Tags
Capitalism, Century Mine, Climate Change, Coal Mining, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Corporate-Controlled Media, Corporatocracy, Environmental Collapse, Financial Elite, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mitt Romney, Murray Energy Company, Privatization, Regulatory Capture, Rob Moore, The Fourth Estate, The Revolving Door Between Government and Corporations, Wall Street Fraud
This post features a couple of stories highlighting the total inner rot behind the facade of a free press, completely driven by the profit motives of corporations, and this country’s so-called democratic system with its fictitious “free work force”.
14 Year Ex-MSM ‘Journalist’: “None of it is Real.”
The financial elite and Washington have become a single entity, with the rotating door between lobbyists, industry, and positions of government operating more like an eight-lane autobahn highway. Under the stampede of corporations buying off the instruments of government, the news media or fourth estate has been completely flattened into the grease-palmed asphalt of that profiteering highway. Once in a while a flicker of ethical consciousness propels a few souls to climb out of the corrupt cesspool. A case in point is Andrea Seabrook, a 14-year mainstream media journalist who states, “None of it is Real.”
After 14 years at National Public Radio, Andrea Seabrook left in July and, to hear her talk about her experience covering Capitol Hill, it’s clear that she had one takeaway: It’s damn frustrating. “I realized that there is a part of covering Congress, if you’re doing daily coverage, that is actually sort of colluding with the politicians themselves because so much of what I was doing was actually recording and playing what they say or repeating what they say,” Seabrook told POLITICO. “And I feel like the real story of Congress right now is very much removed from any of that, from the sort of theater of the policy debate in Congress, and it has become such a complete theater that none of it is real. … I feel like I am, as a reporter in the Capitol, lied to every day, all day. There is so little genuine discussion going on with the reporters. … To me, as a reporter, everything is spin.
We’re still light years behind the eight ball of actually doing anything radical enough to save ourselves, but it is reaffirming to hear straight from the horse’s mouth that the system is total B.S..
Climate Change Denier makes it Mandatory his Minions of Coal Miners Attend a Romney Rally.
Earlier this month, Mitt Romney was welcomed for a campaign event at the Century Mine in Beallsville, Ohio, by hundreds of coal workers and their families. Now many of the mine’s workers are saying they were forced to give up a day’s worth of pay to attend the event, and they feared they might be fired if they didn’t, according to local news radio WWVA.
The claims have been mostly denied by Rob Moore, Chief Financial Officer of Murray Energy Company, which owns the mine. He acknowledges that workers weren’t paid that day but says no one was made to attend the event. Well, kind of.
The claims have been mostly denied by Rob Moore, Chief Financial Officer of Murray Energy Company, which owns the mine. He acknowledges that workers weren’t paid that day but says no one was made to attend the event. Well, kind of.
“Our managers communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend,” he told local news radio WWVA, which has received several emails from workers claiming that the company records names of workers that don’t attend those types of events…
Murray, who is also a climate-change denier, has been an outspoken critic of President Obama’s stance on coal. That view may be why Moore told WWVA that having employees attend the Romney event “was in the best interest of anyone that’s related to the coal industry in this area or the entire country…
Better you not think about the civilization-ending reality of climate change because your job depends on this CO2-polluting substance. That’s got to be the epitome of short-term thinking – today grab a dollar that results in you and your children’s death tomorrow. Nobody ever said this living arrangement was sensible.
Collapse of Industrial Civilization 
From long and painful experience, I have learned that the scenario of a “revolving door” of banks, Federal Reserve, elected officialdom, media and lobbying jobs pertains exactly to a lesser known “revolving door” of foresters in the Interior Dept., the USDA, academia, timber companies, energy companies, pollution clean-up consultants, media, and the EPA.
They are inseparable (the seamless juggernaut), and it explains why no one will talk about the collapsing ecosystem…they are all profiting from it.
