228 comments on DrumBeat: August 14, 2007
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228 comments on DrumBeat: August 14, 2007
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Re: "Technology is key on global warming: Bush adviser"
The article contains one howler after another. I particularly like this one:
Emerging consenus? From where? From James Connaughton's hind parts? Did it ever occur to James Connaughton that global warming might be caused by (drumroll)...THE ADVANCEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY?!?
I will agree with one thing that he says though: "... if you don't have a growing economy, you don't have the resources to pay for the new technologies." (though I would probably rephrase that to say "if you don't have cheap energy...")
To steal a phrase from the Mogambo: We're Scroomed!!!
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry reading that one. I guess the idea the economic growth is the problem is incomprehensible to the average American.
I'm starting to understand why the Easter Islanders' reaction to tightening resource constraints was to build more and bigger statues...
Yeah, and I loved this one:
Ha!Ha! Is this guy trying to be funny? Because if he is, he ought to have his own show. "...assist on technology?" The country that is still fighting to hang onto it's fleet of 12 mpg SUVs?
"...assist in innovative financing?" Hasn't the world had about enough of America's "innovative financing" of late?!?
The guy's a laugh a minute.
See: 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man'
Interview on Democracy Now!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wanniski/wanniski53.html
" JOHN PERKINS: ... The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950's, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time's magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed – well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran..."
Then read "Will the real economic hit men please stand up?". Regarding "Democracy Now!", I highly recommend "What's wrong with Amy Goodman?" and "The Empress Has No Clothes".
Thanks for the links, would you mind making a bit of your point here and now, for those not without the time to follow the links.
I am aware from a friend who has shot video for them, that there's no small irony in suffering poor labor conditions while working on a news program that advocates for labor rights, among other things.. just the same, if you have something to add, why not say some of it in your own words?
Bob
Why spoil the surprise?
No, I'm happy to elaborate. I could write tomes. In fact, I started to before I decided to cut it down to this:
I saw the interview with Perkins. I donated money. I received a copy of the book. I remember thinking, "He said the CIA approved the book. What could he possibly reveal other than filling in details of the horrible deeds the U.S. Empire and its corporate surrogates have committed over the last century?" Months later I saw the piece in From The Wilderness. The very first paragraph answers that:
"Limited hangout" is a term I learned a couple of years ago, in the context of 9/11 being an inside job. I do not mean to start a flame war but I will just point out that by "inside job" I do not mean "Bush did it." I am so sick of that worn out strawman.
In any case, the pieces on Amy Goodman are largely about 9/11. But there's another subject she avoids, peak oil. That actually offends me more than her handling of 9/11. There are any number of reasons to impeach and/or prosecute members of this administration; 9/11 and the subsequent cover-up are but a part. Peak oil, on the other hand, is, with the possible exception of white male capitalist patriarchy, the best kept secret from the general population. It isn't even "debunked" in the mainstream media; it's still in the "First, they ignore you" phase. To the best of my knowledge the phrase "peak oil" has yet to be uttered on any mainstream TV channel. If someone knows otherwise, please do tell.
I listen to DN fairly often. They do talk about Peak Oil and matter-of-factly, at that.
Has Global Oil Production Reached Maximum Capacity? A Debate on Peak Oil
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/28/1439240
Blood of the Earth: Dilip Hiro on the Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/31/1543222
They also hosted a debate between the Loose Change conspiracy theorists and the Popular Mechanics debunkers. Neither side covered themselves with glory.
Peak Oil has definitely been mentioned in MSM here. The New Zealand Listener (weekly mainstream national mag) ran a series of articles in their May 26-June 1 issue on the green revolution, one of which (pgs 23-24) raised Peak Oil as a major problem.
