A five degree climate change would have the potential to wipe out the majority of all humans, all mammals, reptiles, birds, fish, insects, plants, single-celled pond life and Wall Street Journal Op-ed readers. It would make the terrible consequences of the current economic meltdown pale into insignificance.

This is fact, according to scientists, and opinion according to the WSJ. But it is a fact nonetheless, so how do we prove it? Simple: that event already happened with the increased CO2 and resulting global warming at the Permian-Triassic extinction, 250 million years ago. We can read about it in the stone tablets of the fossil book.

The potential threat of human created, global warming is a fact according to the mountain of evidence and scientific consensus, but opinion according to the current US government and Energy Secretary, Sam Bodman. In addition, we are in the middle of a die-off, let alone recession, with the ongoing rate of species extinction being greater than at the P-T boundary.

Against this background of intransigence, ignorance and incompetence Obama’s rumored selection of Noble Prize winning physicist, Stephen Chu, as Energy Secretary would be the single most important appointment in a generation. It is as if the Papacy had yielded to the greater wisdom of Galileo.

Ordinary people have some idea what the once obscure term LIBOR means, according to a piece on Bloomberg. At the same time, VP candidate, Sarah Palin has recently shown that she: cannot name a US newspaper; a single Supreme Court decision apart from Roe vs Wade; where Gaza is or any impact the $700B might have on the budget.

Today’s Journal, a place where interns know what LIBOR is, leads with the headline: “Biden, Palin Clash on Taxes, Iraq in Sharp Edged Debate“.

How can a TV debate model that fails to smoke out someone who does not understand high school level geography or politics become the de facto forum for voters to asses Presidential and VP candidate ability?

Josh Marshall points out that US TV debates are not actually debates at all, there is no follow up. In interviews with Couric, all of Palin’s knowledge gaps were revealed in simple specific follow up questions after responses that were pure waffle.

If you aren’t born here, in order to be able to vote, there is a method to smoke out people who don’t learn basic principals of the democracy. My wife recently obtained US citizenship, which requires answering questions about things that include the Supreme Court and its decisions.

Sarah Palin revealed in interview that she wouldn’t necessarily be able to pass a test required to vote, and yet a test of whether people should vote for her is described by the Wall Street Journal as ’sharp’.

The US is moving to the left and the UK to the right. In the US, a Republican PR spokesman has shopped the Bush administration and the owner of Fox News and the Wall Street journal is praising Obama. In the UK someone who went to the same school as Prince William has replaced a Trotskyist as London Mayor and a Bishop makes today’s headlines with a supreme piece of irrational thinking, blaming the culture of the civil rights movement for social decay and secularism for the rise of Islam.

With Scott McLellan shopping the Bush administration, people are wondering why? The answer is to be like his Dad, how ironic that family conservatism should undermine the Republicans:

“McClellan’s father, Barr McClellan, was an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and then for the Federal Power Commission under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. Barr McClellan also wrote a book about power and Washington: “Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK.” Published in 2003, the book claims that Texas attorney — and McClellan’s former boss — Ed Clark masterminded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” Link

If Murdoch switches from Republican to Democrat he will be doing what he did before in the UK, with a switch from Conservative to Labour. People who actually believe what they preach at the Wall Street Journal and Fox News may be in for a rude awakening. Link

In England, where I am at the moment, there is a palpable shift to the right, not to fiscal conservatism but to anachronistic social conservatism. A scatter-brained Church of England Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali makes headlines in the papers today saying that all the UK’s social problems are a fault of the progressive secular culture and that this creates a moral vacuum that allows for Fundamentalist Islam. In other words secular culture is responsible for bad religion, which is defined as the religion that is not his, and that the moral decay in society is due to what gave us the civil rights movement. Link

From today’s Guardian review of a book about letters between the upper class Mitford sisters whose contacts with everyone from Kennedy to Hitler are documented.

If ever Hannah Arendt was right about the banality of evil it is here, in black and white:

“The Führer was heavenly, in his best mood, & very gay,” she [Unity Mitford] wrote to Diana [Mitford] in 1935. “He talked a lot about Jews, which was lovely.” She signs off “With best love and Heil Hitler! Bobo”

There is a surreal moment where there article talks about Hitler arriving (while head of state) at Diana’s apartment in London and ringing the doorbell and nobody answering it.

Link

Today a globeandmail.com: Suicide bomber killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. this is a very important story following on from the Red Mosque siege, but it has had very little coverage in the US.

Financial news in newspapers and television in the US is far superior to Europe, but international news is either nonexistent or terrible.

I would suggest that keeping the public informed of what is happening in Pakistan at the moment, would be an investment better spend than a significant portion of the defense budget.

Someone on CNN called me a ‘Dirty Jew’

Imagine that Iran decided to invade Mexico in the face of near universal international condemnation, because it claimed Mexico had weapons that it turned out it didn’t. And that it then waged war for several years, de-stabilising the American continent and causing Mexicans to stream across the border into America.

Imagine that Iran had the audacity to setup a Pensicola prison, actually in America but controlled by Iran. Here they could put people that they captured and not have them subject to the Geneva Convention or domestic law. Then imagine that Iran had its navy patrolling the area and inspecting fishing boats, just off the coast of Texas.

Imagine the Americans decided the Iranians were messing too near their border, like with the Russians and Cuba, and captured several Iranian seamen and showed them on TV looking unharmed physically and possibly much better off than the Pensacola detainees, who didn’t get many TV crew visits.

Would there be justifiable public outrage at the actions of America, or would the actions of Iran help mitigate it?

CONTINUE READING…

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Its pretty amazing when you come accross something you actually know a little about, how you discover how naive a supposedly slick PR machine is.

Today Bush cited ‘Iraq the Model’ as an example of success in Iraq - because there are bloggers you see.

Some time ago I added 20 or so Iraqi Bloggers to my RSS reader. About a third of them have since fled the country, a third have disappeared and the remainder are a woeful tale of human misery and sufffering, leaving a sample of 1 - Iraq the Model.

In fact Iraq the Model is the potential online equivalent of ‘Mission Accomplished’, something championed too soon that could go the other way. Carl Rove is not so much a genius (an incumbant Republican sock puppet would have won after 911) but a rather out of touch ’spinster’.

Bush Cites Upbeat Bloggers From Baghdad

Which one of these two buildings was built by slaves?

The one built 4000 years later.

Protester disrupts Westminster Abbey service marking 200 years since slave trade abolished - International Herald Tribune

Chris Jordan does some fantastic art pieces that represent quantitative information visually.

Amount of money spent per hour in Iraq as a giant picture of Benjamin Franklin made out of dollar bills.

Number of people admitted to hospital for painkiller abuse as an abstract shape made from the same number of Vicodin pills etc.

Thanks Cori.

current work

Oh My God, Please Stop This Fucking War

Ty and Renee Ziegel’s Wedding
Ty and Renee before Ty’s accident. via Kottke