reality of megacities, with their pulsating neon lights and traffic-filled streets, will fall into silence and decay. Coastal cities will be swallowed up in watery graves. The impotence of man's technology will become painfully evident as the global-scale geochemical disruptions caused by man quickly unfold, ripping asunder any hold we once had on Earth.
…If modern industrial capitalism were a person, he or she would be on suicide watch. The system that has brought us quantum physics and reality television, modern medicine and the columns of Andrew Bolt is set on a course which, by all the best reckoning, points directly to its doing itself in. If capitalism goes on — everything goes. Climate, coastlines, most living species, food supplies, the great bulk of humanity. And certainly, the preconditions for advanced civilisation, perhaps forever…
~ Renfrey Clarke
About xraymike79
I'm a social critic, political/cultural commentator and artist. The modern industrial world is sleepwalking towards the cliff of economic and ecological ruin. Most are oblivious to the paradigm shift that is occurring, but some are starting to awaken to the false stories our culture has told itself. My objective is to highlight important news stories and essays to find the hidden truth behind what Joe Bageant called the American Hologram. www.collapseofindustrialcivilization.com
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120 thoughts on "Business-As-Usual on a Dying Planet"
first!!!!
but seriously Mike, "massive kill zones"? but, but, our Emperor said it was 100% safe! how can this be? especially with a cool name like Corexit, "corrects it" get it? surely there is truth in advertising, there's surely some sort of law.
what? no health care? and we are supposed to believe this? say it ain't so Joe! can't be, we have universal insurance now, don'tcha know, courtesy of the mandate in the ACA.
none of anything in this post surprises me, you did yeoman's work tying it all up in a neat little package.
what is ridiculous is that people argue we have plenty of oil when we are drilling for it in deep water, in the arctic, anywhere we can suck it up, common sense should tell us we are getting desperate. and then there's fracking, plenty of natural gas, as long as we turn the crust of the earth to rubble.
we probably dodged a bullet in the Gulf, there was talk of the salt dome rupturing, but hey! then we wouldn't have to drill for it, we would just have a giant oil filled lagoon, just skim it off the top.
the general public has no clue how toxic crude is all by itself.
"…turn(ing) the crust into rubble…"
and the toxification of groundwater sources describes our fracking nightmare.
Gasland Part 2, anyone?
http://thoughtmaybe.com/gasland2/
Thanks mike. Seems strange to say that, since I am not really masochistic. I am aware in a general and abstract way of our massive poisoning of our home planet, but when you bring it down to a specific case of seriously poisoning millions of people, it hits me in the gut – it makes me sick with what is being done to us. And to think that there are still people trying to trash Rachel Carson and her attempts to warn us makes me even more disgusted. When Silent Spring came out, I got the message right away. She is one of my heroes who helped me to wake up. Could it be that massive personal pollution is a factor in keeping us asleep and uncomprehending of our real desperate situation? Maybe the poisons in our brains are helping keep us stupid?
This was my chance to dig a little deeper into that disaster and learn a few things — sort of like attending an autopsy. Perhaps that's part of the reason why people ignore this stuff — too difficult and depressing to look at.
I am certain that the toxins we inhale & ingest [start with DDT, but there are all those heavy metals, as in the soil of India] along with malnutrition via prepackaged foods, account for the malformed brain circuitry that presents as Dyslexia, Developmental Topographic Disorientation, and simple inability to understand written or spoken instructions. Perhaps not, but it the simplest explanation. Not so much zombies as morons.
Industrial Disease.
Interestingly, Petrol Sniffing, which renders the habitue quite stupid, when stopped, a full recovery results: if that person outlives the inherent dangers. http://www.abc.net.au/health/library/stories/2005/11/24/1831506.htm
witsendnj@yahoo.com said:
Not to minimize the health problems and environmental damage from the gulf spill, but for impact and scale that mess is dwarfed by the far greater health carnage and environmental atrocity that occurs every day from burning fuel in cars, planes, trains, trucks, ships and power plants. Air and water pollution sicken and far more people and animals and are killing vegetation – the base of the food changing and the foundation of the ecosystem – and each and every one of us that chooses to partake of the products of industrial civilization is part of the problem. It's gratifying to vilify greedy corporations and corrupt government agencies for spectacular disasters like that spill or Fukushima, because the uncomfortable fact is anyone using electricity is complicit in a much worse unending calamity that almost nobody wants to acknowledge or admit to, because there is no solution. Our benighted species is incapable of exercising self-restraint whatever guise the culture assumes, and that is the tragedy of the commons. It is meant as a description of humanity's behavior, not an excuse for privatization. Watch the movie just posted on my blog for the best proof of this I've ever seen, which is about the exploitation of the ocean – a "resource" that still is, for the most part, a commons, a status that hasn't protected it one iota.
There's a component of biological programming in our self-destructiveness, but to say all of human behavior and everything existing — the economy, political system, overpopulation, environmental destruction, etc — is attributable solely to biological programming while ignoring social conditioning is an extreme oversimplification of the human condition.
witsendnj said:
Funny thing though…is that if you assume it is accurate, you find that it perfectly predicts the outcome we now see before us. So when humanity wakes up and decides to shun their toxic fossil fuel energy slaves in favor of hard physical labor, zero population growth, and gender equality, I will take it all back, gladly!
I have a feeling we'll never know.
I have a feeling we already do, if you strip away the denial and delusional hope we are programmed to indulge in. Kumbaya, anyone?
If that be the case, then we should simply enjoy our societal entropy rather than be horrified by it.
redeye said:
Humpty Dumpty has certainly fallen off the wall. And here we are, left to muck about in the shards and liquids of his remains. Rats!! Who'd a thunk it would end like this? I always dreamed that I would go sitting in the ocean on a beach chair, at low tide, with a jug of mezcal in each hand, staring cross-eyed at the sunset as the incoming tide painlessly pulls me home … not choking on scrambled eggs.
"… each and every one of us that chooses to partake of the products of industrial civilization is part of the problem."
Like we have a fair choice to live a decent life outside civilization.
The culture has blame-the-victim circuits built in, which manifest as a blame the victim meme.
It is morphing and mutating into a Stockholm Syndrome format too (The Peak of Sanity – 3).
The "you can run but you can't hide" reality exposed by Mike's post shows who is to blame, who are the victims, and who is a mass-murdering criminal "trust us" enterprise.
Some people have been aware of this for quite some time: "The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." – Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
As far as I can tell, the definition of "a decent life" tends to include the products of industrial civilization. So maybe you can define what you mean by a "decent life" and what prevents people from living that way? Even the Amish work in factories. They know how to farm, so, why? Because there are too many people for everyone to live without technology: http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=kp&v=9Uh-NB_FWIs
Socialists talk about reconfiguring the mode of production in order to provide for the essential needs of people rather than purely for profit-seeking which results in massively wasteful things like a billion cars on the planet, the extreme overuse of plastics and petrochemicals, conspicuous and wasteful consumption, etc. Reconfiguring the mode of production could greatly reduce GHG's.
Concerning technology…
"…degradation of human values is not grounded in technology, in and of itself. It is grounded in the character of a new kind of corporatism and its authoritarian control over technology. It is a new kind of corporatism that is more clever, rapacious, and invasive than any previous form and that is imperial in its quest for power and profit as it tries to control any and all aspects of the public domain…"
– Luis Suarez-Villa. Technocapitalism: A Critical Perspective on Technological Innovation and Corporatism
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2014/03/08/the-technological-sublime/
