Monday, September 28, 2009

George points out that rich cunts are far more of a threat to the climate than fecund peasants in developing countries

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My comment on George's insightful awesomeness:

George is bang on the money. Rich oiks are by far a greater threat to sustainability and climate change than fecund peasants in developing countries. Unfortunately, they have a far higher PR budget and own all of the mainstream media outlets apart from the BBC, which is under constant assault from them, their multitude of proxies and the retarded minority who believe their lies. I can point to the Spectator's recent cover story endorsing the climate change denialist Ian Plimer or Channel 4's airing of the Great Global Warming Swindle or the propaganda war funded by the petrochemical companies.
My pointing this out will make not a blind bit of difference, however, because democracy the world over is victim to their lies. Democracy only works when people vote rationally and hold their elected representatives to account for their actions. That hasn't happened in the UK in my lifetime and I don't see that changing in the near future. Gideon's paradox will make sure of that.
"however massive the dangers posed by climate change, their lack of immediate visibility in daily life means many people will do nothing concrete to tackle it; by the time they are prompted to action it will, by definition, be too late."

I freely admit that I am one of those people who freaks out about overpopulation. As I wrote, I think George is bang on. However, I don't think that we should ignore population growth because all those peasants firing out a dozen children and playing no role in the production of climate change gases are still being denied the same opportunities as the rest of us, which is monstrous. These people deserve the same standard of living and education as us and by the time they get it the climate may well be royally fucked even though they all end up voting Green (the obvious choice for educated, rational people) because of the massive inertia of the climate system. So you can't blame just the rich. If you spread their wealth and opportunities across all of the developing world the emissions would still be just as high. Both problems need addressing, yeah? Otherwise we're just replacing an unjust, self-destructive system with a just, equally self destructive one.

George rules .


Addition 29-09-09:

Please also read what this guy wrote elegantly criticising George's argument. Nice.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

"If truth could be told, the true axis-of-evil is the United States and Israel."

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Don't forget that "Great" Britain is also a founding member of the Axis, Paul. Paul is awesome.

Via MJ's comment on Craig Murray's post.

Friday, September 25, 2009

rapid population growth undermines development efforts

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"the priority given to population issues has diminished compared with concerns about development. If population growth continues unabated, we fear the problems of development will be "solved" by rises in death rates. For this reason, efforts to slow population growth should be treated as a human rights issue."

Word.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

something for the weekend

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Following up on her previous awesomeness, Kat is upping her game to even more dizzying heights of ultrapure, honey-sweet, soulful wickedness with this little solo number:




And here's yet another awesome piece of her work.


I'm going to see Kat play at Sandsifter tomorrow with local boys Albenaza and London ska-hop outfit Imperial Leisure. The sun will be shining and its gonna be three foot and clean at Gwithian. So that's good music, tick; good company; tick; good weather; tick; good surf; check! Its gonna be so rad.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Trafigura and corporate killing

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So Trafigura are guilty as hell of dumping potentially lethal waste in a developing country (see this Guardian article and the attached communications file). Wikileaks also has a copy of a report from an environmental consultancy laying out in detail exactly what was hazardous in the slops landed from the MT Probo Koala and how it might effect anyone exposed to them. The predicted effects exactly match the symptoms reported in the press. This is merely a formalised laying-out of what the Trafigura execs already knew- that their waste was highly toxic- as is clear from their leaked communications.

Unfortunately, whilst the Trafigura executives responsible for this outrage can be prosecuted for infringing a number of minor treaties dealing with the transport of hazardous waste, there exists no appropriate corporate killing legislation under which they can be held accountable for the dozen or so deaths associated with this incident. This is clearly wrong and needs to be addressed. Corporate executives whose actions cost lives are as culpable as drunk drivers or incompetent surgeons. Whilst Trafigura offer a few million pounds to the victims of this incident they stood to make £7 million from each shipment of coker gasoline they cleaned up. The £30 million pound compensation plot is probably going to come from the company's coffers and not from the pockets of the men responsible. Any capacity to prosecute people like this should be extraterritorial so that EU citizens can't get away with dumping waste in the developing world in order to make a fast buck.

Friday, September 18, 2009

why not having children is awesome

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Thank you Julian Baggini. You rule.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

civic illiteracy, antiscience and anti-intellectualism

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This is a great article from ZNet. As with many criticisms of US culture you can apply much of it to the UK as well. The premise of the article is an articulation of something I have been trying to verbalise for some time. As usual I am too lazy and too imprecise in my language to write anything so concise and linear as the arguments in Giroux's article and so I will simply point to his work and say "what that guy said!" Essentially I feel that democracy is meaningless in any society as dumbed-down as the one we inhabit. Evidence based decision making is merely a dream of people like me. Science is regularly exploited for political or commercial purposes or is simply wilfully misrepresented with little opportunity for recourse and even less understanding of the importance of such recourse to the health of society. Research goals are being similarly subverted. The education system seems to be on a permanent slide to nowhere and the goal of producing well-rounded personalities seems to have been replaced with one of producing well-disciplined automata.

