A Duty To Warn

Liberty Bell

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ASM Defends Science-Based Health Policy in Letter to Executive Branch

"July 14, 2020

In response to a coordinated effort to discredit public health officials, ASM, the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) issued the following letter to Vice President Pence demonstrating support for public health officials who are prioritizing science-based public health strategies to address the COVID-19 pandemic​.


Dear Vice President Pence:

During a national public health emergency, it is vital that we lead with science and with the best data available. Our continued response to and successful recovery from the COVID-19 crisis depends on adherence to sound scientific and public health guidance from the experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who have made the health and safety of the public the top priority.

As organizations representing thousands of researchers, public health professionals, health care providers and others serving in scientific and health care professional fields, we object to any attempt to cast doubt on science and sow mistrust for public health expertise, and to spread misinformation during this challenging time for all Americans. Such efforts not only put the health of our population in greater peril, but also undermine the work underway to move our country beyond the pandemic and return to normalcy.

SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus and COVID-19 is a new condition with which we have no prior experience. As is the case with any new pathogen or disease, we are learning in real time. Public health and medicine are inherently dynamic fields that adapt as the science evolves. We have embarked on an unprecedented global effort to develop medical countermeasures and refine public health guidance, and as this work uncovers new knowledge, recommendations can and will change. By heeding the recommendations of those who are on the front lines of progress to combat this virus, we have the best chance at a successful outcome.


Sincerely,

American Society for Microbiology
Association of Public Health Laboratories
Infectious Diseases Society of America
AcademyHealth
African American Health Alliance
American Academy of HIV Medicine
American Association for Anatomy
American Association for Dental Research
American Association for Respiratory Care
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy
American Association of Immunologists
American Association of Physics Teachers
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Physiological Society
American Public Health Association
American Society for Cell Biology
American Society for Clinical Pathology
American Society for Investigative Pathology
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
American Society for Virology
American Society of Hematology
American Society of Pediatric Nephrology
American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
American Sociological Association
American Thoracic Society
Association for Psychological Science
Association of American Cancer Institutes
Association of Nurses in AIDS Care
Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health
AVAC
Baruch S. Blumberg Institute
Big Cities Health Coalition
Biophysical Society
Black AIDS Institute
Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation
Coalition for the Life Sciences
Consortium of Universities for Global Health
Council of Scientific Society Presidents
Cure HHT
Endocrine Society
Genetics Society of America
Hepatitis B Foundation
HIV Medicine Association
Institute for Systems Biology
Institute of Food Technologists
International Society for Stem Cell Research
Jeffrey Modell Foundation
LUNGevity Foundation
NASTAD
National Association of County and City Health Officials
Natural Science Collections Alliance
NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
Prevention Institute
Safe States Alliance
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society
Society of General Internal Medicine
Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP)
Society of Toxicology
STChealth LLC
The Histochemical Society
Treatment Action Group
Trust for America's Health
Vaccinate Your Family
Washington State Department of Health
AIDS Foundation Chicago
American Statistical Association
North Carolina AIDS Action Network
IRMA - International Rectal Microbicide Advocates
HealthHIV
Positive Women's Network-USA
National Coalition for LGBT Health
The Well Project
Cascade AIDS Project
Latinos Salud
Entomological Society of America
AIDS Alabama
San Francisco AIDS Foundation
American Crystallographic Association
North American Vascular Biology Organization
American College of Nuclear Medicine (ACNM)
AIDS United
AIDS Action Baltimore
International Association of Providers of AIDS Care
WVU Health Sciences Center
American Society for Gravitational and Space Research
International Association of Providers of AIDS Care
Institute of Mathematical Statistics
American Urological Association
The AIDS Institute
IAVI
Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America
Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology
American Medical Technologists
Federation of American Scientists
Pan American Society for Clinical Virology
Association of American Medical Colleges
North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition
National Association of School Nurses
AIDS Alliance for Women, Infants, Children, Youth & Families
International Mammalian Genome Society
International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH)"

The Warming Science Commentariat - 15

Skeptical of Pseudo Skeptics

In the post The Exceptional American Denial (almost nine years to the day ago) I pointed out that denialists were being given a biased representation in the news media.

