VIX NO FOUR

Mr. Ebell did some work at last: 3600 words of bone-headness with a third of the material cut and pasted from other "news" sources.

Myron began his piece with a report on the Kyoto Protocol, crowing about protests that were unattended and pointing out the non-existent contradictions in the rhetoric of the climate campaigners -- Kyoto should be implemented, although on its own it is ineffective, like "get out of bed in the morning", even though on its own that doesn't get you to work on time. He expressed admiration for those poor and working class carbon tarriff traders who were trying to earn an honest living having to beat up some Greenpeace agitators who invaded their pit in London.

Myron reported on some Global Warming Bills passing through congress, before reporting on some non-happenings in the European Union, but it was too boring to read.

Myron felt unapologetic about how Tony Blair's Climate Change rhetoric seems not to agree with his actions (not taxing aircraft fuel, not requiring public bodies to use renewable energy), before reporting that to fund development of renewable energy in Britain, electricity prices would have to rise by a whole five percent. Compared to the cost of a new Thames Barrier, this is going to look damn cheap. He then went on to miss the point of Global Warming bonds, by taking it literally. It's actually a financial illustration of the fact that that spoiling the planet now is a cost on the unborn who's interests are not properly represented on today's Exxon balance sheet. Even though he has kids, Myron doesn't care about future generations because he thinks they will either live in space, or experience the Rapture, or both.

Myron did report some alarming stuff from a Climate Change conference in Exeter, but chose to single out this boring poster by someone in the US department of Interior.

Then he gets back to his usual attempt at hammering a crack in the handle of the "hockey stick" temperature graph by droning on about the Medieval Warm Period again, after which all the ice and glaciers refroze into a state where they were indistinguishable from glaciers that have stood unmelted for hundreds of thousands of years.

Aparently, while everything else is changing, the Polar Bear "harvesters" have been reporting an explosion of Bear numbers in the Arctic. Quick, kill as many as you can now while they're all over the place. Shooting things is fun and good for the environment. When they all disappear we can say the seals ate them. The precise text of the unsourced bear article is repeated all over the internet word for word, which clearly means it's true.

I don't know about you, but I don't think Myron's got much to show for himself. Maybe he's losing faith. It's also notable how British-focussed he's becoming. There are rumours that after their victories among the political classes in America, the oil-and-lies industry has shifted to London. Note to Myron: You might find it more challenging here because, although our politicians are just as stupid as out where you came from, more than a few of them haven't worked for an oil company! They might not so easily mistake you for a human being, as opposed to a lie monger. So do enjoy your alumni dinner in Cambridge University and the lovely spring weather. If you want to look clever it's best if you don't open your mouth.

Narrow Outlet

Myron spoke to Dimitri Vassilaros, an opinion columnist in Pennsylvania, about a referendum vote in Oregon that was taken last November. Yes, indeed, Myron is talking about stuff he knows -- how to make money by pissing on the environment where other people live. Remember, his definition of property rights means that the [government] registered owner of any parcel land is supreme, and his [or its] view absolutely over-rides the interests of anyone who lives, breaths, or opens their eyes daily in the vicinity of that land. They are nothing. They are little people who don't understand that you have to sell your soul to ExxonMephistopheles in order to make the money to buy the land to have the right to breath clean air.

No problem. This fine journalist's previous column was about the miracle of the pharmaceutical industry, with choice quotes like: "Increase profits by decreasing quality and you risk driving your customer into the arms of your competitor."

Unfortunately, Myron wasn't on hand to correct that particular lie by reminding him of that other government private property rights register: The Patent, which ensures there is no competitor.

Not to worry, he swiped at public opinion which held that drugs were too expensive: "How [do] these [armchair] pharmacists know the research and development cost of even one pill?"

Presumably by reading the profit figures, which by definition are not research spending. He ended the column with the gem: "...good intentions will not even finance the manufacturing of an aspirin."

I thought we were talking about research and development.

The telling of lies does frequently get sloppy, because the correction mechanism is not referal to independent facts, evidence, history, or reasoned argument, you have to go back to the source to get the false story straight. That's what the corporate spokesman are there for.

Real reporters know this, and don't report their words uncritically verbatim. They ask questions. So, when the spokesman says: "[With price controls] France [produces] only 4 percent of world's new medicines," a reporter would ask to see the list of pills from which this 4% figure is derived. He would check that it didn't include all the killer drugs that were taken off the market because they were dangerous and didn't do anything medically new.

A long as Myron only takes interviews with people of this calibre, we're making progress. It won't be long till Exxon fires him for preaching only to the choir.

The Yes Man

Myron doesn't only say yes to greenhouse gasses, he also says yes to any form of pollution, if the polluter pays... his wages. Although he doesn't declare his income, we can be assured that the Coal industry funds him. The evidence for this is the good work he does to ensure that you and your family enjoy the benefits of Mercury ingestion, which will Myron richer while you get your brain damaged. Mentally retarded and dead people are not part of the economy, so they don't count when Myron makes his usual uncosted announcements about how pollution control would harm the economy.

How does he know?

The answer is simple. Myron is a corporate spokesman, who pretends he isn't with the intention of misleading his audience into mistaking him for a scientist or even a human being. And corporations are legally obliged to disregard all outside costs resulting from their activities.

So, if a corporate owned chemical plant saves a few thousand dollars in cost cutting, and has an accident which kills twenty thousand people and makes a further fifty thousand too sick to work, that's not a cost to the corporation or to what they loosely define as the "economy". The thousand dollars is a profit, paying compensation is a nuisance, and they do not care if you die. People like Myron won't see the bodies and can't see the numbers. His cost-benefit analysis is psychopathically limited to within the shifting legal walls that are Exxon or some other such mass-slaughtering organization.

That's why Myron publishes numbers for the rates of SUV sales, but never for the rates of death. They don't matter. He is a true Yes Man for corporations, for whatever they would like to do.

Last December, like a beam of raw sunlight in an underground nuclear bunker infested by snakes, Jude Finisterra broke through the facade of the "Business media" by lying that he was a corporate spokesman. You could tell he was not a real corporate spokesman (like Myron Ebell), because he spoke the truth. On camera, he apologized for all the criminality done by his corporation for the past twenty years, and said that the time had come to fully compensate everyone who had suffered.

The Yes Men have a movie out now. Go see it. Or, if you are too cheap, enjoy one of the online videos about a petition encouraging global warming that Republicans could not be dissuaded from signing when informed that it would turn China into a desert and kill millions of people beyond the borders of the United States of A.