Don't get me wrong, this is very much a "this country's going to the dogs" kind of rant. I'd like to think though that there's a lot more evidence to support my argument, thanks to the likes of Giroux, than there is to support rants on the same topic by oiks like Richard Littlejohn or Melanie Phillips- who tend to blame the imigruntz and the ecoterrorists as opposed to their own industry, the government and the marketing and PR campaigns of big corporations. They, of course, are terrified of democracy because it clearly doesn't agree with them (yet!) and therefore they, like the "anti-democratic forces" Giroux refers to, have a vested interest in perpetuating and extending social illiteracy and the dumbing down of society so as to subvert democracy.


'The death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination by ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment'.

"The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens"

--Robert Maynard Hutchins


" . . . from this fractured society come the feral, illiterate, innumerate children of those broken homes, who have seen what society served their parents and are now so filled with hatred and confusion and incomprehensible rage, that they wander the streets in gangs looking for something to fuck or fight . . . "
- errorgorilla

“Ignorance is like cholera, it cannot be controlled by the individual alone: it requires the organised efforts of society.”

-- Sir Muir Gray


“ The affair seemed symptomatic of the dumbing-down of public life in this country and the collapse of education, which has turned large swathes of the populace into pap-brained, illiterate TV-addicted hysterics.”

Bruce Anderson

The Independent


"It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice."

- George Orwell, 1984

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

lies, damned lies and The Spectator

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Flying Rodent. What a guy.

I can't begin to summarise the post. Just read it. And laugh like a pissed hyena who knows that an incurable virus will render life on earth a savage, post-apocalyptic struggle for survival in three weeks but happens to have a conveniently booked appointment at the Dignitas clinic in two.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Plymsoul

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This is some fierce local talent in the shape of Kat Marsh:



Kat is awesome.

Friday, September 11, 2009

some of the Green Party Manifesto for A Sustainable Society was drawn up by antiscientific wankers

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From The Daily (Maybe) and Camden Kiwi. I refer to article ST252 of the MFSS:



A pledge to "respect the earth and life upon it"?? Are they fucking serious? Which shower of stupid cunts came up with that antiscientific wankery? And why do they pick on scientists and technologists? Why not businessmen? Why not politicians? Are the worlds' environmental problems solely the responsibility of scientists?

I could go on with the angry rhetoric but I think I've made the point. Whoever wrote that needs to be beaten about the head with hemp sandals and then throttled with a hair shirt.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

it always amuses me how "thesis" sounds so similar to "faeces"

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Here it is, kids. The whole chibang:

Hadley Freeman is super-awesome

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Rather predictably, I hate the idea of "fashion" and the elitist, mega-consumerism it incites. However, whilst being aware that the industry has a sleazy underbelly of exploitation I was not aware that it was quite as dark as Hadley reveals it to be. Her juxtaposition of this story and that of the slightly chubby model pictured on page xxxxx of some glossy, narcisisstic piece of pseudo-journalism reveals much about the mainstream media's prediliction for gossip over issues of social import. That the fashion industry itself has utterly failed to condemn Anand Jon Alexander's sexual predation is similar revealing of its inherent sociopathy.

I am quite pretentious. Yes.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Andrew Brown is a climate change denying fucktard

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Word.

My reply to his idiocy:

"if catastrophic global warming is to be averted people need to act now to avert terrible things which will otherwise happen after their deaths"

This is absolute rubbish. Terrible things have been happening as a result of climate change for decades. 95% of the coral in the Caribbean was killed off in the El Nino of 1998! Only an ignoramus could pen such a sentence.

You can go as far back into history as you like to find examples of humanities idiocy when it comes to abusing the ecosystems they inhabit. The Dust Bowls of Canada and the USA in the '30s are a perfect example.

If people like Andrew Brown continue to be allowed platforms from which to broadcast such absurd statements then the climate change debate is going to continue to be dominated by ignorance and bigotry as people struggle to ascertain the facts in the face of mass media propaganda. The first war in the battle to save our civilisation is being fought in the media. I truly hope George Monbiot serves Brown a deservedly fact-laden kicking in return.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

drugs prohibition is fucking stupid

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This is a favourite topic of mine. Simon "awesome" Jenkins repeats a few of the same old arguments.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

these people are scum

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Doctors and psychologists actively participated in CIA waterboarding sessions, monitoring the torture victims' health and physiology and taking notes that could be used to improve the technique. These people have broken the hippocratic oath and should be barred from practising. They should then be prosecuted under the Nuremberg Code and Geneva Conventions for war crimes. As should the UK and US cabinets responsible for the supreme crime of initiating wars of aggression.