We must continue working to promote the building of a human community with a shared future.
— President Xi Jinping
Oh, another quick blog, as the cascading disgusting news of the minute comes at me while I am volunteering at the welcome center in Waldport, meeting people from Oregon, around the region, other places even farther north, east, and a few from other countries, like today, Cambodia.
We are not the smartest people on the block, and the sharpest pencils in the box, well, forget USA USA, Go USA!
Shit show from governors and their breast grabbing, ex-president (sic) Trump and his golden shower tapes and rapes and such, to the Bill Cosby Drug ’em Anyway You can show. Biden and the victim, Tara Read, raped, allegedly, by BIden. But oh, even though these are trauma setting events for the people in the victim seat, and those around them, and maybe vicariously us who have to read about this shit and the lack of justice to all the perps in Capitalism, there still l are bigger stories, and the cognoscente dissonance of the stupidity of making millions and billions off of disaster, pain, pollution, war, hurt, poverty, environmental genocide, AKA, ecocide.
Here, shit show stories with deeper parsing to be done:
California may have enough water, and that’s a triple pun by Bloomberg Un-News.
Fake vaccine cards from China, with misspellings (think CIA)
The old Black-Jamaican-Indian Harris team with Beady Dementia Biden at the helm of, resuming Trump’s kill the Mexicans, et all policy.
Oh, the European capitals and hinterlands, burning and flooding — Turkey, here.
Then, some judge in Dallas is now yammering about SARS-2 surges, and no pediatric beds for sick kiddos.
And, here we go, world government, one government, we stupid, useless breathers and eaters and breeders, brought to us by National Propaganda Radio, NPR.
Ramzy hits it on the head, Greed and Consumption: Why the World is Burning: Global warming is, in large part, the outcome of a destructive pattern instigated and sustained by capitalism. The latter can only survive through unhindered consumption, inequality, greed and, when necessary, war.
Rome is scorching hot. This beautiful city is becoming unbearable for other reasons, too. Though every corner of the beaming metropolis is a monument to historical grandeur, from the Colosseum in Rione Monti to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in San Giovanni, it is now struggling under the weight of its own contradictions.
In Via Appia, bins are overflowing with garbage, often spilling over into the streets. The smell, especially during Italy’s increasingly sweltering summers, is suffocating.
Meanwhile, many parts of the country are literally on fire. Since June 15, firefighters have reportedly responded to 37,000 fire-related emergencies, 1,500 of them on July 18 alone. A week later, I drove between Campania, in southern Italy, and Abruzzo, in the center. Throughout the journey, I was accompanied by fire and smoke. On that day, many towns were evacuated, and thousands of acres of forests were destroyed. It will take months to assess the cost of the ongoing destruction, but it will certainly be measured in hundreds of millions of euros.
Additionally, the entire southern Europe is ablaze, as the region is experiencing its worst heat waves in many years. Greece, Spain, Turkey, and the Balkans are fighting fires that continue to rage on.
Ahh, there is that consumption addiction, that Retailopethicus, that Homo Consumo Sapiens things, in Western Man/Woman. MD Gabor Mate discussed this years ago, and he is an addict, too, to shopping:
But it’s not hardwired in us as hunters and gatherers, for sure. Thanks to marketing, Mad Men, Mad Women, to Terror Management Theory, Edward Bernays, PT “A Sucker is Borne Every Nanosecond” Barnum. It’s mass brain washing, mass sublimation of diseases of the mind, mass murder, mass guilt, the societies in Western Culture, here because of Mass Murder and Massive Theft After Theft.
Sex and Coke and Cigarettes are an addiction, hitting the old serotonin reuptake. Then, there is classic Capitalist selling you what you do not need, what does not work, what is broken upon delivery, what is too expensive, what is a lie.
And, lies are big in USA — George Lakoff, narrative framing. W Bush was a rancher (no, he was afraid of horses, had no cattle, and was silver spoon Yale dropout.). Up is down, as in the Dead Presidents and those still sucking air, those useless breathers like Bush, Carter, Trump, Obama. Oh, that first Black President, Clinton.
This is the fog of consumption and valorizing the dirty rotten rich, all their goods and millions and billions with blood on each dollar, each mark, each ounce of gold and encrusted diamond broach and 240 foot yacht. Edward Curtain nails it — Just to take that piece of human stain, Obama as an example:
The recent news of Barack Obama’s vile selfie birthday celebration for his celebrity “friends” at his 29-acre estate and mansion (he has another eight-million-dollar mansion in Washington, D. C.) on Martha’s Vineyard is an egregious recent case in point. If he thinks this nauseating display is proof of his stability and strength – which obviously he does – then he is a deluded fool. But those who carry water for the military-intelligence-media complex are amply rewarded and want to tell the world that this is so. It’s essential for the Show. It must be conspicuous so the plebians learn their lesson.
Obama’s Vineyard mansion stands as an outward sign of his inner disgrace, his soullessness.
Trump’s golden towers and his never-ending self-promotion or the multiple million-dollar mansions of high-tech, sports, and Hollywood’s superstars send the same message.
Take Bill Gates’ sixty-three-million-dollar mansion, Xanadu, named after William Randolph Hearst’s estate in Citizen Kane, that took seven years to build. (The Houses of Dead and Crooked Souls)
He nails Thoreau well here, “There is a taboo in life in general and in journalism: Do not ask where people’s money comes from. Thoreau was so advised long ago”: Do not ask how your bread is buttered; it will make you sick…
So, I am finished for now. No amount of sanity is the antidote for this sick society, the endless sickness that is part and parcel the Military-Media-Education-Press-Finance-Surveillance-Medical-Drug-AI-Prison-Legal-PR-Retail-Extraction-Ag Complex.
Big ass complex that it is:
How is the new IPCC report substantially different from any of the other IPCC reports? The planet is warming. Human activity caused it. There is only a limited amount of time to take action in order to forestall the most extreme outcome. The report is a prelude to yet another global climate conference, where more non-binding, incremental measures will be agreed upon by the very leaders who profit from inaction, amid much self-congratulatory backslapping about how fraught the process was. Meanwhile, the forests burn, the permafrost melts, the methane percolates, the droughts deepen, the seas rise, the rivers flood, and the hurricanes line up in the Atlantic basin like jetliners over O’Hare.
When reading the dire climate report, it’s important to keep in mind that 20 transnational corporations and the Pentagon are responsible for more than 35 percent (480 billion tonnes) of the total global carbon emissions since 1965. (St. Claire, Counterpunch, Friday 13th, August 2021)
Saudi Aramco 59.26 (billion tonnes of carbon dioxide)
Chevron 43.35
Gasprom 43.23
Exxon-Mobil 41.90
National Iranian Oil Co. 35.66
BP 34.02
Royal Dutch Shell 31.95
Coal India 23.12
Pemex 22.65
Petro Venezuela 15.75
Petro China 15.63
Peabody Energy 15.39
Conoco-Philips 15.23
Abu Dhabi National Oil 13.84
Kuwait National Oil 13.84
Kuwait National Petroleum 13.84
Iraq National Oil 13.48
Total SA 12.35
SonaTrach 12.30
BHP Billiton 9.80
Petrobas 8.68
Paul Haeder, Author 