Reducing Coal Power Plants, and Increasing… What?

BBC News – US unveils sharp curbs on coal power plants: risks to health, communities and the economy

The Obama administration’s proposal to reduce dependence on coal fired power plants is not a “climate” proposal. 

The “climate” connection assumes a causal relationship among extreme weather events that impact local economies, and human anthropogenic CO2. As climate scientists have repeatedly stated, this connection cannot be demonstrated with any certainty for any extreme weather event. The most that can be said is that weather extremes are consistent with projections from mathematical computer models used to test theories to explain observed climate variation. To date, these models have been unsuccessful in projecting present trends in global climate variation.

It remains to be seen whether or not a reduction of coal fired power plant effluent will have any effect on observed climate variation. Since global average surface temperature has remained statistically stable for the past decade and a half, while global atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to rise linearly, the anthropogenic CO2/climate change connection is called to question. Observable results of a reduction in CO2 production, if any, must be weighed against complex and chaotic natural climate variation resulting from existing solar, geophysical and cosmic energy cycles.

Of greater concern is that this push to reduce existing energy sources, with no concomitant reduction in energy demand, will result in increased emphasis on energy production from nuclear power plants, fracked natural gas, and hydropower, prospects that threaten greater risks to public health, communities and their economies, and the natural environment. 

Dear Mr. President: Hands Off Syria!

Dear Mr. President:

Do not, under any circumstances, attack Syria.

Your message sent out as an email following your speech on Syria contains several misstatements of fact:

1) “…we have resisted calls for military action because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force.” This statement is the heighth of hypocrisy. The American CIA has armed and trained opposition soldiers in Jordan and sent them into Syria to fight against the Assad government. This is unauthorized military action akin to President Reagan’s illegal arming of the Contras in Nicaragua.

2) Your administration has failed to provide any evidence to back up the claim that the Assad government launched chemical weapons against opposition forces. Furthermore, you have ignored evidence that the chemical weapons incident was initiated by opposition forces funded and supplied by Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud.

3) Syria provides no more threat to the security of the United States than does Israel, which possesses chemical and nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them throughout the Middle East. We send billions of dollars of “aid” (read, military arms) to Israel in response to intensive lobbying by pro-Israeli organizations in the United States. The true intent of American involvement is to destabilize Syria in order to isolate and threaten Iran, the last in the chain of anti-Israeli countries in the Middle East.

Mr. President, democracy does not consist of “Americans stand[ing] together as one people.” Democracy is rule by the people, not by a President who takes the powers of war-making away from them.

Stop the war propaganda. Stop the saber rattling. Withdraw from the eastern Mediterranean and start working, as a statesman rather than a tyrant, to bring peace to the Middle East.

The Emperor’s New Outfit

Now that the Oval One II has politely asked Congress for permission to turn loose his Navy on Syria (prepositioned in the eastern Med before the alleged chemical weapons attack), it’s time for his handlers to unleash the next militaristic adventure: the propaganda war against the American people.

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman wrote a book called Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of Mass Media, in which they detailed how national and international news is structured, controlled and packaged by elite economic and political players in favor of their preferred outcomes.

In “The Grand Narrative for War: Manufacturing Consent on Syria,” Anthony DiMaggio updates Chomsky and Herman’s work, bringing it into the headlines of the Obama administration’s salivating desire to bomb the hell out of yet another small nation that obstreperously refuses to bow down to the American Empire (TM). CNN leads the charge with (“How Bashar al-Assad took Syria to the brink — and beyond“), pounding the drums of war in a race to be the first to bow before the Emperor and kiss his unshod feet.

Even though each and every national poll reveals that the American people, and most of the rest of the world, are overwhelmingly opposed to a unilateral military attack on Syria by the United States government, the Powers That Be (PTB) manufacturing the Emperor’s New Outfit are spinning their cloth made up of the warp of disinformation and the woof of lies. PTB designers are busy crafting the new look, PTB word-weavers are spinning their threads and shaping their cloths of headlines, sound bites and peurile pundit prevarications.

Soon the full suit of clothes of the New Look will be revealed as the Oval One II parades down the media runway, to the pliant applause of the terminally entrenched. Critics will acclaim the New Look. The punditocracy will adopt the New Style. Congress will adopt and defend the Emperor’s taste in haberdashery. 

Maybe, if we’re very lucky, despite the glare of the stage lights and the blare of the band, those with eyes to see and ears to hear, if there be any left, will note the true transparency of the new garments. 

Stay tuned.

Lies and Disinformation in Old al-Sham

From this article:
Syria “Wag the Dog”. Towards a Major Mideast War? | Global Research
we learn:

1) “According to Israeli on-line intel news Debkafile, several days before the chemical attack in Damascus hundreds of armed rebels crossed over into Syria from a newly established CIA base in Jordan. The rebels were led by US commanders.” They were trained and armed by the US CIA

2) “Centcom, the US military command for the Middle East, has established a new underground war room near Amman, Jordan, for the purpose of commanding Syrian operations. Recently, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, visited Amman to inaugurate the new forward command center.”

 This is the second step in the decades-old Neocon plan for a ring of “regime-changed” countries around Israel, protecting the US Empire’s forward bastion in the Middle East and monopolizing access to Mideast oil.