It was particularly interesting to a see a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering who had made a career looking at the possibility of a hydrogen economy, saying that it just wouldn't work, even though they wanted to convince themselves it would.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Yeah, I'm sorry, Bench, but while DN has covered 911truth a couple times, as the first article you linked (Will the real economic hitmen please stand up?) suggested was what journalists were overlooking BECAUSE of these 'limited hangout' examples like 'Confessions of an EHM ..' But they cover a respectable range of topics, regularly touching on Darfur, on Immigration and related Farm and Labor issues in the US, on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.. Israel/Palestine, etc.. They have had Robert Fiske from the Independent reporting out of Beirut (who is great) a number of times, getting more history, context and perspective on Middle East stories than anything you'll find in much of the soft, gray middle or the flaming right-wing end of the media.
You should listen a couple more times and see if you don't find some stories you actually appreciate someone covering.
Bob
What's wrong with Amy is that she has a difficult choice.
Either she can try to be impartial and let the flacks spin away, or she can challenge them. Jon Stewart spoke about trying to get a straight answer out of Ari Fleischer. I listen to all sorts of talk shows and the fact is that many guests are better at obfuscation than journalists are at cutting through it.
" ... almost never does Amy Goodman or her guest dig deeper, connecting the dots with the current epidemic of disappearing pensions, the disastrous housing bubble which is in the process of bursting, the ramifications of the new bankruptcy law, widespread doubling of monthly credit card payments, and a plethora of issues that signal global economic collapse. "
Huh? I've posted DN links on most of these topics right here on TOD.
Let's not single out Amy Goodman for punishment. Like every star in far-left media, her status depends on what far-left consumers think of her. If she were to say things that make her audience feel bad, they would tune her out.
Overshoot, collapse and dieoff make people feel bad. That's why they don't talk about it on the radio or TV. If they did, people would change the channel. Even when Jared Diamond's on TV, 99% of the time he is very careful to avoid saying anything too sad.
The purpose of far-left media is to catch people who can't digest mainstream media lies, and keep them fed with media that's a little more truthful. Without really showing them what's behind the curtain.
This isn't a conspiracy. It's a product. People need to feel good, and the far-left media provides a product that enables some of them to feel good.
Bmcnett, I agree with everything you say except your very stupid reference to "the far-left media".
Ignorance gone to seed!
The far-right media, Fox, is just as guilty as anyone. Nay, they are by far the guiltiest. And the middle or the road media, NBC, is equally guilty. And CNBC is as far right as any of them. They are almost, but not quite, as guilty as Fox. Everything you get from CNBC is all peaches and cream.
The Far-Right Media are the ones who would have us believe that the free market will solve all our problems. The Far-Right Media are the ones who will book no dissent to the idea that the great American way of life is in no danger as long as we keep electing on good republican politicans to to solve the world's problems.
The fact of the matter is all the media downplays the problem, left, right and center. No one wants to hear bad news and no one wants to deliver bad news. This is one issue that is truly bipartisan. But if you hate the left you will blame the far-left and if you hate the right you will blame the far-right.
Stop being so childish Bm-whatever, and get it right.
Ron Patterson
Ron,
I agree with you completely, the far-right media is simply evil.
All media are guilty of whitewashing the news, but the far-left media should know better.
They spend so much energy carefully peeling away the layers of propaganda from mainstream and far-right media, and they do a good job of it. But then they stop peeling before mentioning limits to growth.
This lulls a lot of smart people into feeling that the limits-to-growth people are a zany fringe.
I'm not the sharpest fellow, and they had me convinced for ten or fifteen years that the world's biggest problem is the evil rich.
The evil rich are bad, no question about it. But overpopulation and resource depletion are even worse. Wish I could have heard about those fifteen years ago.
Bmcnett, sorry I did not mean to lose it but I have been hearing this far-left media crap for years and it is a crock. The media is left, it is right and it is center. And right now I think that it is more right than left. At least I know the financial news networks, Bloomberg and CNBC are far right. And these are the stations that should be addressing peak oil and they are not.