What you should have focused on, since your cognition evinces the blaming the victims circuits, was to question me about "a fair choice."
Western jurisprudence requires those who would charge and convict an individual of the capacity to do what they are alleged to have done.
Would you urge that we who you say are "part of the problem" can vote this suicidal civilization out of office?
Can we fire them?
Invade and overthrow them?
Reason with them?
Express our opinion and have them kneel to us the people, we the 99%?
They "blame the 99% for what the 1% are doing" did not get much traction, but neither do our wishes to keep ourselves alive.
There have been millions of chances for those who have the say to switch to sustainable policies.
But at each of those millions of chances they have doubled down on an inexplicable death wish.
The meme you advanced comes from OIl-Qaeda suicide bummers.
You do not have to believe it or perpetuate it.
From Wealth, Energy, and Human Values: The Dynamics of Decaying Civilizations …
James said:
Many, many businesses will take short-cuts or do shady things if it means a boost in profits. How do we save a non-human environment when we have little respect for each other? It's likely we'll eat and pollute everything on this planet and then in our sickened condition we'll look at each other in disgust and finish each other off with our magnificent man-killing technologies.
Not much of our behavior is truly left to our volition. There are neural programs laid down through evolution that make sure we do the right thing. We don't decide to get the parking spot closest to the store entrance, we are programmed to do it, to do things with the least amount of exertion thereby conserving precious energy. How do you find your car when you leave the store? Not by rational or conscious means usually, but by some hidden part of the brain sending you in the right direction, closed to consciousness. The brain won't let you wander around in circles for hours burning precious energy.
There's a lot going on under the cranial hood that we're unaware of and it's beyond introspection. We've all heard about the "will" experiments where decisions are made by the brain before the "I" has any awareness. It's very easy for society to pander to our natural inclinations but very difficult if not impossible to change our behavior based upon argument and evidence. Why is it that we elect haircuts, smiles and perfect teeth in our vaunted democratic elections? Because that is what evolution has prepared us to judge. Why aren't ugly, intelligent girls on the networks bringing us the news?
Why do tobacco farmers grow and sell a product that kills people? Because there's something very unattractive under the hood but which has been retained because it works. It's selfish, it's greedy, but it works, until now.
Equipped with tools and energy, man is an existential threat to himself and all other organisms that are required to live within limits. We are the cancer that is competing with and disrupting the balanced system from which we arose. How much of a tumor load can the ecosytem withstand?
Some of our fellow humans in Idaho…and they're expending energy to lead us:
http://gawker.com/i-cant-stop-watching-this-bizarre-idaho-gop-governors-d-1576919917
"A Master's in raisin' hell………blitzkrieg." First achieve isolation, then hide. The "normal" guy with good hair will win although the neo-nazis may rally around the blitzkrieg idea. Some day that biker will have to park his hog in the living room and remember the days when gas was available. His identity will be shot.
The freak show of humanity…
Former Canadian Defence minister, Paul Hellyer, said there were "about 80 different species" of alien, in an interview with Russia Today.
"Some of them look just like us and they could walk down the street and you wouldn't know if you walked past one", he said.
Mr Hellyer also claimed that extraterrestrials were working with the US air force in Nevada, he went on to say that they were "very concerned" about the future of planet Earth…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/10560418/Former-Canadian-defence-minister-Aliens-among-us.html
I bet The Harper Gang would love to bring Hellyer back as the minister of environment.
LOL. I got a kick out of this rant.
Afflicted with Affluence…
I listened to a radio interview with a fundamentalist oil drilling engineer who assured the listeners that god was behind the formation of the oil deposits on earth, and that god would ensure that supplies never ran out. I think the interview was quite revealing as to why so many religious people are unconcerned by resource limits or climate disruption or other environmental tragedies. If your worldview is that an omniscient, omnipotent being exists, and the principal concern of that being is the wellbeing of Homo rapiens, then it follows that things will never get too bad, as that being will come to the rescue.What percentage of our species lives in a private world of delusion ?
"Homo rapiens"…LOL.
Was that intentional or subliminal?
Intentional. More accurate than sapiens, I think.
Yep. Vegetation of all sorts is dying everywhere, not just along the coasts. It is right in the article why – plants absorb pollution. http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/01/29/whispers-from-the-ghosting-trees/
Not there, but I can have 'virtual' dreams…
Beautiful scene. A small celebration of Prometheus's "gift". We foolish children have been playing with fire ever since. Getting burned….
Interesting twist…… City gets sued for not preparing for climate change:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/19/climate-change-get-ready-or-get-sued/
Malthus said:
A dying planet full of the walking dead.
This documentary by Journeyman Pictures was made shortly after the 2010 BP oil spill. It shows the atmosphere of tight security and media censorship surrounding the accident as well as revealing more about the environmental devastation and the toxic dispersant Corexit — it dissolves bone and damages DNA.
Oddly, the title is the same one that Vice used: 'Crude Awakening'.
[youtube:www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_x-b97LX0k]
The hits just keep coming…
Au contraire, I was just listening to American Family Radio, the host said that Antarctica has added so much ice that the polar bears are having trouble. Now what is your rebuttal to that Mr. X-R-A-Y M-I-K-E, you environmental commie sympathizer. P-O-L-A-R B-E-A-R-S HAVING TROUBLE, GOT IT? TOO MUCH ICE. He also said that the Bible spells out that man is to have dominion over the planet and use it as he wishes and that CO2 has risen but the earth hasn't warmed in 18 years. Are we going to let these fire and brimstone crackers end us? As reason is currently our only weapon, we are at considerable disadvantage. I'm afraid this is the future, a clueless and gullible populace fed lies as deterioration proceeds.
As punishment for his chronic deceitfulness, the Greek mythological figure Sisyphus was condemned to ceaselessly roll a large boulder uphill, whence the stone would fall back down of its own weight. There is no more dreadful punishment than futile, hopeless, and wasteful labor.
With climate change, humans in their continued refusal to face reality have been condemned to the same fate as Sisyphus. Keeping back a rising sea and rebuilding what climate chaos will continuously destroy will be our eternal punishment.
Building sea walls to counter the effects of sea level rise will become the largest employment opportunity in history. The billions of humans seeking jobs will slavishly take up the vain task.
There is another answer, and in the spirit of the moai of Easter Island, upon the coasts we shall erect one million concrete statues of King Canute who's magical potency is known to make the water retreat. Just as a back-up we will employ one million concrete statues of Moses parting the seas. Let's not hold back, we should leave a lasting testament to our intelligence and foresight. Those only slightly more rational can build concrete walls.
Actually I think it was a fair question that I would still like to see answered. The problems I see with the "blame the 1%" approach are at least two-fold. First, there is no way to feed 7 billion and counting people, never mind provide them with sanitation and electricity, without an industrialized economy and no matter what economic system you have, industrial civilization is killing life on the planet; and secondly, ven if you eliminated the evil 1%, guaranteed there are effectively countless legions willing and eager to replace them. To quote from a post at the FB Panic Room – Benjamin TheDonkey: Gail says: "…the climate change scientists and activists don't want to admit that we have to give up electricity, cars, planes, electronic toys, unrestricted procreation and consumption and international shipping, because nobody wants to sacrifice anything, including the climate scientists and activists."
I'm O.K. with more BAU—
It's better than being all through;
The truth is, my friend,
I don't want it to end,
And neither, I'm betting, do you.
~ by Benjamin the Donkey, a Limericks of Doom
andyuk said:
yep, thats why we need 'power down' using thoughtful, frugal and fair allocation of resources and humane de-growth of population, rather than just allowing industrial civilization to just splutter on its extravagant, mindless path to inevitable system failure.
Well, given that during the relatively luxurious ride up Hubbert's curve we never managed to use "thoughtful, frugal and fair allocation of resources" – indeed, the era has been characterized by wars and too many humanitarian atrocities to mention, to say nothing of the obliteration of the natural world – I'm curious to know what human traits might kick in to make the imminent vertiginous slide down energy abundance any more "humane"?
misericordia said:
Lack of means.
From an earlier email with Darbikrash which applies to the comments and line of thinking by Wit's End:
You know I see a lot of these kind of comments, it seems popular for this crowd to apply this sort of reductive reasoning to the NTE worry quilt. The notion is to make non-intuitive associations of fundamental chemistry, physics, and population statistics by means of explaining human existence. Malthus tried this and it did not work out so well for him….
I don't really subscribe to this line of thinking, it strikes me as contrived and an obtuse attempt to be clever.
I believe what's missing in these descriptions is acknowledgment of the nature of the human condition. Dating back thousands of years, pursuit of logic, truth, meaning, and to my point, the search for normative social justice. It is uniquely human to pursue these subjects, and where possible, to optimize social relations to achieve the best result.
This is not the same as reducing all behavior to categories of acquisition, consumption, and waste. It is the social relations that in large measure dictate equality, happiness, and other intangibles, not numerical quantities or 4 sigma distributions.
The logical conclusion of this line of reasoning is that nothing really matters, we're all just plankton or amoebas, petri dish experiments that can be resolved with nothing more than power law functions and statistics.
I fundamentally disagree with this viewpoint.
Capitalism, like other forms of political economy, is a class structure, a series of social relations based on the exchange of commodities. For thousands of years humans have searched for an optimal means of creating a class structure that resolves equality and normative social justice despite the inclinations of murderous character traits and downright thievery exhibited by many humans throughout the millennia.
It is the struggle for improvement, with full acknowledgment of the futility given our vast imperfections. But knowledge of the gulf between where we are, where we can be, and where we realistically can end up does not- and cannot- impede our attempt at ascendancy.
One of our founding questions is how best to organize our world to make our short stay enjoyable, yet fair, to the maximum extent possible for all inhabitants.
Is that optimized answer capitalism? No, I would argue it is not. But it is summarily invalid to proclaim that there will always be unequal and unfair distributions of all things- of course there will, no one ever said differently.
The struggle is to level load these inequalities, directionally, towards a more fair society, not to eliminate them altogether. Because the claim that nature distributes things in Pareto principled outcomes does not comport with the entirely separate subject of exploitation by humans for humans.
Just because nature does it to some extent does not mean you get to follow suit.
The other argument that is similarly encountered is that the population will inevitably kill off all the resources anyway, regardless of the means of distribution. Maybe so, but as already mentioned, it is the pursuit of optimal conditions that is important, not some existentialist nihilism that carries the day.
Perhaps one might consider this a Rawlsian precept, e.g., that we should consider the aggregate carrying capacity of the environment in the context of Rawls' "veil of ignorance". He suggested that any rules for normative social justice be considered from the viewpoint that we do not know the stature of the parties with regard to abilities or positioning in the social order.
"The veil of ignorance blocks off this knowledge, such that one does not know what burdens and benefits of social cooperation might fall to him/her once the veil is lifted. With this knowledge blocked, parties to the original position must decide on principles for the distribution of rights, positions and resources in their society. As Rawls put it, "…no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like".[5] The idea then, is to render obsolete those personal considerations that are morally irrelevant to the justice or injustice of principles meant to allocate the benefits of social cooperation.
For example, in the imaginary society, one might or might not be intelligent, rich, or born into a preferred class. Since one may occupy any position in the society once the veil is lifted, the device forces the parties to consider society from the perspective of all members, including the worst-off and best-off members."
Maybe we use this contrivance for resource scaling, planetary carrying capacity, etc. Consider if P is 2 people, Adam and Eve, or some (unknown) number that cannot possibly consume all the resources within their lifetimes, how do they behave? Like amoebas?
It is only when P gets to be an alarmingly high number that we get the reductive chemists shouting from the rooftops. It's not a job for chemists, and the answer for resource optimization lies under the veil of ignorance- the correct answer is the same whether P=2 or P= 2e10.
Does capitalism pass this Rawlsian test?
All this blather to deny the essential evolutionary imperatives imprinted in our minds is not useful. I highly recommend the work of the delightful Laurie Santos who says at the end of this talk…"We have to recognize that we have biological limitations," and she quotes Camus…"Man is the only species that refuses to be what he really is," and adds "The irony is it might only be in recognizing our limitations that we can actually overcome them." The prevailing ideology – that human behavior and motivations is somehow outside of nature – persists in trivializing millions of years of complex adaptation. Comparing the understanding so eloquently expressed by Santos as akin to humans being like amoebas or plankton renders more sophisticated efforts to overcome our biological limitations moot and understood by a tiny minority. Too bad.
Lidia17 said:
"we're all just plankton or amoebas, petri dish experiments that can be resolved with nothing more than power law functions and statistics."
This is in fact the case. No evidence anywhere points to it being otherwise. It's only in people's minds that we are somehow different, not subject to the laws of Nature.
autonomousactionradio said:
Reblogged this on Autonomous Action Radio.
I wasn't aware of Howard J. Kunstler's views on 9/11, but an email from a contributor here, Darbikrash, caused me to look into it:
I regard the 9/11 conspiracy theories as a fantasy and a distraction from the real problems we face. It is especially unfortunate that they became associated with the Peak Oil issue, and that was obviously a result of Mike Ruppert's elaboration of them in his book Across the Rubicon, which brought discredit to his otherwise good reporting on the global oil situation, and tainted others like myself who regard energy as the crucial geopolitical and economic issue of our time. There is enough confusion in this nation without conflating the real concerns over energy with paranoid fantasies about government plots.
~ JHK, December 26, 2005
Now going back to Darbikrash, he has brought to my attention a recent discussion thread at PeakProsperity.com in which it is revealed that Chris Martenson is very much in the paranoidal, government spook controlled demolition of the WTC and building 7. There is an interesting back and forth between Martenson and Darbikrash where Martenson even resorts to insinuating that Darbikrash is a paid internet troll for the government to control discussion on this 9/11 conspiracy. The thread is here:
http://www.peakprosperity.com/forum/85359/book-review-mysterious-collapse-world-trade-center-7
My reply to Darbikrash:
I was not aware that PeakProsperity.com and its owner were ardent CT'ers of the paranoidal 9/11 controlled demolition story. When you see the effort and energy that so many on his site and elsewhere put into this ridiculous conspiracy, you realize there will never be a voluntary shift away from capitalism or anything radically different from what we have now.
Simply put, we have the psychological reasoning for such conspiracies quoted here:
"Or perhaps this strain of conspiratorial theory is borne of a sect that conjures the government as being responsible for everything that is wrong, the FED is responsible for debasing the currency, crushing the "free market" with unreasonable and nonsensical regulation, fabricating fiat money to destabilize the economy, and if that wasn't enough, why spraying us all down with chem trails.
In this context a government plot to bring down the Towers makes perfect sense."
I did post a comment there but saw that it was immediately held for moderation. At any rate, here is what I said:
Just out of curiosity, I looked up the author of this book that PeakProsperity is so religiously holding up and found this bio:
David Ray Griffin is a former philosophy and theology professor (specifically, emeritus at Claremont School of Theology in California) and current moonbat conspiracy theorist. He wrote a load of theology texts in his pre-truther days, mostly dealing with theology and postmodernism. He claims to have evidence of a government conspiracy regarding the 9/11 tragedy and Osama bin Laden's death, and he has written several books on the subject.
His first and most famous work of trutherism is The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. Naturally, it's a book-length just asking questions session (indeed, he never explains how the conspiracy would work in toto, but merely attempts to poke holes in the "official account" like most other conspiracy theorists), replete with the standard post hoc Cui Bono reasoning and citations of other cranks as "experts." All the old truther chestnuts are there as well, including WTC7, the Pentagon being hit by a cruise missile, the PNAC, and a number of the other greatest hits.
He has also written some material shoehorning Christian theology into trutherism (namely, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action).
I would have thought this topic would be relegated to the "Controversial Topics" forum, but apparently for a certain segment of the population, this sort of thing passes as "Current News and Events".
I mentioned the go-round over 9/11 at you last post to a friend over lunch, after which she forwarded this site to me: http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
Which I found to be comprehensive and convincing.
http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/
TR said:
For a conspiracy to be a success,everyone has to believe that it's not a conspiracy.
I apologize for using the C-word. rofl
"The 67-year-old longtime Wheel of Fortune host took to Twitter yesterday to seemingly blast people who are worried about the effects of climate change on the planet.
"I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends. Good night," Sajak wrote last night."
http://www.eonline.com/news/543731/pat-sajak-global-warming-alarmists-are-unpatriotic-racists
THE WHEEL OF MISFORTUNE…
C_IMA_E C_ANGE DENIE_
w said:
via ClubOrlov.
Discussions of social policy, especially with regard to such things as the rights of women and sexual and racial minorities, play a very special role in American politics.
…It has recently been shown that the US is not a democracy, in which public policy is influenced by public opinion, but an oligarchy, where public policy is driven by the wishes of moneyed interests.
On major issues, such as whether to provide public health care or whether to go to war, public opinion matters not a whit. But it is vitally important to maintain the appearance of a vibrant democracy, and here social policy provides a good opportunity for encouraging social divisions: split the country up into red states and blue states, and keep them in balance by carefully measured infusions of money into politics, so as to maintain the illusion of electoral choice.
Throw a bit of money at a religious fundamentalist candidate, and plenty of feminists, gays and lesbians will vote for the opposing kleptocrat who will, once elected, help Wall Street confiscate the rest of their retirement savings, in return for a seat on the board; throw another bit of money at a rainbow-colored lesbian, and plenty of bible-thumping traditionalists will vote for the opposing kleptocrat who, once elected, will funnel tax money to his pet defense contractor in return for some juicy kickbacks. This part of the American political system works extremely well.
On the other hand, if some matter comes before the politicians that requires helping the people rather than helping themselves and their wealthy masters, the result is a solid wall of partisan deadlock. This part works very well too—for the politicians, and for the moneybags who prop them up, but not for the people.
While it is the entire country that is being victimized by this system of governance based on the principle of social divide and conquer, it is women and minorities that are the pawns in this game, and the biggest losers, with some of the worst outcomes out of all of the developed countries.
The US has the largest number of children born into poverty and leads the world in teenage pregnancy and the rate of sexually transmitted disease infection among teenage girls. In spite of what's been called "progress," the effect of women working outside the home has been to halve family incomes.
As for minority rights, there are more black slaves in America today than there were before the Civil War—they used to work on plantations, but now they work in prisons, many of which are privately owned, where they make money for their politically connected owners.
With regard to the rights of sexual minorities, it needs to be noted that not only does the US lead the developed world in rape, but that here rape is evenly distributed between men and women, male rape being most prevalent, again, among the prison population.
This vast landscape of societal failure is obscured behind a verbal veil of political correctness. Never mind the fact that the nirvana of progressive race and gender politics only exists on television (where it is faked) and among a few of the continuously shrinking remnants of the middle class—we are still required to pay lip service to it.
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2012/12/13/climate-change-dying-by-two-degrees/?mc_cid=8d30ed173f&mc_eid=f0754ee742
Some climate reports say that we might reach this two-degree warming around 2050 to 2070 if we do nothing to "mitigate" climate change, but these projections are disingenuous. Based on the "Albedo Effect" alone, which predicts that the decreased reflectivity of the Earth, due to melting of glaciers, will cause warming to accelerate, anyone can reasonably calculate that, if we do nothing at all, the next one-degree increase in temperature will happen faster than the last. In other words, if we stop all emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) today, we have less than 30 years.
– See more at: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2012/12/13/climate-change-dying-by-two-degrees/?mc_cid=8d30ed173f&mc_eid=f0754ee742#sthash.u8KQNjHY.dpuf
It is a simple matter of thermodynamics that we are returning to the conditions that prevailed during the Permian Era, before green plants fixed the carbon that we are now burning as fossil fuels. Back then, the seas were vaster, and the Earth's landmass was smaller than it is today. At two degrees of warming, civilization, as we know it, will end. Port cities will become submerged. Islands will disappear or shrink to their highest peaks. Simultaneously with the violent cyclones and massive floods, there will be fires in currently dry regions because they will become yet drier. The salinity of the oceans has already changed to the extent that many aquatic species are greatly stressed and might soon disappear. The overall process is underway, and it will intensify even if we stop all carbon emission right now. We need to do more. Much more. At the least, we must set out to reforest the planet as rapidly as we can. We must also gradually decrease the human population to a sustainable level, if only to prevent the achievement of this depopulation by disease and other calamities. The world simply cannot accommodate more humans, nor can it tolerate the religion of capitalism, which calls for infinite growth and consumption on a finite planet. – See more at: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2012/12/13/climate-change-dying-by-two-degrees/?mc_cid=8d30ed173f&mc_eid=f0754ee742#sthash.u8KQNjHY.dpuf
You're no longer on moderation.
Stay away from CT's.
U.S. officials cut estimate of recoverable Monterey Shale oil by 96%
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oil-20140521-story.html
US Officials Blow Up Oil-Boom Myth
http://www.dailyimpact.net/2014/05/21/us-officials-blow-up-oil-boom-myth/#more-2204
Lol. Reality is a bitch sometimes.
BenjaminTheDonkey said:
W_'R_ F_CK_D
The letters are only a few,
So the puzzle is easy to do:
No overall view
Was ever more true—
Please give me three "e's" and a "u."
That's the real Wheel of Misfortune!
I'm going……can't wait.
People's Climate March to Target System 'Powering Our Destruction'
Coalition, backed by 350.org and Bill McKibben, announces mass demonstration in New York City targeting world leaders at upcoming UN Meeting
In a new article published in Rolling Stone on Wednesday, 350.org co-founder and lead spokeperson Bill McKibben announced the demonstration and issued an open invitation to anyone—from around the country and across the globe—"who'd like to prove to themselves, and to their children, that they give a damn about the biggest crisis our civilization has ever faced."
NYC September 20.
"Together, we'll take to the streets to demand the world we know is within our reach: a world with an economy that works for people and the planet. A world safe from the ravages of climate change. A world with good jobs, clean air, and healthy communities for everyone." —People's Climate March organizers