Prof. Naomi Oreskes was featured in that post for her seminal work, by the use of a video made when she was at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).

She is now at Harvard, as is Prof. Jerry Mitrovica (see videos at the end of this post).

Anyway, quite recently in Nature Communications (also almost nine years to the day after my post mentioned above) an in-depth comparison of this media failure in today's world, shows that the monkey business as usual (MBAU) is still taking place in The Warming Science Commentariat (The Warming Science Commentariat, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14).

The paper published in Nature Communications points out the ongoing MBAU of the Warming Science Commentariat:

"Since the early 2000s there has been little disagreement among scientific experts over the fundamental evidence supporting the existence, origin, and societal significance of anthropogenic climate change (CC). Yet, while an anthropogenic cause is supported by an overwhelming majority of climate change scientists (CCS), climate change contrarians (CCC) have successfully organized a strong voice within politics and science communication in the United States."

(Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians, PDF). As Prof. Oreskes points out in the video, the fossil fuel and tobacco industries are behind this offense against the public (which has given new meaning to "political science").

Yes, Humble Oil-Qaeda spends a fortune in order to try to keep or make you and I ignorant, and has been doing so for decades.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Prof. Oreskes video ("The American Denial of Global Warming") copied from The Exceptional American Denial:

"... use the video below to enjoy a free class lecture at a very well respected American university, or, read the history here.

Key times in the video (Note: GW = global warming; GG = greenhouse gas, CC = climate change):

00:40 - Schwarzenegger: no debate, GW is happening.
06:20 - Proper amount of GG is good, keeps us warm.
07:00 - Too much GG is a bad thing.
07:09 - Tyndall in mid 1800's began research into GG.
07:45 - Arrhenius did first degree calculations re: CO₂ content.
08:25 - Callendar discovered GG increases in 1930's.
09:02 - Hulburt accord in 1930's.
09:43 - Depression / war stopped GG research.
10:00 - Gilbert N. Plass developed CO₂ atmospheric calculations.
10:49 - Suess & Revelle do paper in 1957 warning of GW dangers.
12:30 - Dr. Revelle warned of polar ice cap melt in TIME interview.
13:25 - CO₂ levels discovered to be high.
16:30 - Lyndon Johnson in 1965 says fossil fuels causing GW.
17:00 - GW, CC not political originally.
18:20 - White of NOAA, 1978, warns of GW dangers.
20:52 - Polar Areas to be impacted 4 times more than other areas. 
24:20 - IPCC formed in 1979 with consensus on GW.
26:00 - Bush I signed GW treaty.
26:45 - Denial of GW begins.
27:40 - Luntz injects GW denial propaganda into political debate.
[2019 - Luntz now admits that he was wrong on GW]
28:25 - Oil baron Cheney propagates GW denial.
29:00 - Oil companies do massive scale denial propaganda.
29:30 - Marshall Institute
30:30 - Marshall Institute formed to support Reagan SDI (star wars)
32:50 - Marshall Institute "cigarettes not related to cancer".
36:50 - Marshall Institute does GW denial campaign.
42:54 - Marshall member Seitz worked for big tobacco.
47:20 - Singer of Marshall Institute politically attacks GW.
53:35 - Cigarette smoking is ok rhetoric applied to GW science."

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Prof. Mitrovica takes Woodward (1888) to a new level:

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Blind Willie McTell News - 7

All The News We Think You Need

This series goes back a ways (Blind Willie McTell News, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Concerning this subject matter, a piece over at Salon is a must read, so here are a few excerpts:

"For those who attended to the substance of Wednesday's congressional hearings featuring former special counsel Robert Mueller, they offered a cold, devastating reminder of how far our nation has fallen. Mueller, with his terse but honest responses to Democrats reading passages from the report that followed his investigation into Donald Trump's relationship to the Russian criminal conspiracy to hack the 2016 election, painted a devastating picture of a White House hijacked by a greedy criminal who will not hesitate to obstruct justice and betray his country for personal gain. Republicans, virtually to a person, exposed themselves as morally bankrupt lickspittles who eagerly lie and make up conspiracy theories, all to serve their orange-hued wannabe mobster of a master.