Ron
Maybe we should try that statue thing. We could carve giant SUVs and set them around our cities.
Right! And use giant styrofoam blocks as the media!
God Lord Man! Think of what you are saying!
Statues of SUVs carved out of old grow redwoods, at 2:1 scale, is the only sane option!
Death to the styrofoam infidels!
Are You suggesting the US will turn into a Cargo Cult?
I can see primitive post-crash Americans building fake Wal-Marts and waiting for them to be filled.
Well, yeah, sounds about right to me.
It's not much of a stretch, is it?
Cargo Cult Capitalism: america's waking dream!
Peak Oil Tarzan
Sometimes I think the problem with the technocornucopians and us is we don't speak the same language. Advances in technology will provide significant mitigation. Clean coal (a misnomer if I ever heard one) could not exist without the advancements in technology. But, we wouldn't need clean coal technology if the population of the world were the 2 billion people that it was at my birth. We're burning triple the fossil fuel because the population has tripled. Natural mechanisms would quite possibly take care of most of the problems, and there wouldn't be the pressure on resources of all kinds.
If I were the richest man in the world, I'd set up a foundation where developing world children got free tuition for elementary education if their daddy had a vasectomy or their mother had her tubes tied. The point would be that the parents could offer a path to enough education to break the cycle of poverty by acting responsibly.
That's the key. End the wretched poverty and birthrates would fall below replacement rates, like in the OED countries. Even out the playing field a little with education.
oilmanbob, I agree with you: education would go a long way toward solving many of our problems.
Call me a cynic, but I decided some time ago that TPTB weren't particularly interested in educating the masses. If they did that, who would scrub their commodes and cut their lawns?
Peak Oil---
There is a easy way to bring population growth to a stop, and it works every time, across all cultures----
When women have equal political and economic rights, population growth stops, or goes negative-----
Obviously education is a main component, but delegitimizing religions and cultures with toxic ideas is essential-
I think you have cause and effect reversed.
When there are enough resources for the population, women tend to have equal rights, maybe even superior rights. But when a population is under Malthusian pressure, women lose their rights.
Control of females is control of fertility.
Leanan, that's an interesting perspective and one that deserves some serious thought. But women are second-class citizens even amongst relatively wealthy Muslim societies with high birth rates -- Saudi Arabia comes to mind. So, there has to be a cultural/religious component.
I tend to take subjugation of women in these societies at face value: The "man of the house" has a right to surround himself with as many of "his" women as he can financially support.
Again, I think you have cause and effect reversed. The cultural/religious component is shaped by socioeconomic factors, not the other way around. Why do Italians have so few children, when the Pope is right there telling them birth control is a sin? Economics trumps religion, if it doesn't shape religion outright.
You would expect to find women subjugated in a culture with high birth rates. There is no need to control fertility - control females - otherwise.
The cultural/religious component is a socioeconomic factor! By definition.
I imagine it takes some time for economic wealth to change cultural perspectives - like say 100 years or so?
L--
I think you are being biased toward rationality--
Wealth and equality are primarily political and economic agreements--
(At least from the persons perspective inside that system)
When religion, as in Saudi Arabia, enters the causality, even economic wealth cannot overcome Iron Age superstition that regulates women to second class status---
I don't think I can open a monument to the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Mecca---
Not instantly. As Speek pointed out, it takes time. But eventually, why not? Christianity and Judaism were once every bit as restrictive as Islam.
No, but when push comes to shove, if believing in the FSM confers some sort of advantage, FSM believers may conquer Saudi and erect a monument in Mecca.
Ask yourself...why is it that males are preferred over females so widely? (Not universally, so it's not innate.) There's no genetic reason why males should be favored. Yes, they can have more kids than females, but OTOH, females are pretty much guaranteed to have kids if they want them, while men are not.
There are economic reasons to prefer males, and it has nothing to do with religion, carrying on the family name, men being superior, or the other cultural myths we tell ourselves to justify what we do.