Go ahead and flame me. Tell me how I have to be brain dead to think any march can thwart the upcoming biosphere destruction. Yeah…..probably right. But what better way to spend that day? I think it will be awesome…..
McKibben:
The gap between "We're all sitting ducks" and "We do not face a crisis" is the gap between halfhearted action and the all-out effort that might make a difference. It's the gap between changing light bulbs and changing the system that's powering our destruction.
"The point is, sometimes you can grab the zeitgeist by the scruff of the neck and shake it a little."
In a rational world, no one would need to march. In a rational world, policymakers would have heeded scientists when they first sounded the alarm 25 years ago. But in this world, reason, having won the argument, has so far lost the fight. The fossil-fuel industry, by virtue of being perhaps the richest enterprise in human history, has been able to delay effective action, almost to the point where it's too late.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/21-3
I hope this has an impact on people. Pope Francis recently spoke about climate change. Yes, it's real:
Pope Francis made the religious case for tackling climate change on Wednesday, calling on his fellow Christians to become "Custodians of Creation" and issuing a dire warning about the potentially catastrophic effects of global climate change.Speaking to a massive crowd in Rome, the first Argentinian pope delivered a short address in which he argued that respect for the "beauty of nature and the grandeur of the cosmos" is a Christian value, noting that failure to care for the planet risks apocalyptic consequences.
"Safeguard Creation," he said. "Because if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us! Never forget this!"
The pope centered his environmentalist theology around the biblical creation story in the book of Genesis, where God is said to have created the world, declared it "good," and charged humanity with its care. Francis also made reference to his namesake, Saint Francis of Assisi, who was a famous lover of animals, and appeared to tie the ongoing environmental crisis to economic concerns — namely, instances where a wealthy minority exploits the planet at the expense of the poor.
"Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude," Francis said.
Francis also said that humanity's destruction of the planet is a sinful act, likening it to self-idolatry.
"But when we exploit Creation we destroy the sign of God's love for us, in destroying Creation we are saying to God: 'I don't like it! This is not good!' 'So what do you like?' 'I like myself!' – Here, this is sin! Do you see?"
Think Progress: Pope Francis Makes Biblical Case For Addressing Climate Change: 'If We Destroy Creation, Creation Will Destroy Us'
Nice words.Now let's examine how the catholic church behaves when it has real power within a society.Read Countdown by Alan Weisman for details of the catholic church in the Philippines. Ruthless opposition to efforts to educate people about birth control methods,prevention of access to contraceptives,abortion illegal.Poverty,overcrowding,ignorance,suffering are fine for this existence on Earth,because it is the imaginary afterlife with god that really matters,and,hey,the more souls the merrier.I wonder what the pope thinks is driving the sixth extinction currently occurring. A population explosion of dragonflies?
Greed, corruption, and abuse of power have plagued civilization throughout history. With fossil fuels, man was given the means to destroy himself which he did with hedonic pleasure. The Heretick posted the Pink Floyd song 'Amused to Death' on this thread. It's the appropriate anthem for these times.
The fate of male chicks in a hatchery:
Only females lay eggs so the males are useless and must die for the egg industry to be profitable.
Google has this as "grinded" rather than ground… I am NOT with Stupid.
Gail said:
It's the same for most domesticated stock and always has been. The males are either eaten or killed while young, or castrated. Otherwise they are dangerous to have around. I let some roosters grow and what a mistake! They attacked my kids, one time when they were on horseback, which was very dangerous, to say nothing of how they attacked the hens and each other. I finally locked them out of the coop and let the fox have them.
Like cabbage.
deepgreenresistancenewyork said:
Reblogged this on Deep Green Resistance New York.
"One of President Obama's wealthiest supporters is pledging to spend at least $50 million in a bid to make climate change the central issue in hotly contested elections in New Hampshire, Florida, Michigan and a handful of other battleground states.
A group run by California billionaire Tom Steyer unveiled plans to aggressively target Republicans in seven states who have been skeptics of global warming. Among the political figures the group plans to target is Florida Gov. Rick Scott and former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who hopes to win a Senate seat from New Hampshire.
The group plans to spend at least $100 million – half of it Steyer's money, the rest raised from other environmentalists – on campaigns that will include micro-targeting voters, branding climate skeptics as deniers of basic science and highlighting the hardships climate change is already causing."
http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-pn-steyer-20140521-story.html
I'm sure everyone is aware of the biblical floods in Serbia recently that were never before seen in their recorded history. It's not over:
The worst of the waters have receded, for the moment, even here in the Serbian town hit hardest by the record-smashing floods. But with temperatures in the mid-80s and rising, concerns are now shifting to an almost inevitable outbreak of disease in the coming weeks…
…Contaminated water has covered homes, towns and fields, turning much of Serbia's most fertile agricultural region into a poisonous stew of toxic chemicals, rotting carcasses and disease-carrying insects. So far, there have been no epidemic outbreaks, the health minister said, but that will almost certainly change — intestinal ailments, respiratory infections, skin diseases, hepatitis, perhaps worse.
"That is what is going to happen," he said. "We can't predict what kind of disease, but if people return to their homes too soon, as many will, before the contaminated areas can be cleaned, it will naturally come to that."…
…The second wave, which is not expected to be as huge as the first — the largest since records began to be kept 120 years ago — could still be devastating. It will be caused by a mass of water moving down the Danube from Germany and Austria, which had heavy rainfall from the same system that socked the Balkans.
The powerful Danube is expected to handle the flow with ease. But its passage is likely to cause the Sava and other tributaries to back up yet again…
These floods have been directly linked to climate change here.
We are all dead stars:
[youtube:www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUo-Q8hhvB0]
"Every atom in our bodies was fused in an ancient star. NASA astronomer Dr. Michelle Thaller explains how the iron in our blood connects us to one of the most violent acts in the universe—a supernova explosion—and what the universe might look like when all the stars die out."
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/370784/we-are-dead-stars/
Here is the person who was in charge at the EPA during the 2010 BP oil spill that destroyed the Gulf and so many people's lives. She permitted the use of Corexit on the oil spill:
Lisa Perez Jackson (born February 8, 1962) is an American chemical engineer who served as the Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2009 to 2013. In May 2013, it was announced that Jackson would be joining Apple, Inc. as their environmental director, coordinating environmental practices.
Here is her twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/lisapjackson
Her latest post on twitter…
"This is why we do what we do." ??? How ironic is that? I don't really know what to say, but the Gulf residents have plenty to say.
In the second video of this blog post, Shane Smith, the founder and executive producer of Vice Media, said that he wished he had been able to interview Lisa P. Jackson on her decision to use Corexit or to interview the current EPA Secretary to ask why it is still being used since we know it's so toxic and amplifies the damage so much.
Is it really that hard to reach Lisa P. Jackson to ask her these questions???
…In the Restoration Task Force Meetings, we brought up the Corexit and health impacts, and I disrupted one of Lisa Jackson's speeches to do so, and Lisa Jackson worked hard to either shut us down or minimize the health impacts to invisibility. At one point, as my colleague and member of the Committee to Ban Corexit, Les Evenchick reminded me, she stated as a fact that the Gulf has long had environmental issues, as though the BP disaster were just one in a long string of events in the Gulf. This is manipulative psychology, and I was there at the task force meeting in New Orleans where she made this claim, and heard her say it. She isn't the only government official that has used this technique to downplay the BP disaster as though the Gulf was a sewer before BP's "accident". I've heard several lower level federal officials using that verbage as a form of distraction from the very real issues left behind by BP and the Corexit.
