Sunday, June 25, 2006

I think therefore I don't exist

The Myron Ebell Climate takes one of its well needed breaks to check out the political swamp in which this sick fish swims.

Earlier this year I commented on the idiocy of Peter Stoney who claimed that if the Liverpool container port wasn't allowed to expand, it would lose so much business to ports in mainland Europe that it would have to shut down. What made his analysis so insane was the assumption that transport could be treated like a commodity that could be manufactured elsewhere in the world, in spite of the fact that it was not a physical entity.

After checking the story out, I've found that Mr Stoney was not 100% wrong, as I had thought. Fact is, these new superships are so massive that it takes up to ten ordinary sized cargo carriers to unload one of them. So it makes sense to park them in Antwerp after they have brought underwear from China, and ferry the goods to regional ports like Liverpool. It is this business which this corporate mouthpiece says we must sacrifice our coastline to.

Unfortunately, since he failed to mention this reasoning in any of his writings, he can't take the credit for assertions that are partly correct due to a coincidence. Like any corporate fighter, he misrepresents the case by waffling on about jobs which the harbour corporation would rather not create if it could possibly be avoided, while completely not mentioning the massive windfall profits for investors who do not experience the degradation, and are the sole and only motivation for this project.

And so we move on to the latest story of Iraq's WMDs, and take note of the fact that in 2003 there was not only no unfabricated evidence for the existence of these illegal weapons, but a great deal of incentive for the dictator of Iraq to declare and destroy all traces of previous American-sponsored stockpiles. In spite of this, the people of the US allowed their government to commit over one trillion dollars towards the invasion, destruction, and occupation of this oil-rich country.

Imagine what could have been done towards the mitigation of global warming had they deployed this wealth constructively. Since none of it has come from the pockets of Exxon, Myron Ebell has had little to say. Anyways, his job is to lie about things which do exist by claiming they don't, not the other way round.

Now, after three years have passed, the US government has made a statement which summarizes the situation of Iraq's WMDs in six utterly pitiful paragraphs.
Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.
Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.
Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.
The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.
The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.
It has been reported in the open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.
In other words, they have found the out-of-date chemical weapons sold them before 1991. Others are still to be found in the lair of the Loch Ness Monster. And the people fighting the occupation force are willing to use any weapon that exists and is available.

The statement is the truth. It's a lie to claim it is anything but a complete refutation of every single government claim made about WMD before the war. Our dear leaders and their entire supporting power apparatus does not give a toss!

I conclude with a quote from John Stewart of the Daily Show who said of the CEI ads:
I haven't seen an ad defending a chemical process since 1996's "suck on this Krebs cycle".
In it, Myron's friends taught us that Carbon Dioxide was a natural process of life and breathing, so couldn't be classed as a pollutant.

If you buy that of logic, neither is shit. The CEI is full of it.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Myron, bury thyself

You've all been there. You are on strike, or you trying to blockade a military base from which the government is sending forth bombs, and the police, whose job it is to defend violence and the immoral rights of capital, are behaving like pigs. Sure, they push you out of the way. Sometimes they spray you with toxic chemicals.

Then someone wants to throw a brick.

Please don't do that. Think: What's the best that could happen? Do you want to see it bounce uselessly off their shields? Or would you rather it hit someone's head? And kill them? Then you will have committed murder. One dead policeman isn't going to stop the war any sooner, and they now have an excuse to come after you with everything they've got. And they are willing to kill you all. That's why violence works for governments -- because they are willing to go the whole way. They actually prefer that everyone be dead, rather than be beaten by anyone. We can remember that lesson from the Cold War, if we learnt anything.

The agents of the government can throw bricks which kill people, and get away with it, but ordinary people don't.

And so the era of truth is dawning. Probably a little late now to save us, but we can at least enjoy the start of the day and look across the rubble and destruction that has been wrought through this night of lies.

Myron's people at the CEI have started throwing bricks at the sun. What's the best that could happen? People might believe a word of their lies and delay treatment of cancer? Or maybe it will land safely in the dust. And we will all turn to face Myron and realize that it was he who was hammering our skulls in the night, and now we can see him he doesn't look so frightening.

In fact, we can put him in a truck and drop him off at the asylum. They've got a room full of Carbon Dioxide there where they put people to calm them down and make them sleep.

He calls it life. I'd call it turning men blue.

Friday, June 02, 2006

It is no Occident

Myron and associates are acting like rats whose tails have been bitten by a snake, over the release of the Republican Party appeaser Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. Unforgiveably, the title contains the word "Truth" in it.

On the one side of this manufactured debate we have the dire and quantitative predictions of a threat to the human species possibly more severe and less invisible than a meteor on a collision course with the Earth.

And on the other, there's Myron lying about the statistics, producing crap TV ads about the importance of neon lights and fat children in cars, and smearing the movie's main narrator.

Let's put this down straight. The attacks on Gore have been particularly feeble. For example, Myron says:
I've watched him for a long time. I don't know that he holds any surprises
Then he explains how much life deteriorate if we attempted to avert global warming rather than take its severe consequences:
Mr. Gore has always promoted causes that would require taking decisions away from the people and putting them in the hands of an expert elite. Mr. Gore's ideal would be to give each person a book of energy rationing coupons and every year put fewer coupons in the book. It is a program of mandatory energy starvation.
Pathetic.

Now Gore's history of involvement with Occidental Petroleum is an utter disgrace, but Myron can't mention it because he would expose the fact that all oil companies are fundamentally evil, especially Exxon.

Likewise, Gore's spectacular betrayal of the majority of the country in the year 2000 also can't be mentioned, because it would remind people that the election was stolen.

So we're left with a weak yellow-eyed critique of the wastefulness of Al Sore's book tour. Said Myron:
While the CEI video pokes fun at Mr. Gore's profligate consumption of the world's petroleum resources, we don't begrudge his lifestyle that requires using as much energy as a small village in America or a medium-sized town in Africa. The mobility that jet fuel and gasoline provide is a good thing and the benefits of abundant energy should be available to all people, not just the elite. CEI calls on Mr. Gore to stop preaching against the petroleum products he uses so lavishly and instead join us in promoting access to energy. I also can't help but wonder how much energy will be wasted while showing An Inconvenient Truth in empty, air-conditioned theaters across the nation.
This is no good. No good at all. Your children will die in the world you have fought to bring on, Mr Ebell. As long as you can drive them to school when they are young, you don't care what happens later.