12-29-06 What We Don't Know - pt 2

Going all the way back to the era of the Shah in Iran, whose ouster signalized the first big oil shocks in America during the 1970's, what "we didn't know" was that Iran's turnabout into an Islamic theocracy was the beginning of what we don't know today. What we don't know today began to turn into what we're finding out (at least for me) back at the beginning of the month when I posted part one on this subject.

Now the story's beginning to gain a little momentum, and I saw this article published today.

Essentially, the money that has been made from oil exports out of Iran over the past three decades has been used by the Islamic theocratic government for internal social programs. Very little, if any, has been used for the maintenance of oil infrastructure, or the development of new oil infrastucture. The consequence of this mis-spent revenue is that a crisis point has been looming for several years now.

Once this situation is understood, it's easier to comprehend why a country with one of the world's largest oil reserves would ever need nuclear power plants. And once it begins to make sense that they really do need to come up with alternative sources of energy for their country real soon, much of the confusion that surrounds the political ideas about Iran and the political motives of those in power in Iran begins to take on a different shade of meaning.

That government has been using the revenues from oil exports all this time to "pay off" the population, essentially, for its support. As long as the gravy train flows, the population is easy to keep on their side. Now the whole thing has reached a point where the whole thing can very easily collapse within the next decade, the oil revenue flow could collapse, the gravy train "pay off" in social funding could collapse, and the chaos that is inevitable in such a collapse will forever remove power from those in Iran who currently have it.

12-26-06 Merchants Of Chaos

First, you find a chaotic problem. If you can't find one big enough, then you just create one. I'll point out that the best example of creating one is the "war on terror" beginning with Afghanistan, and then Iraq.

After you've got the population convinced that the chaotic problem really exists and that it really has to be solved, then you're all set. Now you can rape the US treasury. Throw caution to the wind and appropriate billions and billions to solve the chaotic problem, year after year. Meanwhile, make sure that there's plenty of that money going into the right pockets.

Results? Who cares about results?

Tossed into the mix last year was hurricane Katrina... a chaotic problem that was miraculously dropped into their laps like a golden egg. What a fantastic opportunity!!! It took the prospect of creating another chaotic problem right out of their hands!

Here's an article about the fraud and pocketing of "katrina money".

If you look at where the billions and billions of taxpayer dollars went in the waging of the "war on terror" and "handling" of hurricane Katrina, you might notice that there's a vast and persistent lack of results. And underneath the lack of results is the auditing of where the money actually went. That's where you find the skimpy details of investigations, fines, wrongdoing, and (this is the one that really says it all) sloppy accounting...

Here's a good example of sloppy accounting.

Of course, the way that the major media spins these scandal-ridden activities is the way the above story was spun, as well. "Oh, gee, we just wanted to get things going as fast as we could... to... to... to HELP PEOPLE, y'see... and well... gosh, we weren't that concerned with all those accounting details... setting all that up would've slowed down our efforts to HELP PEOPLE, see..."

Same story across the board.

These guys are the merchants of chaos, and they will never stop, never give up, and never cede the power they accumulate along the way. Some of their henchmen have been running the executive branch of our government for the past six years. They have not been "helping people" at all. They have simply been "helping themselves" to a treasure that future generations of taxpayers will have to come up with.

Meanwhile, in six short years, they have made the world a much worse place, a much more dangerous and chaotic place, and they have profited immensely from it. At this point in time, anyone who believes that what has happened was "by chance" has to have their heads buried in the sand.

12-26-06 A Year Of Blogging

Today marks 366 days since I started this blog. Originally, I said that I started it because I had been putting all this sort of stuff into e-mails to people, and the e-mails were just too long. But that wasn't quite on the mark. This is more like catharsis for me. Spiritual puking, actually, and a large amount of mental masturbation. And the process of spouting all these musings and rationalizations has, quite certainly, been very enjoyable for me because I can "get it out of my system" with this output.

Back in my younger days, I effected a similar "sorting out" process by writing songs. The songwriting was mostly an emotional outlet, and it took three or four decades to get all that stuff out of my system. I tried writing a song a couple of years ago, and it was mildly enjoyable. But the need to outflow the emotional senses of things seems to have run its course.

Not so with the intellectual outflow, though. Every day, I see things or read things or see things on TV that basically screw with my own inner sense of how things ought to be. It's a comparison between the way things are, and the way things could be in a scene that was closer to ideal.

It isn't so much that I think I know a lot, or that I have any solutions to the problems facing us in this world, or even that I think I could be some sort of opinion leader. It's more along the lines of sensing that something's wrong, here and there, and this is my attempt to sort it out to some degree.

The things that I try to focus on are aspects, spins, and viewpoints that I think are uncomplicated but generally missed. Or, maybe just not focused on enough...

For instance, the president's inability to pronounce "nuclear".

This is the sort of thing that says to me, "Hey, there's something really out of whack here. This man graduated from Yale, and he can't pronounce 'nuclear' correctly? What's up with that?" I didn't graduate from any college at all, and I know how the word is pronounced. Just for this one thing, all by itself, George W. Bush is a national embarrassment of the first water.