Yes, there are enormous problems with fertilizer runoff and dead zones in the Gulf. But the Barataria Bay was one of the most productive in the world before the BP oil disaster, and is now home to dying and diseased dolphins.(14) And this is just a part of the ecological picture on the Gulf coast.
Lisa Jackson succeeded in downplaying the health effects. Read that final report from the task force.(15) Page 43 through 47 deal the with goals of "resiliency" and "education", leaving out health impacts entirely. Consequently, because of this task force report's influence, the health impacts from the oil and Corexit were completely left out of the Restore Act as a result. Instead, we get something about making coastal communities "more resilient". In the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council's report, a glance at their "goals" and "objectives" is revealing. (16) Restoration included? Yes. Economic impacts? Yes. Resiliency Projects and "education"? Yes. Might as well call it "re-education". Get used to the new reality on the Gulf coast: constant exposure to toxicity due to the remaining oil, continued spraying of Corexit according to many local fisher folk, and a badly damaged if not dying Northern Gulf ecosystem (17).
I brought up the fact that LSU has studied bioremediation for decades. Makes sense given that Louisiana produces and refines a healthy portion of all oil and gas produced in the country. Yet no bioremediation attempts are being made to help the dying marshes; I spoke to two professors who have studied the issue extensively, but both are fearful of exposure on this issue. The marshes are in crisis as per LSU Professor Linda Bui's report (18), one of the few professors willing to speak out. Her report chronicles the dying insects, the receding, oiled marshes, whether heavily oiled or less heavily oiled, and increased toxicity and increased presence of two oil compounds, naphthalene and methylnaphthalene, rather than the natural biodegradation process occurring as Federal and state officials hoped for. I consider this situation of increased toxicity in marshes and oil that is not degrading related to the massive use of Corexit that has hurt the ability of the natural microbes to do their job, but I didn't have time to say that during the meeting, given our three minute limit.
There has been at least one scientists who looked at the long term effects of Corexit: the news is not good. (19) Terry Hazen leads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Ecology Department. Hazen says during the well blowout in 1978 off the coast of Normandy, the Amoco Cadiz spill, the recovery of the areas where the Corexit was usedhas been slowed down for decades, and these areas have still not fully recovered. In areas where the Corexit was not used, the areas are "fine now", according to Hazen…
Democracy in Reverse: Predatory Capitalism on the Gulf Coast
…A major expansion of the state's seafood promotion and marketing efforts was to begin when BP finally funded the efforts in December of 2010, to the tune of $48 million. Those promotional efforts continue today even in the face of oiled wetlands that aren't recovering, and massive amounts of tar balls littering Louisiana shores.
A resolution to ban dispersant use in state waters, SB97, unless the dispersants were "practically nontoxic", was introduced before the Louisiana legislature in June of 2011. Robert Sullivan, a native of Cameron Parish and resident of New Orleans had lobbied for the resolution and was at the state capital on the day it was voted down, with just 19 people voting for the measure. Clearly, Jindal and the legislature were not behind this resolution.
"I immediately left the senate chambers after the vote, and went downstairs to the lobby," said Robert Sullivan in an interview recently. "There were numerous people in suits, male and female, high-fiving each other. It was shameful."
In April of 2013, a bill that would have made the use of toxic dispersants as a last resort in the event of an oil spill didn't make it out of a Louisiana senate environmental panel.
Corexit remains a primary choice of the oil industry's arsenal to combat oil spills…
http://www.ecoworldview.org/?p=159
This is an excellent site. The author does not post very often, but her essays are well written and informative.
"I wanted to welcome you to what will hopefully be a site that folks from around the world can cull and utilize for alternative views on the world ecological crisis, issues concerning the working class in relation to this, and a view of the ruling class of this world. Hegemony capitalism in my view is destroying the world's ecosystems, and rendering the working class to a form of wage slavery with a declining natural environment that threatens all life on the planet…"
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I'll be doing a follow-up post on Lisa Jackson.
It is so sad to see how beautifully we could have lived, had agriculture and industry……empire culture…..not destroyed our planet.
Peruse this site and watch the videos of the Awa tribe.
http://www.survivalinternational.org/awa
J_ST K_DD_NG
The help that a vowel purchase buys
Adds hope that on one of these tries
There'll be some kind of prize
Before our demise—
Please give me a "u" and two "i's."
Why we have CT's…there is something very, very rotten in the official story…http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/opinion/the-bush-white-house-was-deaf-to-9-11-warnings.html?_r=2&hp&
The LIHOP Scenario is much more believable, as I stated before.
The point is that the LIES give rise to conspiracy theories. For instance, the lack of transparency about Fukushima encourages people to think radiation is an even worse threat than it actually is…and the suppression of research about ordinary pollution and how it is killing trees lends credence to the crazy chemtrail theories.
People disenfranchised by the political system and dumbed down by the corporate-controlled MSM are essentially forced to subscribe to CT's in order to make sense of the world.
Pat Sajak will say:
H_LY SH_T
Soon nobody can deny
That everything's going to fry,
Resulting thereby
In no food supply—
Please give me an "O" and an "I."
CLIMATE DENIER FLAKES
They're Grrrrreat! (not)
Breakfast Cereals to Get More Expensive, Thanks to Climate Change
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/breakfast-cereals-to-get-more-expensive-thanks-to-climate-change/371281/
And less nutritious:
I'm sure the food is probably less nutritious, but that report seems like a PR piece (for big Ag & GMO) to me.
"…according to the report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs."
Here are their board members.
http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/files/AboutUs/Board_of_Directors/files/About_Us/Board_of_Directors.aspx?hkey=0a1d2ba6-9801-47fe-a57a-392b31d567d4
Not exactly "humanitarians" in my book
No, it is good information.
This was reported earlier in the month from research that appeared in the periodical Nature:
Climate change making food crops less nutritious, research finds
High CO2 levels significantly reduces essential nutrients in wheat, rice, maize and soyabeans, Nature paper reveals
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-change-food-crops-nutrition
http://www.earth-policy.org/books/eco/eech3_ss5
I was/am just frustrated because I see the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the International Rice Research Institute as Disaster Capitalists. I should not be surprised; playing both ends from the middle makes good business sense. I am not up to speed on GMO's, so maybe they might help some people. Anyone?
http://irri.org/news/hot-topics/genetically-modified-gm-rice
This man follows the GMO assault assiduously:
https://attempter.wordpress.com/2014/05/17/make-it-up-on-propaganda-volume-the-golden-rice-hoax-marches-on/
Thanks Lidia
Ann Coulter says "The worst thing and I think the most offensive is that 'global warming deniers,' comes from people who are 'Holocaust deniers.'"
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/22/ann_coulter_jumps_to_the_defense_of_pat_sajak_climate_deniers/
TH_ H_RR_R
Collapse will surely expose
Every hatred the human heart knows
As cruelty grows
Unrestrained. So it goes—
Please give me two "E's" and four "O's."
Another Domino Wobbling
Thailand militarisation is symptom of accelerating global system failure
Crippling fossil fuel dependency, climate volatility, rocketing debt levels are propelling protests, radicalising the state
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/may/23/thailand-military-coup-system-failure-peak-oil-climate-food-debt-bomb-prayuth-chan-och
And capitalism perpetuates all of this. My next post is on this subject.
GaiaWillPrevail said:
Tweet from Greg Palast regarding the BP oil spill…
ariannelot said:
Reblogged this on The Crimes Of Premeditated Genocides.
Pingback: No Dice — Too Little, Too Late. | Collapse of Industrial Civilization