Don’t be fooled by the Oval One II, any “limited” attack on Syria will be only the first step in a protracted imperialist war by the United States in the Middle east. The plan is to sear Syria seriously, kick Assad aside, erase Iran and consolidate Middle East oil resources for the United States and its favored minion states.

This could well represent the beginning of the ultimate end of the US Empire, as the US government overextends its military in the Middle east quagmire. “Shock and Awe” only works once, if it works at all. Ultimately the US government must commit money, men and materiel to subdue and maintain its imperium. Meanwhile, economic and social conditions will continue to deteriorate at home, requiring ever more surveillance,  oppression, restrictions on civil rights, ignoring and shredding the Constitution of the Unted States of America, if there is anything left after the Patriot Act.

Oligarchs and tyrants have never been much on history. While history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes. The Arabic name for the area now occupied by Syria is “al-Sham.”  One may as well call it “Roobi-kahn.”

Syrian rebels armed and trained by CIA ‘on way to battlefield’

First Syria rebels armed and trained by CIA ‘on way to battlefield’ – Telegraph

Wait a minute! Since when did we start training and arming one side in a civil war in a sovereign nation, and send them into battle from another country?

Oh wait. Contras, Nicaragua, Ronald Reagan. Iran/Contra.

Oh yeah, I forgot.

Ronald Reagan got into trouble while he slept through the Iran/Contra affair, supplying arms and training to the Contras.

So this is all right now? This is official United States government policy?

I wondered what all that shredded parchment was on the Oval Office floor.

“All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.”

The above quote from I.F. Stone demonstrates that nothing has changed when it comes to the central state. Here’s the story you won’t see in the headlines of your corporate newspaper, nor in glowing phosphors on your TeeVee screen:

7 Deceptions About Bin Laden’s Killing Pushed by the Obama Administration

The United States government deliberately mislead and propagandized the people of the United States and the world, setting up a smoke screen of lies that was dutifully spread and amplified by the lapdog press. Where are the screaming headlines announcing the “revised” versions of events now touted by the government?

This is no “fog of war.” This is deliberate misinformation, disseminated knowing full well that the real story, when revealed, would never have the impact of the lies initially told.

Governments always lie.

Rescind Obama’s Peace Prize

Obama Expands Military Involvement in Africa

The Nobel Peace Prize has been rendered meaningless with its presumptive award to US President Barak Obama, who has clearly demonstrated a dedication to the imperialist policies of his predecessor, George II.

The current regime continues to expand arms sales to African nations, ostensibly to stop Al Qa’ida expansion. However, one cannot expect the locals to use their new weapons only on the “enemies of my friends.” More guns and ammunition means more indiscriminate killing for purposes having nothing to do with US pretensions of empire.

The only way to stop war is to stop the obscene corporate profits in international arms sales to every local thug who’s embezzled a few million dollars from the neighbors. The United States government places private profit above any and all moral principles and standards of decency, and backs up its support of business interests with clandestine intervention and outright military incursion. The almighty dollar walks loudly across the earth, carrying the big stick of violence.

Rather than awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to anyone, withhold it indefinitely, until peace, at long last, prevails.

Some Things Never Change

A Bomber Jacket Doesn’t Cover the Blood

Just as Bush II landed on an aircraft carrier in safe waters, clad in a ludicrous fighter pilot costume, Barak Obama just happened to stop by to visit our occupying horde in Afghanistan. Wearing a crisp new sporty bomber jacket, with the Air Force One logo in place of unnamed aerial killers, Obama assured his carefully posed minions, “We face a determined enemy. But we also know this: The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something.”

Nothing changes when it comes to war. A white-haired old man said it best, many years ago:

“Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”
– Mark Twain, “Chronicle of Young Satan”

The First Coward Sneaks into Afghanistan…

Obama Makes Surprise Visit To Afghanistan

…and out before first light.

In an amazing display of comic cowardice, the President of the United States snuck into Afghanistan under cover of darkness, with the curtains drawn on the windows of Air Force One. After of few hours of midnight secrecy with Puppet in Chief Karzai and his Komic Kabinett, Obama left before the cold grey light of dawn, winging his way back to safety in Fortress America.

The CEO of America, Inc. paid a visit to one of his wholly owned subsidiaries in the Middle East. The world is safe for hypocrisy.

US Out of WAR, NOW!

Even with Obama in Charge, Anti-War Democrats Powerless

It’s not about Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s about war as an instrument of foreign policy.

The united States government has used the military as the strong arm of big business for over two hundred years, having learned the techniques well from our bloody British ancestors. Big Business walks softly about the planet, carrying the big sticks of the CIA, NSA, Pentagon and now a phalanx of pecuniary mercenaries, in the fight for the fun of it as much as the money, paving the way for Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Agriculture, their paths greased by American consumers ground under their wheels.

Torture, mutilation, genocide, and environmental destruction are the collateral damage of official uS policy. Too bad our fancy flying robot murderers kill more innocent children, grandparents, brides and grooms and party guests than targeted combatants. Fortunes of war. The “acceptable” (for us) price (for them) of spreading democracy. Let’s spread it thick!

Countries have life spans just like their citizens. It’s time for the united States to grow up. We have a new Democratic President and a Democratic Congress. If there ever was a time to steer this country from the path of it war, it is now.

Let’s make it so.