Blueprint For Genieology

On the merits, for people judging the hearings on substance, Wednesday was a devastating exposé of a situation many times worse than Watergate.

The mainstream press that regards politics more as a TV show than a matter of real world importance had a different verdict: BOOOOORING!
...
The grossness continued Thursday morning as both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran articles declaring that Mueller's inability to play to the cameras means that any hope of impeachment is probably dead.

Perhaps, in some other time, things like evidence and morality might have mattered when it comes to fundamental questions of justice. But according to modern analysts, all that really matters today is how much Emmy buzz you can generate in seven hours of testimony on Capitol Hill."

(Media declares Mueller was boring: Who cares if Trump is a criminal?). Read the entire Salon piece and join the outrage!

The previous post in this series is here.

Back By Popular Demand

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"Anybody have any questions .... ?"

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How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 7

Fig. Zero Despotic Trufiness Galore

I. Background

In this series we have been focusing on the trinity that has brought down some 26 civilizations which came and went (some went down centuries prior to our current civilization).

Of those prior civilizations it has been noted that "... the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority" (How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 6).

Tyranny by a despotic minority can only be prevented by a ubiquitous free press leading to a well informed populace.

In the embryonic writings of our constitutional republic we see the notion of a "free press" (First Amendment).

That amendment was written prior to the outbreak of corporate media, which is decidedly not a free press now, because it is in varying degrees entangled with commercialism (Corp Germ > Corp Seed > Corp Monster, 2, 3, 4).

II. Mourning Java

This very morning, Morning Joe expanded upon the paranoia that MOMCOM has been spreading concerning what JoJo likes to call "social media" ("unsocial media" would be more accurate).

Thus, McTell News (Blind Willie McTell News, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) is blundering through yet another revelation that "social media" carries harmful entities (Russian bots) as well as helpful entities (real good and real bad news).

After all, the "air waves" and the actual atmosphere carry both harmful virus and harmful biotic entities, as well as carrying helpful virus and helpful biotic entities (e.g. Etiology of Social Dementia - 5, The Deceit Business).

We can live in the air of this planet, so why can't we live with the "air waves" in social media (The Citizen Journalist In America, 2, 3) ?

III. Despots Anonymous

The despotic minority is composed of both geniuses and dumbbells, males and females, multiple races, and multiple good and bad political entities (How To Identify The Despotic Minority, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Thus, social media culture is very much like the atmosphere and the corporate media.

Why is McTell News afraid of social media then?

Do they have a problem with a tendency to be control freaks (Mocking America, 2, 3; 4, In the Fog of The Presstitutes, 2, 3, 4) ?

IV. Conclusion

Corporate media needs to realize that the antidote is a proper educational system loaded with healthy civics, not a whiny corporate media fed with the advertising toxins of MOMCOM.

That educational need also includes a very healthy dose of global warming induced climate change reporting (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact, 2, 3, 4, 5).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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MARCHING FOR OUR LIVES

It's A World Wide Liberty Walk

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"A recent study of World Health Organization data published in the American Journal of Medicine that found that, among high-income nations, 91 percent of children younger than 15 who were killed by bullets lived in the United States.

And the trends are only growing more dire.

On average, two dozen children are shot every day in the United States, and in 2016 more youths were killed by gunfire — 1,637 — than during any previous year this millennium."

(The "Genes" of Culture In Civilizations - 2).

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When Accountability Is A Plague - 5

It takes a despotic minority too ...

What does it take to destroy a democracy?

One well researched answer is "the absence of accountability" (When Accountability Is A Plague, 2, 3, 4).

Another well researched answer is "a long time."

A well known and once-most-quoted historian said it takes social suicide:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). A well know encyclopedia, looking deeper into that historian's writing, put it this way:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces" ...

(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). So, if we have an absence of accountability combined with a nationalistic, militaristic, and tyranny orientated despotic minority, kiss democracy goodbye.