text:
Q: how to grant user privilege on specific schema? The situation is I have two schemas: A and B. I have a restricted user that I need to give a privilege do SELECT queries in B schema and just it. How can I grant this user?

A: You may find you do not have access to dba_tables,
The following block of code run in the owning schema (a) will grant permissions to all tables, to the user b
BEGIN
    FOR t IN (SELECT * FROM user_tables)
    LOOP
        EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'GRANT SELECT ON ' || t.table_name || ' TO b';
    END LOOP;
END;

A: You can't.
The best you can do is grant user a 'select' privilege each table in schema b.
this query will generate the commands you'll need:
select 'grant select on A.'||table_name||' to B;'
from dba_Tables
where owner = 'A';

The problem with this, is in the case you will want to add new table to A. then you'll have to grant the privilege on it separately. it will not do it automatically..

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
KMUTT
KMUTT Working with Biotechnology Industry The main campus of King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) is located in an industrial area on the Thonburi side of Bangkok. The university has a history of working clo
Working with Biotechnology Industry
The main campus of King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) is located in an industrial area on the Thonburi side of Bangkok. The university has a history of working closely with industrial partners since first being established 50 years ago. In addition to collaborative research, major companies such as Castrol and Mercedes Benz chose to locate their training facilities on campus. KMUTT is also active in Practice School programs, using industrial partners for on-site education.
More recently, there is an increasing trend for this collaboration to feature the life sciences. KMUTT made the breakthrough for the commercial production of Spirulina in Thailand, in addition to a long history of assisting the food industry in waste treatment and recovery. This led to the establishment of a new campus at Bangkhuntien, which in turn led to higher interest from major research institutes and eventually the establishment...
More recently, there is an increasing trend for this collaboration to feature the life sciences. KMUTT made the breakthrough for the commercial production of Spirulina in Thailand, in addition to a long history of assisting the food industry in waste treatment and recovery. This led to the establishment of a new campus at Bangkhuntien, which in turn led to higher interest from major research institutes and eventually the establishment of an Industrial Park. KMUTT is the only university in Thailand to invest in an industrial park, providing incubator units, facilities, and research and training support.
The Bangkhuntien campus sits on a piece of reclaimed land on the very outskirts of Bangkok. Already a number of important bioscience centers have been established, including the Biochemical Engineering and Pilot Plant Research and Development Unit, as well as an Excellent Center for Waste Utilization and Management (ECoWaste). The Industrial Park provides excellent facilities for bioentrepreneurs including pilot plant fermentation in addition to testing and analysis services. To date, the focus has been on microbial bioprocess development and algal biotechnology. The National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC) is a major partner in many of these activities. Bangkhuntien is also home to KMUTT's School of Bioresources and Technology. The combination of scientists and engineers helps to provide ideal solutions for private sector partners, while developing pilot plants reduces the risk and high investment normally required for establishing a bio-business.
The KMUTT Industrial Park welcomes inquiries from foreign investors who are considering establishing a bio-business or joint venture in Thailand and are looking for support through facilities and research. KMUTT sees the future focus as being biopharmaceutical science and engineering and is actively seeking international collaboration in this area.
KMUTT has watched with keen interest as more universities in the United States and other countries invest in cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice) facilities. These facilities not only provide for education and research, but help save industry-significant investment and testing costs, while at the same time providing an important source of revenue for the university. The benefits for education are significant as cGMP provides hands-on facilities for students who will help to fill the increasing manpower needs of the biopharmaceutical industry.
Thus, in partnership with BIOTEC, KMUTT has decided to invest in a cGMP plant to service the needs of the biopharmaceutical industry in SE Asia. When completed in 2010, it will be the only university-based facility of its kind in the country. The plant will provide for scale-up study and production of recombinant proteins for clinical trials (phases I and II), as well as for training manpower. Students will have the unique opportunity of working with a large-scale manufacturing facility, from design to operation and management. Because of the considerable investment costs involved, the university can provide services that can be shared by industry at a fraction of the costs they would need to invest themselves or to make use of private contract facilities. For a country such as Thailand, government support to the fledgling bio-industry is crucial considering the high cost of investment required for a bio-business start up. Appropriately, the Biopharmaceutical cGMP plant will be located in the KMUTT Industrial Park on the Bangkhuntien campus, where best use can be made of KMUTT's strong industry linkages. Companies interested in advanced biotechnology and products can avail themselves of services via collaborative research and development, contract R&D, process optimization, and contract manufacturing according to the client's needs. The plant will ensure that international standards for good manufacturing practice and safety are met.
KMUTT's cGMP Bioprocess Pilot Plant will be composed of two suites, each dedicated for microbial and cell culture fermentation systems up to 500L and 100L bioreactors, respectively. Both are supported by separation and purification processes and the plant has been designed to comply with international standards. KMUTT is already collaborating with other biopharmaceutical research groups within the country, such as the Government Pharmaceutical Organization, which will lead to the formation of multidisciplinary teams making use of the facility.
For more information on Biopharmaceutical cGMP Pilot Plant, contact the Biochemical Engineering and Pilot Plant Research and Development Unit at KMUTT at bec_info@pdti.kmutt.ac.th.
83 Moo 8 Thakham | Bangkuntien, Bangkok 10150, Thailand
T: +66 (0) 2470 7400 | F: +66 (0) 2452 3455
technical_service@pdti.kmutt.ac.th | www2.ipc.kmutt.ac.th
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Očitý svědek (v americkém originále Eyewitness) je americký filmový thriller z roku 1981. Režisérem filmu je Peter Yates. Hlavní role ve filmu ztvárnili William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Plummer, James Woods a Steven Hill.

