Weapons manufacturers vs. the rest of us

Hiroshima in retrospect

It has been obvious since 1945 that we have the technology to incinerate ourselves.

Despite this obvious fact, huge industries keep producing weapons that have no obvious use.  Uses have to be manufactured.

No human conflict since 1945 has been settled by force of arms, and we could argue about how "settled" the outcome of World War 2 was. Nevertheless, people keep trying to settle disputes with the force of arms.

It never works but it makes a few people rich.

Let's take the Middle East and North Africa, an obvious disaster area into which NATO, Russia and China have inserted themselves by providing the technology to blow things up.  That's what it is: technology to blow things up.  No matter how sophisticated the technology, at its heart it is the means to hit somebody over the head with an axe.  The logic, such as it is, is that if you have more axes than the other people, you win.

People argue that nuclear weapons forced Japan's surrender.  There's even doubt about that.  As with the Eastern Front for Germany, there's an argument that what forced Japan's hand was the possibility that Russia would turn its murderous intention on Japan, so better to surrender to the Americans.

The only winners are the people who make the axes.

The auto-radicalized extremist Islamist jihadist terrorists are coming! Or going. Whatever.

Part 1 of an educational series from the Government of Canada

Many citizens are concerned about the presence of Muslim hordes in Canada who might, without warning, become fanatical killers bent on destroying the fabric of decent, right-thinking, white society.

The Government of Canada understands these concerns, and provides the following guidance:

1.  There is absolutely nothing to worry about, as long as...

2.  ...the government has appropriate powers through its decent God-fearing Christian (and selected Jewish) agencies to...

3.  ...ignore the Charter, Magna Carta, and habeas corpus...

4.  ...and do what's needed as determined by The Strong Leader.  

Part 2:  When to phone the RCMP about Suspicious Activity

Wordfuck and Terrorism

 “wordfuck” n.

Definition:  the use of a word to cause confusion rather than clarity.

A recent flagrant example:  Obama's use of the word "imminent"

Orwell was all over this, but the use of "Orwellian" has itself been wordfucked by having its use vague, which is convenient for the user.  Better to read his own words:

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

***

"What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can choose — not simply ACCEPT— the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

***

At the end of the Second World War, the United States Department of War became the Department of Defense.  It's been downhill from there.

SWAMP - a new demographic

Saxon White Anglo Male Protestant

...which is becoming extinct, but not without a lot of thrashing around, risking detonation of the entire world:  Dawkins, Hitchens, ...it goes on.

How did this happen?

The essential attribute is lack of insight.  The inability to distinguish between a dispassionate interest in the truth and gonadal/brain-stem reasoning cloaked with pseudo-rational "thinking" is the hallmark of the species.

Issac Newton spent his later career studying alchemy.  We can all do this.  An interest in the truth , however defined, is what separates the crows from the goats.

July 4th Ultraviolet Terrorism Alert

Just because you can't see it doesn't mean you won't get burned.

If nothing happens it's because we protected you even though our resources are stretched beyond capacity.

If something horrible happens it's because we don't have enough resources or power and/or have crippling civilian oversight.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Mispeaking and Mistruthing

We will be on the lookout for terrorists this 4th of July. Think or behave differently at your own risk.

— U.S. Dept. of Fear (@FearDept) July 3, 2015

Jason Fekete, Ottawa Citizen

Published: March 18, 2013, 4:57 pm

OTTAWA — Alberta Premier Alison Redford says the federal government should follow her province’s lead of introducing a carbon price on greenhouse gas emissions for large industrial emitters — as long as it improves environmental outcomes and is not a publicity stunt.

In an interview Monday with Postmedia News, Redford also said the Obama administration’s looming decision over the Keystone XL oilsands pipeline will have long-term implications on the Canada-U.S. relationship.

She also scolded federal NDP leader Tom Mulcair for spreading what she said are “mistruths” and betraying Canada’s long-term economic interests during his visit last week to the United States.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.

George Orwell
Politics and the English Language

"I mis-spoke."

What the hell does that mean?  I didn't know what I was talking about?  I thought it was right but it wasn't?  I just made it up and didn't care if it was right or not?  I knew it wasn't right but said it anyway?

Here's a suggestion;  let's encourage the use of "accurate" and "inaccurate."

For example:  "Premier Redford was unable to say which statement of Mr. Mulcair's was inaccurate or how it was inaccurate."

Canada Day 2015

I'm not a citizen of NATO...

...so fuck off.

July 1, 2015

My fellow Canadians,

Whatever your political views, I think it's obvious that we're all in this together:  we're all Canadian citizens,

Declaration of Independence from NATO

We hold these truths to be stone-cold obvious:

1. We are not NATO citizens.

2. NATO is a military alliance from which we can withdraw at any time, giving six months notice.

3. As the International Committee of the Red Cross has said, international agreements, such as the Geneva Conventions, are made between and among nation states.

4. Some international agreements - such as the Statute of Rome that Canada has signed - provide for international law taking precedence over national law where grave breaches of international humanitarian law ("war crimes") are concerned.

5. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled - unanimously - that Canada's international human rights obligations are binding [2008 SCC 28]

6. The idea that our obligations to NATO take precedence over our international human rights obligations is preposterous.

7. The idea that our obligations to NATO take precedence over Canadian law - and in particular, the Criminal Code of Canada - is equally preposterous.

8.  The idea that our obligations to NATO take precedence over our own foreign policy is even more preposterous.

9. The idea that our obligations to NATO require us to collude in war crimes is just stupid.

Happy Canada Day, everybody.

PS;  Dear Google, your Canada Day artwork of two people canoeing is also preposterous.  The canoe doesn't look like a canoe, and the paddlers seem not to know the difference.