L-
You are dismissing cultural replication and meme's----
These are independent repreplications, and only need to keep their hosts (people) alive long enough to infect a new host--
Religion is the best example, but many replications work together for their own survival--
Unfortunately, as Dawkins first pointed out, we are not entirely dealing with a purely biological perspective--
In general, religion is only followed if it's somehow advantageous. Usury is supposed to be forbidden under Islam, but they find ways around it, because the economy has changed.
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have the same roots, and were equally restrictive. Why is it that women are allowed to drive in Israel and the US, but not in Saudi? Why didn't the memes work on everyone?
Answer: Historical particulars.
Translation: economic stressors.
"In general, religion is only followed if it's somehow advantageous"
L--
I think Dawkins, Dennett, Wilson, Pinker, etc would disagree strongly on that one----
Dennett makes the case (brilliantly) for religion as a natural phenomena , with evolutionary fitness at certain points in it's origin, but eventually taking over the replication itself-
I wish it were that straight forward--
I am a former Bio teacher, and digest evolutionary discovery voraciously--
The evidence doesn't always point that way, and in many instances actions are against evolutionary fitness when cultural replication is involved-
I think religion is a natural phenomena. But which religions we choose, and which elements we choose to follow - that is often (though not always) dictated by socioeconomic concerns. (Example: "Thou shalt not kill." The church, at least in the U.S., applies that to fetuses with a lot more enthusiasm than it does to war. Why?)
Also note that I am not saying that specific religious beliefs are shaped by evolution. Quite the opposite.
Leanan, do you actually believe most people choose their religion? Gracious, no wonder your views on religion are so strange and unrealistic. While I was in Saudi I saw thousands of Moslems. I doubt that a single one of them "choose" Islam as a religion.
A few, a very tiny few, people choose a religion. The vast, vast majority of the people in the world are born into their religin. If you drum a religion into a child's head almost from birth, that religion will be there for life and no force will be powerful enough to remove it.
Ron Patterson
I was speaking figuratively, of course.
One quick counterexample: I have a fanatically religious fundamentalist Christian mother who drummed the religion into our heads from when we were toddlers. Bedtime bible stories, forced church and vacation bible school attendance, forced baptism, etc.
By my early teens I had declared my atheism to her and never relapsed into dogma again. It is possibe to rise above superstition.
But in the Western world there is also a strong counter-culture to religion, science, atheism, etc... so there are probably more varied influences in young people's lives in our countries too...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Leanan, I have been thrashing this (religious) straw for almost 50 years. And I think you grossly underestimate the power of religion. There are many reasons for the preference of males over females, most of them cultural. And yes, it is economic at the same time. Males are far more likely to take care of their parents while they can tell their wife's parents to go to hell.
Religion has a far stronger hold on those who follow Islam than those who follow Christianity. There is simply no comparison and to attempt to make a comparison betrays one’s knowledge Islam as well as religion in general. Christianity is a religion, Islam is a way of life. Christianity defines what some people believe, Islam defines the belivers entire existence.
Schoolboys in Saudi Arabia spend half the school day studying the Koran. By the time they are 12 they have it memorized verbatim. Schoolgirls also study the Koran but few of them ever learn to read. They will remain second class citizens all their life.
One thing that shocked me when I first got to Saudi was the number of women beggers. Life insurance is a violation of Islamic law. They consider it to be making a wager against the will of Allah. Therefore widows, unless their husband was relatively well off, must turn to begging when their husband dies unless they can beg support from their family.
While economics often trumps Christianity, Islam will trump economics every time.
Ron Patterson
I think that's a result, not a cause. In many cultures, it's the daughters who care for aging parents. "My son's my son till he takes him a wife. My daughter's my daughter the rest of her life."
The reason males are preferred is because the number of females determines fertility. One man can father a hundred children a year or more, but a woman can only have one child a year. Viewing females as inferior makes it easier to practice female infanticide (actively or via neglect). As China is finding out, it's an effective way to put a brake on population growth.