For example, when a nation's elections eventually are decided by a minority of voters who are persuaded by nationalism, militarism, and tyranny (whether they know it or not), the end is near.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Germ Warfare Comes To America

American Hospitals are in the enemy's cross-hairs

I. Destroying Americans With Depravity Bombs

Some seven years ago, in a Dredd Blog series (Your Health Is Their Number 1 Enemy?! , 2). I quoted people who were no doubt trained at the War College.

I quoted people who wrote that your health care is the biggest threat to the Pentagon.

That anti-health care diatribe was posted at National Defense Magazine, a well-known site.

After reading it, I posted:

Pentagonia, capitol of Bullshitistan, well aware of the current political climate, has declared who its greatest enemy is, believing it is health care:

The U.S. military keeps searching the horizon for a peer competitor, the challenger that must be taken seriously. Is it China? What about an oil rich and resurgent Russia?

But the threat that is most likely to hobble U.S. military capabilities is not a peer competitor, rather it is health care.

(The Enemy the Pentagon Should Fear Most: Health Care, National Defense Magazine, emphasis added). We have been pointing out this very strange ideology for a while now, using "MOMCOM" symbolism to isolate the militant energy fighting against the middle class and poor in the United States.

(Deja Vu - Guns v. Butter Election Looms, March 22, 2010). That post I quoted from was subsequently deleted by National Defense Magazine (the link in the quote above is to The Wayback Machine copy).

The sicko sycophant who wrote the National Defense Magazine article is an enemy of the welfare of the people of the United States, whom the military took an oath to protect by, among other things,  protecting the U.S. Constitution.

II. Target Number One: The Helpless

Americans are known historically for lending a helping hand to their neighbor, as is written at the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me

Is this a fake?

your tired,

your poor,

Your huddled masses

yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse

of your teeming shore.

Send these,

the homeless,

tempest-tost

to me,

I lift my lamp

beside the golden door!"

(Wikipedia). Who are the enemies of these American sentiments, who are the enemies of rural hospitals, who are these enemies of the American people who need health and other care at times during their journey to a better life?

III. "Let's Seriously Hurt and Harm

Twenty or Thirty Million American People"

That is something that enemies of the American People want to do, and would do if they could.

But they can't.

Alone.

They need people in powerful places inside America to lose their minds and turn on "tired ... poor ... huddled masses yearning to breathe free ... wretched refuse ... homeless ... tempest-tost" people in rural America, in American cities, and anywhere sickness and disease attack us.

These moles in "a despotic minority" are feverishly and fiendishly working to remove health care in order to "make America great again."

IV. What "Can't Happen Here" Is Happening Here

I recently quoted an Encyclopedia Britannica article concerning the once-most-quoted historian:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces."

(Stockholm Syndrome: The Declaration of Intellectual Dependence). That description is way too close for comfort.

V. Conclusion

Those Americans who came and went, before we were born or became Americans, knew history well enough to use the phrase "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" (Supreme Court).

Those who want to do the harm to Americans (harm that hostile foreign enemies would want to do), and who took that oath not to harm Americans, are in fact domestic enemies.

Defend her from them!

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Trump (R-RU) has a friend named Jim:

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The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 3

My Dog: Jack of Hearts

A Dog Has Died
by Pablo Neruda

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

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The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Doing The Alt-Right Thing - Mithraism - 4

Black Beard Alt-Right does Washington, D.C.

Due to a slight change in the name of the right, a change from "right" to "alt-right," I changed the name of this series.

It is a timely change based on an untimely change based on the new-old religion of Washington, D.C. religionists celebrating for the rapture of November the Eighth.

As you have most likely heard by now, the all-powerful GOP got caught doing what the media now thinks was a boo boo:

Majorities in Congress often overreach, but usually not on the very first day.

House Republicans, on the verge of a Washington takeover as the new Congress convened Tuesday, couldn’t stop themselves from trying to dilute the power of a despised ethics watchdog as their first order of business. In the process, they created an unsightly spectacle that pretty much ruined an opening-day celebration of unified Republican government, undermined their own leadership and perhaps foretold the shape of things to come.
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“Mr. Trump campaigned that he was going to drain the swamp, and here we are on Day 1 trying to fill the swamp,” Representative Walter B. Jones, Republican of North Carolina, said after he and his colleagues hurriedly jettisoned a plan seen as a brazen attempt to weaken an independent ethics office that some felt had been unfair to lawmakers. “That is not a good way to start.”

