Waging war against war {and stuff}

..and those who make war and those who dont care much one way or the other and those who just want to get to work and those ipod wearers and cellphone talkers and meat eaters and everyone else who consumes anything without praying to it first.

Daily Ablution, always good for poking sticks at the lunatic left has a good one here:

Towards a Deep Green Stone Age - By Any Means Necessary

About a gathering of 'concerned citizens'...

"We will broadly outline our options for confronting and dismantling civilization, the pros, cons, and considerations of each,and a sharing of resources for people interested in considering different avenues of action."
.."Is a serious meeting to address the destruction of our planet and potential effective resistance. It will include theoretical discussions of serious and confrontational strategies and tactics."

Summary: Civilization offends us we will pluck it out.

For all their moronic blather about "creating a world based on mutual aid, love, justice, and connection to the living world", inspired by "environmentalism, feminism, deep ecology, spirituality, anarchy, indigenous lifeways, anti-oppression politics, peak oil and collapse theories, and past struggles for justice", a look just under the surface reveals their real aim - to bomb us back to the stone age. Literally.

While most of us following the links in that might dismiss these nutjobs, I'd advise against it. We did the same about Islamo-terrorists {some still do}. and the danger of these lunatics aligning with Al Quaeda, with whom they fully sympathise and admire, makes a pretty effective fringe group.

I think the real problem is that it's possible for someone who is certifiably insane to actually put together a program that sounds somewhat reasonable to those who worry constantly about the earth being destroyed by us.
And these people are well on the way to certifiable lunacy.. especially considering their implausible outcomes by method used.

The desire for humanity to revert to stone age 'hunter gatherer' status totally ignores that doing so will result in only the strongest and most wily surviving their blitzkrieg against any form of industrial process.

If you looked at the backgrounds of these people, it's highly likely they fall into the urban academic. In the society they advocate, they would be the first to wither away and die.
Because the same stone age 'da Vinci' they admire for his cave paintings probably did them right after bashing in the head of the cave-painter from the next clan over in a dispute over a possum. Or, if he was vegan, a cluster of berries.

So even Ward Churchill, who preaches regularly from the pulpit of academic idiotry, though he claimed to be indian, probably never learned to live off the land. One assumes he would survive by eating fawning graduate assistants.

To wit: Only NRA members, and Pro Bass fishermen have a good chance of making through their desired holocaust. And Ted Nugent will be their prophet.

And if wishing for your own type to become extinct in the name of saving the earth for those you despise isnt insane, what is.

An Old Fashioned Blog

One of the problems with being inspired to write by reading is once the habit is started, you cant get rid of it.

You change the choice of topics, but it's reading nonetheless. And it's worse when you're interested in EVERYTHING!

For example, I can give you detailed, flow sequenced, training in how auto fuel injection {almost all based on the Bosch Jetronic system, did'ja know!} works... and how to solve engine problems based on that. Of course that's one of the PRACTICAL things I have read.

But mainly I read on politics, which can drive you crazy when you pay too close attention.

So it's great and refreshingly distractive when I ran across a real old fashioned blog - two links away from Tim Worstall, of course.

Free Man in Preston is a GREAT read... the guy has everythingto appeal to a former corporate IT wonk like me. He doesnt go into the tech stuff, though... he just observes from that particular perch in what is essentially a witty diary.

Handle With Care Friday, Jan 19
“Tim, the reason you’re going nowhere,” said Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, blazing into the conversation like she’d been shot from a cannon, “is that you don’t have clearly defined goals. You don’t know where you want to be.”

What I was actually intending to say, before she’d interrupted, was that I was going nowhere until I’d finished my lunch, in response to an order from Death to fetch some stuff from the data centre. I tried explaining this to Stella but once she starts, she’s not easily stopped.

She was wearing a black trouser suit, expensive looking, finished off with orange trim. It said “I’m a not to be fucked with executive, with a hint of Hare Krishna to show my spiritual side.”
I meanwhile was wearing my new jumper, in black of course, woven from a supernaturally soft fabric, probably wool or something like it, which I was casually splattering with tomato soup. It said “Boyishly cute. Sloppy eater.”
We appeared disconcertingly colour co-ordinated.

“You want to do this and you want to do that, but all your projects end up lost in the fog. You spend your time floundering, blah, blah…”

Oh for goodness’ sake. I looked outside. Today the world through my window - streaked with a thick layer of grime following yesterday’s gales - had a soft focussed, Vaseline on the lens quality about it.
Rex the security guard was clearing up fallen debris - broken slates, the former contents of dustbins, a milk float down by the generators - striding along with slow, deliberate purposefulness. He looked like a character in a bizarre litter themed porn film. Don’t dwell too long on that.