Christianity was once just as restrictive, but no longer is. And not every Muslim country is like Saudi Arabia.
I believe what Darwinian implied was that in '"Saudi Arabia"(?) a man will take care of his parents but forbid and prevent his wife from taking care of her parents.
I also believe that it is true.
""My son's my son till he takes him a wife. My daughter's my daughter the rest of her life.""
The daughter is anxious to take care of her parents but is usually prevented from doing so by her husband.
There is still another difference affecting culture and politics between Islam and Christianity that is not generally grasped by those of us living in the west. In Christianity, there was from the beginning a separation of government authority and religious authority. Now I realize that the church often wielded heavy influence over the government and vice versa, but the church in the west had no influence on government for the first 300 years of its existence, and consequently there grew up church offices and institutions that were independent of the state. And it always remained that way - the King was not the Priest, etc.
In Islam, Mohammed was not just a religious leader, but also a political leader. Under him, there was no distinction between the religious law and the state law. Furthermore, the Dar al-Islam ("world of Islam") transcended national boundaries in importance. This continued to be very much a physical reality up through about the end of World War 1, and the concept is still strong today.
The result is that nations, national government and national law are quite important in the mind of westerners with a Christian background. By comparison, Islamic law and Islamic lands are more prominent in the eyes of most Moslems than nationalistic concerns.
What was the Holy Roman Empire?
As the saying goes, it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. The Holy Roman Empire was a central European monarchy during the middle ages (after 800 A.D.).
But ask Father Guido Sarducci about keeping Religion out of Politics. The Vatican has been as political as it has spiritual, if not moreso..
Good thing any choirboy can grow uppa to be da Pope!
The clergy and the nobility have been a siamese twin for much of European history (e.g. the prince-bishopric of Liège). They amputated the arms during the reformation wars in some areas. Only during the napoleonic reign was the religious head cut off. Vatican city is about the only worldly political power they have left.
A couple people apparently objected to my statement that in the western world, separate institutions developed for church and state. Of course, many examples could be given of close relationships between government and church, with one or the other usually dominating.
But I was trying to make a cultural point about Islam that most of us in the western world miss because of our background. In the western world for 200 years, we've had kings, princes, dukes, earls, governors, mayors, legislators and judges. Those people developed and enforced the laws of England, France, United States, etc. We've also had an almost entirely separate group of people who were Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and Priests, who developed church laws and doctrines, and those laws and doctrines were very different from the laws of England, France, etc. Of course the two parties stepped all over each other and the lines were often blurred.
The point about Islam is that it is not like the western world in this area; separation of religion and state was an alien notion to Islam from the beginning. The Caliph was both the head of state and the religious leader of the Islamic world. Only in the 20th century did separation of religion and state gain limited traction in some Islamic countries, and this is sometimes viewed as being a western concept imposed by colonial powers. Sharia, or Islamic law, still has a hold on quite a bit of the Moslem world. Even in largely secular Islamic countries like Turkey and Egypt, some aspects of Islam are part of the secular law.
Since most of the world's oil exports comes from Islamic states, I do think this is applicable to discussions about peak oil, and a useful distinction for us to understand.
The New England states are creatures of the Congregrations. [Hmmm, AND the Corporations.] There was nothing separate about the state and the congregation. Short of a few radicals who went on to found their own state or congregation, one had to be in good standing in all of them to have power. That is more or less STILL true - imagine an anti-corporate atheist running for President.
You use the term "Islamic state" which WOULD be more like "Jewish state" than a secular state. There are plenty of Muslims living in secular states. There are plenty that want a fundamentalist religious state, just as do too many Christians and Jews. Fundamentalist Christians have too much of a hold on this US culture - eg, Gonzales now gets to expedite death sentences? Eye for an eye. But that's better than Islamic law - fetid corruption where the rich bastards get to kill poor non-whites? Sorry, I don't see it.