In the book, “An Appalachian Tragedy” about how air pollution is destroying forests, one of the contributing authors wrote that he asked a timber executive why they aren’t more concerned about dying trees when that is the basis of their products. The executive answered that actually, his income was dependent upon the value of the company stock, so any information about the long-term degradation of the source of their products would make him poorer.
So when I wonder why no one notices that the ecosystem is collapsing in technicolor all around us and no one even comments on it, I try to remember that.
Short term gain at the expense of long term sustainability…the story of homo sapiens sapiens.
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You nailed it. Capitalism is not sustainable. We have no children or grandchildren. There is no real regulation. The entire system is corrupted by the profit motive, and that is what capitalism does — commodify everything and exploit it until exhaustion where the final $value$ reaches zero. And then move on to the next planet?
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I’m sorry, I will have to steal this cartoon…
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Arithmetic, Population and Energy – a talk by Al Bartlett
http://albartlett.org/index.html
Please add the links above to your website.
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From the state of California’s website “Climate Change: Just the Facts.”
The scientific community has reached a strong consensus that global temperatures are rising rapidly as a direct result of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from human-made sources.
The world’s leading scientific body focused on climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. The IPCC, made up of hundreds of scientists with relevant expertise from throughout the world, evaluates the state of peer-reviewed1 and published climate research every few years. The IPCC first expressed the scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused by humans in 2001. The group of international experts came to the same conclusion in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, stating that all available evidence pointed to a more than 90% probability that human activities are warming the planet.2 To view more information about how climate change has changed over time, and to “plot” your own times series graph using data from 1895 through 2012, please visit the NOAA Plot Time Series Website maintained by the National Climatic Data Center’s Climate Services and Monitoring Division.
Every major scientific organization in the United States with relevant expertise has confirmed the IPCC’s conclusion, including the National Academy of Sciences,3 the American Meteorological Society,4 the American Geophysical Union,5 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.6 The list of international scientific organizations affirming the worldwide consensus on climate change is even longer (see List of Organizations). Several studies have shown that about 97% of climate scientists actively doing research agree that climate change is happening and is human-caused.7,8
Does this mean that no scientific questions remain about climate change? Of course not. Scientists continue their efforts to better understand the many complex issues associated with climate change, including the rate of warming in the future, the specific climate impacts local areas will face, and the future rate of ice melt and sea level rise. The basic, fundamental facts that climate change is occurring and its central cause is human-made emissions are no longer subject to meaningful scientific debate: climate change is real, it’s caused by human activities, we are already seeing the effects, and our current path has put us on course for dire results in the not-too-distant future.
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More recent interview – 2012
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I put Professor Bartlett under ‘Movies and Films’
Have you seen this one?
Also a sobering talk with Mother Nature here: ‘This is What a Desolated Earth Looks Like’
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Thanks for the video and the link. A good presentation from Guy McPherson below. Would you say your pessimistic or optimistic? I would say I am part both, I feel that things won’t change until we go through some tough times and then on the other side some better way of life would emerge (like some past civilizations when collapsed returned to tribalism – NA Indians) but then if a collapse of some kind is not soon then global warming will make that difficult. Have we already destroyed the environment too much or used too many resources for that to happen? Even with population decline. Too many variables to be optimistic maybe?
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I’ll take a look at Guy McPherson’s talk when I get some time. I always find him interesting. To quote Guy:
My humility has overcome the hubris that characterizes so much of our species. I see the writing on the wall, but for the vast majority, the belief that mankind cannot be undone still rules the day. Even people close to me scoff at the idea that all could be gone within our lifetime. They think I’m crazy. I think I’m being realistic and humble because the evidence around me is overwhelming. They tell me to stop reading about such things because it’s unhealthy. Who has really lost their mind?