(NY Times, emphasis added). Actually, they were simply practicing their alt-right religion (Doing The Right Thing - Mithraism, 2, 3).

Yep, "pass the lard and praise the ammunition" (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 4).

The part of their religion which they were seized of was the same as what Karl Rove and Bush II fixed upon:

How did the bushies remove the boogie man from under your bed, since that description sounds strangely like the banksters of recent "bailout" infamy?

How did they do that you may be asking? The answer is that they did it using what they think is the "Christian way".

The very Bible they profess to follow says: "... because law brings wrath. Where there is no law, there is no transgression of the law" (Romans 4:15). Now ask yourself, "what good robber baron wants 'wrath' for doing what comes naturally"?

So, when the bushies heard the preacher in church quoting Romans 4:15 their eyes twinkled so brightly folks in the pews around them thought that a meteorite was passing overhead.

It was like the conversion of the Apostle Paul, only in reverse. It was an epiphany of the sort that changes a nation from one age into another age.

They removed the law, which made taking money from the public trough in certain ways, robbery. Thus, no robbery law, no transgression of the law bringing wrath, and thus no more robber barons.

The U.S. then entered the age of the Plunder Barons, who after gorging themselves under Bush II and the republican controlled congress, are seeing if they can corrupt the new blood recently elected.

(Bush II Eradicated The Robber Barons - 4, emphasis added). No ethics law means no ethics violations in the U.S.eh?

Yep, business as usual (a.k.a. same ole same ole) in the swamp out on Highway 61.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Free, "Baby It's Alt-Right Now"

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The Warming Science Commentariat - 10

From the book

I. Yesterday All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away

Yesterday I took a look at coups in general (A Tale of Coup Cities - 13); so today I want to focus on the global coup that began in Britain & the U.S.eh? not long after our collective entry into the 20th Century (The Universal Smedley - 2, A History of Oil Addiction - 2).

A coup that is going stronger than ever here in the 21st Century (Greenland & Antarctica Invade The United States, 2, 3, 4,  Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization, 2, 3, 4, 5).

I am speaking of a coup of change (from a green world where global warming was not yet born, where peace was not yet extinct) into a world where the coup some call the addiction to oil and war now thrives (Glorious Addictions - War & Oil, 2).

From now on let's  call that coup "The Slow Train Coming".

II. Now It Looks As Though They Are Here To Stay

This coup is not one that the military planned, but they have been instrumental in perpetuating it (The Fleets and Terrorism Follow The Oil - 2).

To the contrary, they warned of it being a threat to national security in 2009 (Global Climate & Homeland Insecurity - 2), and continue to (GMACCC).

To some extent that is because, militarily, they can do nothing whatsoever to stop the coup (Why The Military Can't Defend Against The Invasion).

The policy coup that I am writing about in today's post is now even taking potshots at the military (On the Front Lines of Rising Seas: Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, Rising oceans threaten to submerge 128 military bases).

The east coast part of the coup is underway, as they look toward being underwater (Hurricane Matthew Takes Out Beaches, The Extinction of Chesapeake Bay Islands).

III. It's The Coup of The Warming Science Commentariat

The minions of Oil-Qaeda knew about the national security threat well before the military did (Smoke & Fumes, The Private Empire's Social Media Hit Squads - 2, Humble Oil-Qaeda).

Even way back then Oil-Qaeda began to spend the big bucks to dumb down the warming science commentariat (TWSC).

To this day the TWSC are still, for the most part, all too clueless:

In fact, most of our historical data on sea levels comes from devices call tide gauges. Tide gauges bob and dip with the rising and lowering sea, marking the changing levels as they go. And there are continuous gauge records going back hundreds of years [CORRECT: they have even measured sea level FALL since circa 1774].

But there's reason to believe those records may not tell the full story of how sea levels have changed [WRONG: they tell only what they know at their locations as they should ... and as TWSC should].