Tabs walked by with an armful of reports and Terry said, “January’s such a miserable bloody month. Some people seem to shutdown through sheer misery.”
“Do you actually have any ambition, Tim? At all?” asked Stella.
“Yes,” I said. “For you to stop bugging me.”
“It’s beyond me,” Terry continued, lost in the dimly lit cubicle of his mind, “how anybody is ever born in September.”

Rex was fishing milk crates out of branches with a long pole. It reminded me of those hooked poles they had at school for opening windows with. Terry said that sometimes he knows how those Jehovah’s Witnesses must feel. They keep knocking on the door but they’ve long since given up hope of ever being invited in. Milk bottles were scattered on the grass like rotting apples.

Later on, after the going home bell had sounded, Stella told me how her friend Becky has been offered the chance to work in China for three months. It would be a great opportunity for her, career-wise and as “an enhancing, you know, life experience”. She’s an ambitious girl, and the bank she works for would look on it favourably if she were to go. Less favourably if she didn’t. I guess this is what today was all about.
“Just three months?” I asked.
“That’s what she said.”
“And when does she have to give her answer?”
“Possibly longer if it goes well. And if she wants to.”

Ivan the Terribly Thorough swept into the room, a one man flash-mob with a vacuum cleaner. He switched off to dust around the window sills and said that ambitions are all well and good, but handle with care.
“They’re like wishes. Allow them a little privacy,” he said, as dust spiralled skywards above the radiator.
“It’s bad luck to say them out loud,” and then he was gone.

Oh, to write like that!

The Great Global Warming Swindle

From UK channel 4 - 75 minutes: The thread is unraveling from Enviro-Emporer Gore's New Clothes "We've almost begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention, a group of naysayers have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming. According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault and there's nothing you can do about it." So there!

18 Doughty Street & : A new 'Appreciate America' movement!

The love between America and our Motherland, despite all efforts of the left in both countries, is not dead. 18 Doughty Street is a web streaming 'alternative political views source attempting to provide encouragement for those who don't buy the "Evil America" or the "BusHitler" meme.

The associated blog, BritainAmerica.com has already attracted the vultures.... who desperately attempt to keep the nonsensical Bush Bashing paradigm alive.

Comments

I am a Tory who loathes Bush.

I object to:
- misleading people over fsith-based welfare
- a scandalous fiscal record
- a remarkable disregard for the stature of the Supreme Court
- a terrible record on human rights

I would certainly have voted for Kerry.

Posted by: Mike A | March 06, 2007 at 03:09 PM

* * *

JF
Problem is most Americans have a super-individualistic mindset. Most decent Brits would regard the average American voter as selfish in the extreme. Most normal people over here would have happily voted Kerry.

Its time we decent Conservatives dissocitated ourselves from the loutish bible bashing Republicans accross the atlantic.

PS Theres a reason the Bush heartlands are referred to as the fly-over states!

Posted by: si | March 06, 2007 at 06:47 PM

* *


Scooter Libby - Don't drop the soap or you'll get what the American people have had since 2001.

Posted by: Volunteer | March 06, 2007 at 10:13 PM

* *
So if you don't love President Bush you have no 'recognizable Conservative values' according to JF. What a complete moron!

Posted by: malcolm | March 06, 2007 at 10:59 PM

Which comments of course encourage talking point circles, as we have to point out that Bush is only conservative on national security and tax-cut-fueled economic robustness. On spending initiatives, and illegal immigration, he is anything but conservative.

And of course, since I'm a fairly independent thinker, I'd like to point out a few 'simplistics' in this video ad, from 18 Doughty Street; A World without America.



In the height of the Cold War, it was common for the Soviets to claim that Russian Scientists had actually invented most everything credited to the west, including the Telephone and wireless communications {yes, I'm aware of Marconi}. As one who has read up on various technology historical claims, I'd have to say that it's indeed possible that they were correct.

Not 'probable' but possible. The difference in how those discoveries would have been handled, of course, makes the issue moot. In Czarist Russia, there would have been no appreciation of the value to the average person. In the Soviet, even more, the inventions would have been looked on with suspicion and distrust.

So what is really important is not that some technology was born or made practical in the US, but that there was a freedom to exploit it. And, unlike more restrictive societies, the products quickly trickled down to all of us.

And THAT is what makes the difference, in more ways than just market forces but political agendas as well.

Here's how the above video came about, what judges for the winning ad wanted to see:


To me, this video is more evocative than the result. Of course, we have no way of knowing that without the US, there wouldnt have been some other balancing force, perhaps Great Britain, as it is closest than any other country to our ideals... I cant even rule out Japan. But the point is that just like our humble hero in "It's a Wonderful Life" America HAS made a difference.