Obsazení

Reakce
 aktuální k 23. září 2014

Film získal mezi diváky na největších filmových databázích spíše průměrné hodnocení.

 csfd.cz:
 imdb.com:
 fdb.cz:

Externí odkazy

Očitý svědek
Očitý svědek
Filmy studia 20th Century Fox
Filmy o novinářích
Filmy odehrávající se v New Yorku
Filmy Petera Yatese

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Please bring ID with signature or photo and birthdate. You can donate if you are between 17 and 75 years old and in general good health. 16 year olds can donate with parental consent form and those 76 and over can donate with doctor's note. Bring your donor card if you have one.


Ohio State has spent most of this season right in the middle of the Big Ten pecking order. It was their strong 12-1 start, which included a huge season opening victory over Cincinnati, that the Buckeyes rode to the NCAA Tournament.
Coach Chris Holtmann's team often plays good enough defense to at least keep them in the game. The opposition shoots 41.7 percent from the floor, which ranks 65th in the nation and sixth in the Big Ten. Kaleb and Andre Wesson are asked to do much of the scoring. Kaleb, a 6-9 sophomore, leads the Buckeyes with 14.4 points and 6.8 rebounds. Andre adds 8.8 points and 4.0 rebounds. Both Wesson's are capable shooters and that adds another, and much needed, dynamic to often anemic offense.
This is not a Buckeyes team that is going to score a lot of points. Ending up in the 50's or 60's is common for this team. Sometimes that is enough, but usually that is not the case. C.J. Jackson is the leader of the backcourt, but he has not been scoring much at all lately and the case is the same with Luther Muhammad. Justin Ahrens has been able to pick up the slack on occasion, but Ohio State needs their backcourt to score or this group will struggle offensively and have an early exit.


text:
Q: Bootstrap columns cause horizontal scrollbar At the "My Work" section of this website:
Website
something is causing it to be too wide.
When you hover over a project (or trigger the :hover state on the
 and look at the project icons (eye, github and images) the last project's "images" is what causing it I think.
However, I do not know why this is. Should I just remove the padding from these buttons? I feel like that's kind of not what you're supposed to be doing. (If the padding is even what's causing it to happen).
Relevant code:

A: A dirty little trick worked for me. You could add another 12 column grid before .row :

A: If you do not want to use container because of margin which it creates, then you can use container-fluid.

...

A: Horizontal scrollbars are usually caused by using the Bootstrap grid incorrectly.
The solution proposed by Ben Goossens is a hack and should be avoided because it makes the use of Bootstrap pointless. Use Bootstrap as intended and you won't need any hacks or custom css gymnastics.
Here's what you need:
1) .container div
2) .row div
3) .col div
That's the "holy trinity" you need in order for the Bootstrap grid to work properly.
Always put all of your normal content into Bootstrap columns (which in turn go into a row, which goes into a container) and you won't have any horizontal scrollbar issues.
The Bootstrap rows are designed to work with columns together. If you leave one of those 2 out, you're gonna run into issues.

A: change this:
.row {
    margin-right: -15px;
    margin-left: -15px;
}

to:
.row {
    margin-right: 0px;
    margin-left: 0px;
}

A: You can fix this by applying these. It would work
.col-12{
    padding-right: 0!important;
    padding-left: 0!important;
}
.row{
    margin-right: 0px;
    margin-left: 0px;
}

A: Apply m-auto (margin auto) to the row.
Without m-auto
auto:

.row {
  overflow-x: auto;
}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-Vkoo8x4CGsO3+Hhxv8T/Q5PaXtkKtu6ug5TOeNV6gBiFeWPGFN9MuhOf23Q9Ifjh" crossorigin="anonymous"> Without margin auto:

    Column 1

    Column 2

With m-auto
auto:

.row {
  overflow-x: auto;
}
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-Vkoo8x4CGsO3+Hhxv8T/Q5PaXtkKtu6ug5TOeNV6gBiFeWPGFN9MuhOf23Q9Ifjh" crossorigin="anonymous"> Without margin auto:

    Column 1

    Column 2


text:
NAZI SURPRISE
Google maps users stunned after 'Nazi' house is spotted on runway at major Berlin airport
Adrian Zorzut
GOOGLE maps users have been left stunned after spotting a "Nazi" house in the middle of a runway at a major Berlin airport.
One Reddit user posted a picture of the house - which looks like an army barracks - on the popular social chat site, sparking a host of theories behind what the mystery building could be.
Web sleuths believe the mystery building may have been used by the LuftwaffeCredit: Reddit
Schönefeld airport is one of two international airports in BerlinCredit: Alamy
The post - which has clocked over 100 responses - has included claims that the building at Schönefeld airport was formerly a police station or was used by the Luftwaffe.
One user wrote: "Could be an old administration/barracks building from WW2 for the Luftwaffe… I saw a similarly designed building on the airfield at Flugplatz Katterbach/Ansbach now repurposed for administration and a Kantine."
Another claimed it was the "Generals' Hotel" that was apparently built between 1947 and 1950 to house and greet state guests when East Germany was a communist state.
A former airport employee wrote: "I used to work in Berlin Schönefeld from 2018 till 2020 and I remember I asked once, and someone told me it was used as a police station, indeed I remember to see some police vehicles around, and parked there."
One person added: "Really fascinating. It's not labelled at all on any of the new Brandenberg airport maps (that absorbed Shonefeld).
"All I can find is that this whole area of the old concourse area is now marked as 'Government use'.
"Most likely an old building that wasn't required to be demolished when Berlin Schönefeld expanded, might have been used at some point, is still in reasonably good shape, no reason (or budget) to tear it down.
"Its weird situation smack in the middle of the old airport makes me think that this was a country estate manor way back when and the land was appropriated for the airport in the 30s."
No one has confirmed what was building is used for though aerial shots suggest there are no police cars outside.
The Luftwaffe was Hitler's secret weapon during WWIICredit: Getty - Contributor
Google Maps user finds the eery remnants of a brutal World War II battle on a remote Alaskan island
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text:
Nicole Rancourt chosen to be NDP candidate for P.A. Northcote
Nicole Rancourt – a social worker, parent and tireless volunteer in her community – was welcomed to the NDP team of candidates Thursday as the nominee for Prince Albert Northcote.
Rancourt, a Prince Albert resident, works in Mental Health and Addictions Services in the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region. She's also incredibly active in serving Prince Albert as a member of the Saskatchewan Association of Social Workers and her local association of social workers. She is also the chair of the Citizens' Advisory Committee for the Saskatchewan Penitentiary and Prince Albert Parole. She is the regional representative for the Prairie Region Mental Health Council, and is active with the Prince Albert Council of Women and the Health Sciences Association of Saskatchewan.
"Nicole is an incredible addition to the NDP team of candidates," said NDP Leader Cam Broten. "Her dedication to the families of Prince Albert is deep, and she brings with her to this campaign both common sense and compassion. Not only am I looking forward to campaigning with Nicole, but I'm looking forward to having her join our team of MLAs in the legislature, giving Prince Albert the dedicated representation it hasn't had over the last few years."
Broten, who was at the nomination meeting in Prince Albert on Thursday evening, said the campaign in Prince Albert Northcote will be focused on the things that really matter to families.
"Victoria hospital is backlogged, and the wait times for everything in health care from doctors in the emergency room to specialists are absolutely too long," said Broten. "We also know Prince Albert needs infrastructure, including a second bridge, to ensure the city and the economy can grow into its full potential."
Broten said the cost of living is an issue affecting nearly all families, but the government just isn't getting the day-to-day realities for regular people.
"The cost of living is wiping out the gains made by most families, and it's so hard to get ahead," said Broten. "This government keeps asking families to pay extra – for everything from higher power bills to paying to supplement loved ones' home care or seniors care. It's good when we see strong statistics like GDP numbers – but it can't just be about the province doing well. For me, it's also about people doing well."
Rancourt has a teen-aged son and a daughter, and a teen-aged step-son and step-daughter. She's a strong supporter of local arts and sports, and with her partner she's a season ticket holder for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.