A study published October 9 in the journal Geophysical Research suggests a simple reason tide gauge records may lead scientists to underestimate sea level rise [WRONG: underestimating sea level rise is the IPCC's job which they do quite well thank you; tide gauge stations are even used to validate satellite telemetry ("Tide gauge data are used to validate ocean models and to detect errors and drifts in satellite altimetry" UCAR NCAR)]: There aren't enough of them [WRONG: I use about 1,400 PSMSL tide gauge station records from all over the globe], and they're in the wrong places. [WRONG: they are where the people who are endangered by sea level are ... exactly where they should be ... the marine life out in the ocean vastness is not endangered by sea level change]

Current estimates of sea level rise, drawn from tide gauge records, have the oceans gaining 1.5 to 1.8 millimeters per year [WRONG: tide gauge stations do not do global averages, they only do actual sea level measurements at their particular latitude and longitude. The "bath tub modellers" created the global average to gloss over the true nature of sea level change] - already enough to flood major cities in living lifetimes without any acceleration. (And we know it will accelerate.)

The problem is those estimates come from gauges that weren't built to track global sea levels [WRONG: that is not a "problem" it is a reality that they can't measure sea level rise other than where they are DUH!]. Instead, they're clustered around North Atlantic coastal cities [WRONG: they are all over the world, north, south, east, and west (PSMSL)], where they were initially installed to help monitor shipping lanes [WRONG: they were originally installed to measure local sea level change before cargo shipping lanes even existed]. Unfortunately, the North Atlantic may not be the best place to measure sea level rise. Meltwater from major ice sheets actually tends to flow away from there, often toward the southern hemisphere [WOW, THE AUTHOR IS A PLUMBER WHO KNOWS THAT S**T FLOWS DOWN HILL ... WHOOPIE !!].

(Monkey Business Insider). Oil-Qaeda must really take note of this valuelessness and chortle often (Oil-Qaeda & MOMCOM Conspire To Commit Depraved-Heart Murder, 2, 3).

IV. Conclusion

The realm of the clueless warming science commentariat is shameless (The Warming Science Commentariat, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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"Yesterday [Is Gone]"

Yesterday all [our] troubles seemed so far away.
Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
Oh, [we] believe in yesterday.

Suddenly [we're] not half the [world we] used to be.
There's a shadow hanging over [us].
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

Why [it] had to go, I don't know, [it] wouldn't say.
[we] did something wrong, now [we] long for yesterday.

Yesterday [life] was such an easy game to play.
Now [we] need a place to hide away.
Oh, [we] believe in yesterday.

...

(apologies to Beatles)

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It Ain't Me, Man

A lone man refusing to do the Nazi salute, 1936

I.  Modern Nationalism

It is not universally recognized that academically, nationalism is a modern phenomenon:

Nationalism, ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-state surpass other individual or group interests.

Nationalism is a modern movement. Throughout history people have been attached to their native soil, to the traditions of their parents, and to established territorial authorities; but it was not until the end of the 18th century that nationalism began to be a generally recognized sentiment molding public and private life and one of the great, if not the greatest, single determining factors of modern history.

(Nationalism, Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). This is one reason why some people are blind to the reasons that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel for Literature, and thereby became the first singer songwriter in history to become a Nobel Laureate (Congratulations To Bob Dylan).

And on top of that, he is "the first American to have won the prize in more than two decades. Not since novelist Toni Morrison won in 1993 has an American claimed the prize" (NPR).

He has been like the person in the photo above who refused a perverted nationalism and wrote "It Ain't Me, Babe" about it (see 1st Video below).

II. Nationalism Is A Strong American Sentiment

As modern as nationalism is internationally, it is really modern in the U.S.eh? now and then.

It produces offspring such as jingoism, and to the contrary, the rejection of jingoism (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 4).

Various authors have discussed the two brands of American nationalism:

In this controversial critique of American political culture and its historical roots, Anatol Lieven contends that U.S. foreign policy since 9/11 has been shaped by the special character of our nationalism.