Things like that will just nag at me...

I mean, why has no reporter asked the President of the United States why he can't pronounce that word correctly? He should have been called on it right after his honeymoon (the first 100 days in office). Someone should have stood up and asked, "Why, Mr. President, as a graduate of Yale, can you not pronounce the word 'nuclear' correctly?"

It's just a niggling little thing, but it indicates that something isn't quite right.

Before the internet, I wrote in notebooks. My first journal/diary was started when I was about seven. Over the years, I collected a lot of different sized notebooks full of my scrawled musings. It was a large pile, but all of it was lost in a fire in the early 1980's. Right around that point, I bought my first computer (a commodore 64), and my musings and journal/diary outflows changed over to digital files. There are a few notebooks that I filled during this transition, but not much on paper anymore. And I wonder about this, because of the ephemeral nature of such things.

Paper doesn't last too many years/decades before it starts to deteriorate. But at least the alteration of what's on that paper is difficult. With electronic media, however, nobody can ever know if what's written today has been altered by someone else, down the line. Indeed, a whole body of work can simply disappear when the media it's saved on either crashes or breaks or accidentally gets too close to a magnet...

So this is ephemeral. Every letter, every word, every sentence... it could all just disappear in an instant. It's not a permanent record. Quite often, I think that this may be a good thing... especially after blogging for a year.

12-23-06 Same As It Ever Was

When I was a kid and the way that automobiles work was explained to me, I was amazed. I hadn't even suspected that the car moved only because, down there at the bottom of it, the engine was using explosions of gasoline and air. The technology is so refined that these explosions happen several times a second.

I had thought there was some far more advanced magic occuring under the hood, and I had hoped that someday I would understand it. But this! This was a tremendous let-down for me!

It soon became apparent that everything we had in this modern age of technology was, at the bottom of it, just a matter of making fire with various things. We make fire with gasoline to drive pistons inside automobile engines. We make fire with coal and natural gas, and use the heat to boil water and make steam, and use the steam to turn turbines, and use the power of the turbines to turn generators in electric plants. We make fire with diesel fuel inside big engines to make explosions, and those diesels are used to turn generators that make electricity, and that electricity is used to run the electric motors that drive the engines in trains. Everywhere I looked, the beginning of the chain of power sources all went back to making fire.

I grew up in the 1950's and 1960's as the "atomic age" was coming to fruition. Atomic power, I thought, would be the more advanced magic. But it turned out that I was wrong about that, too. When I learned that the only difference between an atomic bomb and the power source for a nuclear reactor was simply that the same chain reaction that could result in a horrific explosion was simply being controlled, and that it was only the heat that was being used, I was again disappointed. It was an even bigger let-down. The heat from the controlled nuclear chain reaction is used to boil water and make steam, and the steam is used to turn turbines, and the turbines are used to turn generators to make electricity...

So there it was. Einstein's great breakthrough showing that the universe is made out of energy, and that there's so much energy comprising matter that you have to multiply the speed of light by itself to come up with such a huge number that will give us some idea of just how much energy that really is... this fantastic discovery was being used, essentially, to "make fire".

Yes, it's true, the world uses water power and wind power and solar power today. But the ratio of those renewable energy sources of power and non-renewable energy sources is still way off; we're still just "making fire" for the overwhelming majority of the world's power sources.

Even now, as I look back on the half century of my life, the world's so-called "high technology" and all the wonderful things it's brought us, at the bottom of it, is still this fire society paradigm, this fundamental and old idea that in order to generate power you've got to make fire.

Why the modern world is still a "fire society" after all the fantastic discoveries that have been made in physics over the past century is certainly a good question, in my estimation. It leads to some fairly simple facts. But those facts are difficult to convey when, down there at the bottom of it all, most people don't realize that they're living in a "fire society". Most people think we're living in some successor to the "atomic age" where the magic of technology is at work.

There's a fire burning somewhere making heat, and the heat is boiling water to make steam, and the steam is driving a turbine to make a generator turn, and the electricity from that generator is connected to huge wires that criss-cross the countryside, sooner or later reaching the place you are and providing the electricity for the computer screen you're looking at. Everything you have and everything you eat was processed and transported using power generated by fire.

It'll be 2007 in a few days. And all the wonders of our modern technology are still run, basically, by fire...

Welcome to the future (same as it ever was).

12-21-06 Criss-Miss

It's almost Criss-Miss, which is often shown in print as "Xmas," although in today's politically corrupt language it doesn't appear much anymore... as people refer to the "happy holidays" instead. But I like to say, "Merry Criss-Miss" anyway. Then during the following week I can say, "Happy New Year."

In those years when I had plenty of disposable income, giving presents was never a problem. But in those years where disposable income doesn't exist (like this one), I have to take a "bah, humbug" stance out of simple financial expediency.

I've been noticing that I'm probably not the only one who's strapped for cash this season, as the number of green zeros on front doors appears to be down considerably. But those who do have money to burn are showing off their prosperity by purchasing those big things for the yard. There's the giant inflatable Santa Clause, and the giant inflatable simulated glass bulb with the snow blowing around inside, and... well, that's about the extent of the choices this year. I expect there will be even more garish and absurd inflatable yard shrines coming out next year.