Any time you start claiming moral superiority over another race, culture or society, you'd be better off going shopping.
cfm in Gray, ME
I wasn't claiming moral superiority for any state. I believe what I said was objective, and a Moslem would agree with it.
I imagine it takes some time for economic wealth to change cultural perspectives - like say 100 years or so?
Various studies of economic history suggest that it takes about two generations -- call it 50 years -- for the local culture to "learn" how many kids must be born in order to have two kids reach adulthood. The "two adult children" thing seems to be somewhat hardwired into people. Note that this is quite close to the replacement birth rate to maintain a constant population, after allowing for deaths of female children before they reach childbearing age. Population growth has tended to occur locally in bursts when modern infrastructure and medicine arrives. Note that infrastructure should be interpreted broadly: affordable soap and underwear are now believed to be important factors.
KSA's fertility rate has been dropping rapidly since the early 80's, exactly the timeframe when oil income was enriching (relatively) even the poorest members of the society.
Thanks, ET. I wasn't aware that SA fertility rates had dropped that dramatically.
I think Leanan has it exactly right here except it applies to many more groups than just women.
Morals, ethics, "rights," all bloom in a World of Plenty. But they ALL become Expensive Luxuries when "a population is under Malthusian pressure."
Mother Nature passed a law long ago that said, "The more the persons around you look, sound, smell, feel and taste the same as you, the better... especially in times of scarcity"
Then Mother Nature is a bigoted bitch. If that's the program then it is high time we came out with a version 2.0.
Mother Nature is Mother Nature. We don't come out with new versions of MN, and it's absurd to think so. Actually, she came out with US. Now, I wouldn't argue with anyone who said it is high time she came out with version 2.0 of us. But then, MN has perhaps different goals than we do :-)
I think the "us vs. them" mentality is human nature. But how it's expressed can vary a lot. I read a book awhile back that argued that race wasn't really an issue until fast transportation made it so. Marco Polo never mentioned that Chinese looked different, and they think it's because traveling overland on foot, the change was so gradual he just didn't notice.
I don't know how true that is, but my sister, who specializes in the 18th century, once told me that race really wasn't an issue before then. They were far more concerned about religious differences than racial ones.
"I don't know how true that is, but my sister, who specializes in the 18th century, once told me that race really wasn't an issue before then."
Definitely not true. The American Indian is a perfect example. Also, the Moors is Shakespeare.
According to Eldred Jones, Queen Elizabeth considered the number of 'Negars and blackamoors' who had 'crept into' London by 1601 such a problem that she appointed one Caspar Van Zeuden (a merchant from Lubeck) to transport them out of England.
http://www.rsc.org.uk/othello/teachers/moors.html
But was the problem race, or that they were heathens?
"But was the problem race, or that they were heathens?"
'Negars and blackamoors' definitely refers to Race.
Thats what racism is. My race is (superior, more civilized, more intelligent, God's chosen, etc.).
Your Race is (inferior, savages, less intelligent, evil, etc.).
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
hea·then /ˈhiðən/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[hee-thuhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, plural -thens, -then, adjective
–noun
1. an unconverted individual of a people that do not acknowledge the God of the Bible; a person who is neither a Jew, Christian, nor Muslim; pagan.
2. an irreligious, uncultured, or uncivilized person.
–adjective 3. of or pertaining to heathens; pagan.
4. irreligious, uncultured, or uncivilized.
Bob, Several times in my working life I had the misfortune to work for engineers that had been promoted into management positions. Notable among them was a total lack of people skills and the opinion that there was a technofix for everyting. Fortunately, they were eventually promoted out of the position of being in charge of my little world...with help from me and my co-workers.
From the movie Antz:
"I think we have had chronic underinvestment in energy efficiency. We really need to accelerate that."
Ain't gonna help that we will be underinvesting even faster, either.
Rat