Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Mythimating Appalachia and Gaza Alike

Check out this Lillis post from 3/24/09:
http://washingtonindependent.com/35488/epa-halts-mountaintop-mining

"...and communities throughout the Appalachian region suffer daily from contaminated drinking water, increased flooding, and a decimated landscape …"

Take a look at that word, "decimated:" it means, to reduce by a factor of ten. Our lords of coal have done to Appalachia what our lords of war have done to Gaza.

Two examples come to mind.

Democracy Now! April 2, 2008
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/2/oil_execs_...

AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Congressmember Jay Inslee of Washington State also questioned the Senior Vice President of Exxon Mobil, Stephen Simon, about the kind of change that could be expected from Exxon Mobil when they’re investing less than one percent of their profits in renewable energy.

REP. JAY INSLEE: Mr. Simon, listening to your testimony makes me even more convinced that we need to act to create an incentive for decision makers in industry to really make real investments in the clean energy revolution rather than relatively small ones. And the reason I say that is that, listening to you, as far as I can tell, you’re spending less than half a percent of your gross revenues on clean energy research. Is that right?

STEPHEN SIMON: It would be a very modest amount. I would acknowledge that. But I would not acknowledge that we’re not doing a lot to address greenhouse gas emission.

REP. JAY INSLEE: Well, considering that we have to cut our greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent in this country below our levels by 2050, would you agree that if your company continues on its present course, it will fall several hundred orders of magnitude short of what we have to do to prevent cataclysmic global climate change?

STEPHEN SIMON: Well, the assumption there that that’s required in order to do that, I would—

REP. JAY INSLEE: Well, how else is it going to happen? I mean, oil isn’t going to all of a sudden become clean. We need to do the research to figure out these technologies.

STEPHEN SIMON: No, but the fact is that we are going to have oil and gas and coal, and it’s going to constitute about 80 percent of the energy equation. With that as a given, how do we then address and do what we can to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions with that being the case?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[[[Full-spectrum dominance /Our Commonweal///[[[{{{ENERGY}}}]]]]]

Spoken like a true economic hit man, eh? Perkins confessed to exactly the same kind of scheme: with certain givens built in from the inception, we oversell nations on destructive extractive industries, bribing whoever has to be bribed, racking up unforgivable public debt, then taking over upon default. This is how we do it.

Now consider Gaza.

[[[Full-spectrum dominance /Our Commonweal///[[[{{{GAZA}}}]]]]]

1100 dead Gazans compared to 10 dead Israeli soldiers. Now that's what I call "leveraging." The difference is of two orders of magnitude; two "powers."

Israel has just finished razing Gaza to the negative second power, aka "bombing them back to the Stone Age." The US is supplying nearly a billion dollars to rebuild what we helped destroy. We expedited delivery of advanced weaponry for Israel to exalt itself to the second power, aka deus ex machina aka "Shock & Awe," and now we're sending money to rebuild.

So there stands proud Israel over prostrate Palestine, propped up and powered by machines of war and almighty dollars made in the USA.

So do we call this "centimated," or maybe "millimated?" No, I know: MYTHIMATED. Jacked to hell and back, and stuck with the bill both ways by myths conceived with malign intent (as the residents of Libby, Montana, now dying of mesothelioma, who brought home lethal vermiculite dust on their clothes for their loved ones to breathe, having been told myths of its safety by WR Grace and gov't health officials alike).
beloved/[{UNION}]/Beloved
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck"d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know"st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper"d swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,
And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

--John Donne, The Flea (from Scott Horton's blog, No Comment http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004598)

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