As customers reach their destination and debark from my taxicab, I've been saying, "Merry Criss-Miss" to most of them this week. I mean, I don't say that to someone who's spent the whole ride pissing and moaning about how they hate the holidays, but it's fun to say it to people who first say to me, "Happy Holidays," just before they get out. The politically incorrect "Merry Criss-Miss" often gives them pause.

It's really amazing to me that saying, "Merry Criss-Miss" would give anyone pause. But that's what I've been seeing. The ones that are most "paused" by it are invariably people who are working in big companies where the corporate culture of this politically corrupt "Happy Holidays" has been burned into their social veneer by the "Human Resources" department over the years. So, when I say it, they give pause... it's an "Oh my God! You're not supposed to SAY that!" kind of thing.

Most of them recover quickly, however, and a smile comes to their faces as they realize that out here, outside the building I'm dropping them off at, where the policies of the "Human Resources" department have no power, they CAN say, "Merry Criss-Miss" and not risk losing their job.

Merry Criss-Miss, everyone!

12-18-06 Gag Me With A Gavel

This particular news story just makes me want to puke!

A seventeen year old boy and his girlfriend, two years his junior, engaged in oral sex. They were caught. Earlier this week, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the sentence imposed on this boy, which is ten years in prison, and the rest of his life spent as a registered sex offender.

What, in the name of all that's fair and right, is the state of Georgia worth at this point??? This was consensual sex between two young kids only two years apart in age, fer chrissakes! They were BOTH "under-age"! And now this boy who, according this post was a good kid, had good grades in school, and had no prior trouble with the law, is going to be injected into the Georgia prison system for ten years where he will be taught how to fight for his life, bargain with male rapists, and learn how to be a criminal. Then after that cruel and unusual punishment, when he gets out of that "system of justice" he'll be branded as a sex offender for the rest of his life, he won't be able to get a decent job, he won't be able to make a decent life for himself, and he'll be punished in this manner for...

...For loving a girl two years younger than him???

12-9-06 Gangs

To characterize the situation in Iraq at this point as "civil war" isn't really accurate. What's going on over there is tribal level loyalties and affiliations acting within small spheres where the members all know who belongs to their group and who doesn't. In other words, it's thousands of gangs, all fighting each other. And the American military is the biggest gang.

Over here in the US, someone once said that "all politics is local." It speaks to the same reality everywhere, that the group one belongs to is the basic personal reality, where the members of that group are one's own and they all know each other, and where the level of interaction between members of one's own group is significantly different than the interactions between members of different goups. Within each group, there is politics, but between groups there is negotiation or war.

The significant difference in how people interact is this simple one. Among group members, it's politics. Between gangs it's either negotiation or war.

Corporations, for instance, are gangs. They prey on each other, corporation versus corporation. Sometimes they negotiate and work together, and sometimes they wage war against each other.

This choice, whether to negotiate or wage war, is the basis for what we see now in Iraq. The largest gang, the US military, is charged with the task of making war on thousands of smaller gangs. The problem, basically, is that they can't easily tell which gangs are the enemy, and which gangs could be made into allies.

One thing is pretty definite, however, in that the sooner the warmongering mofo's in the White House focus on negotiation instead of "winning the war", the sooner this mess might begin to show signs of cooling down.

After all, when the leader of the biggest gang on the block refuses to negotiate, things can only continue to get worse.

12-8-06 What We Don't Know

One of the things I didn't know was why Iran would have any slightest need for nuclear energy plants, when it's got one of the world's biggest oil reserves. This is a question that goes unanswered in the mainstream media, basically, because the mainstream media isn't doing anything intellectually viable. But you have to ask that question....

All the noise about Iran wanting to build nuclear weapons, and the reply from Iran that they are merely building nuclear power plants, is just so perplexing to me. I keep hearing this two pronged attack of words and shrug my shoulders and go WTF??? If I believe the US Government's propaganda, that they're building nuclear weapons, then Iran is "the enemy". If I believe the Iranian Government's propaganda, that they are merely building nuclear power plants, then Iran must be nuts because they have one of the world's biggest oil reserves and why the hell would they even NEED ANY nuclear power plants???

Maybe, just maybe, we're missing some crucial information here...

Ah! Here it is!

12-7-06 A Date That Will Live In Infamy

Today is the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which precipitated the United States' entry into World War II.

Here is a website run by the US Navy that's all about that day...

12-5-06 NIH Gets Roughed Up

About a month ago, I posted about NIH's new conflict of interest rules for staffers.

Today, I spotted this article from the Washington Post about an NIH staffer who's been charged with violating conflict of interest rules. He faces a year in jail and a $100,000 fine, if convicted.

Interesting, isn't it? But it doesn't end there. The big deal in my eyes is that this guy, Pearson Sunderland, III, is being charged with not disclosing some $285,000 in fees that he received from Pfizer, beginning in 1998.

That's "Pfizer", as in the same Pfizer in the news right now for suddenly abandoning their experimental drug torcetrapib, after the death toll went a little higher than expected.

What goes around, comes around, eh?