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Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/quote-of-the-month/krishnamurti-measure-of-health
Nature gave us no rules regarding what we think, hence we think what we like without limits but when we start acting differently from the rest of nature, I think then you can say a person or society is not doing what is right. If you sit and watch nature you will see. Nature gives us an example to follow, she does not discriminate, she takes no more then she needs, with animals that are social then things are done for the good of the group etc. I first read about this reading stoicism, here are some of Marcus Aurelius meditations http://www.malaspina.org/marcus.htm.
When you look at tribes they move a lot to not use all the resources in one area and let it regrow, they do not discriminate, yes man and women have different jobs but it is only due to physical attributes and it is not frowned upon if a women hunts etc. Whatever is best for the group. Not saying it is perfect but they have lasted many more years then any civilization has.
Now when it comes to us humans we have the ability to think rationally yet few people do, its in our nature to think rationally but many people do not know how to think logically hence their rationale is hindered by this. The stoics taught their students how to think logically. I now this is very stoic orientated, I will get to my point now. http://newstoa.com/newstoa_books.php?s=1
You use your rational mind as nature intended to look at facts etc. Where as the people you know, with regarding to talking about collapse, are not thinking rationally but using the animal in them to make decisions. Dr Steve Peters in his book the chimp paradox put is simply, you have a human side(rational) and the chimp side(emotional) . If a person allows the chimp to rule they will act on what they only see presently in front of them(everything appears fine at the moment) and on what the chimp wants which is security and other basic needs. You see this type of person around a lot, those who only work then go and chase many type of pleasures constantly. That is their life. Now you friends/family are probably using there chimp side more and hence the idea of collapse threatens there basic animal (chimp)need of security etc. so it is easier to satisfy the chimps needs by looking at the present and seeing everything is fine so they can deny facts and feel satisfied.
But nature intended us to think rationally. Maybe so we could live longer then other species was the original plan(if nature(god) has plans) but giving an animal more intelligence might not have worked out. For what ever reason we have the ability to be rational, we were meant to use this ability like other animals use their abilities. If we do not then as above we digress from what nature does and have problems.
Now there are set ways to think, but the ones close to you are not using this ability correctly or letting the chimp side rule, no one has lost their mind, if anything there has been a failure of education or loss of control of the chimp side but the constant bombardment of advertising and the fact because the majority think its fine to just have a life of chasing pleasure only re-enforces the beliefs of the chimp.
Sorry I might of digressed in parts and my point may not be too clear. Basically the rational ability is a human ability and nature intended use to use this ability (to control the chimp maybe) if we fail to use it correctly we go against nature and have problems. Now like anything we can become addicted to anything so we should be careful not to do too much of anything like read about collapse. As the Greeks said “Everything in moderation”. You have not lost your mind just your thinking more rationally then they are so it appears to them you have because your different to the group.
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Regarding the life of pleasure bit. Now there is nothing wrong with having pleasures(nice food, drinking, watching tv, sex etc) but a person should be careful not over indulge or problems arise. “Everything in moderation”.
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Now there are no set ways to think* Sorry for the other errors.
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Do you know anything about nuclear power plant shut down? What would happen if collapse led to no one able to look after the nuclear facilities? The images the book “The Road” conjure up seem appropriate or the film “akira kurosawa- Dreams” nuclear scene.
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And then there’s the little problem that might result when the grid goes down for whatever reason and the rods cannot be cooled…and the fact that so many are located near the coasts, where sea level will rise and inundate them…
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Japanese society is perhaps more corrupt than America’s, if you can believe it. The New York Times did a series of articles uncovering the “culture of collusion” in Japan that lead directly to the disaster of Fukushima, a truly man-made event. From one of the NYT articles:
And from another NYT article, the regulators are the same people promoting the industry:
Additionally, the Japanese leveled the hill upon which Fukushima was built just so it would have easier access to ocean waters. Then they put the fucking back-up generators in a basement:
I could go on, but I won’t. For your enjoyment, just read the following essay:
Fukushima Daiichi Syndrome
There are too many reasons why nuclear should be done away with.
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