Within that nationalism, Lieven analyses two very different traditions. One is the "American thesis," a civic nationalism based on the democratic values of what has been called the "American Creed."

Love it or Leave It

These values are held to be universal, and anyone can become an American by adopting them. The other tradition, the "American antithesis" is a populist and often chauvinist nationalism, which tends to see America as a closed national culture and civilization threatened by a hostile and barbarous outside world.

With America Right or Wrong, Lieven examines how these two antithetical impulses have played out in U.S. responses to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and in the nature of U.S. support for Israel.

This hard-hitting critique directs a spotlight on the American political soul and on the curious mixture of chauvinism and idealism that has driven the Bush administration.

(Good Reads). Currently, the understanding of what it is to be "American" is not a unified concept in what the Canadians call "the U.S.eh?"

III. It's The Economy Plutocratic Neofeudalism Stupid

As economics professor Dr. Reich pointed out, some aspects of economy is a point of agreement in the rhetoric of voting republicans and democrats alike (Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money - 12).

After all, both of those groups of voters have substantial numbers in the middle class, which is suffering.

I mean economic suffering caused by the now quite-obvious-and-naked degeneration of a robust economy into a plutonomy (The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, 2, 3, 4, 8) characterized by feudalism (American Feudalism, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

IV. It Is Ok To ReMake America

The conservative Wall Street Journal really does agree with the liberal Dr. Reich about the economic issue of income disparity:

According to economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, the top 10% of earners captured about half of all income as of 2007.
...
The second reason is that those people in the middle- and lower-income groups are struggling to pay off debt and stay afloat amid rising unemployment, as today’s data remind us. That has crimped their spending.

The data may be a further sign that the U.S. is becoming a Plutonomy–an economy dependent on the spending and investing of the wealthy. And Plutonomies are far less stable than economies built on more evenly distributed income and mass consumption. “I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy to be so dependent on the top 2% of the income distribution,” Mr. Zandi said.

(U.S. Economy Is Increasingly Tied to the Rich, WSJ). The agreement that inequality in access to the economic life of the nation has led to a plutocracy is not the end of the matter.

How to fix it is the place of contention.

For one thing, conservatives have been lowering the tax rates of the uber rich but not doing the same for the working classes, while liberals want to tax the uber rich more so than the working classes.

The Speaker of The House of Representatives is an ideological fan of Ayn Rand:

In a 2005 speech to a group of Rand devotees called the Atlas Society, Ryan said that Rand was required reading for his office staff and interns. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” he told the group.

(Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy - 3). Ayn Rand was a died in the wool ideological believer in plutocracy:

Her psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats ...

It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.

Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as "refuse" and "parasites", and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.

Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, depicts a United States crippled by government intervention in which heroic millionaires struggle against a nation of spongers. The millionaires, whom she portrays as Atlas holding the world aloft, withdraw their labour, with the result that the nation collapses. It is rescued, through unregulated greed and selfishness, by one of the heroic plutocrats, John Galt.

(Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy). It is a perplexing reality that "prosperity gospel" aficionados, within the religious conservative evangelical voting bloc, are ideologically aligned with her:

Prosperity theology (sometimes referred to as the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel) is a Christian religious doctrine which claims the Bible teaches that financial blessing is the will of God for Christians.

The doctrine teaches that faith, positive speech, and donations to Christian ministries will always increase one's material wealth.

Its proponents teach that the doctrine is an aspect of the path to Christian dominion over society, arguing that God's promise of dominion to Israel applies to Christians today.

The doctrine emphasizes the importance of personal empowerment, proposing that it is God's will for his people to be happy. The atonement (reconciliation with God) is interpreted to include the alleviation of sickness and poverty, which are viewed as curses to be broken by faith.

(Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy). Can you fathom that there is a cold, heartless, and pathological dynamism in the U.S.eh?

See you in the camps (Pentagon Warning).

V. Conclusion

Revolution
by John Lennon

"You say you want a revolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know you can count me out"
...

Yep ... it ain't me babe ... it ain't me you're looking for ... it ain't me man ...

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Global Climate & Homeland Insecurity - 2

I. Begin Here

The subtitle of today's post is: "When The Truth Is Found In The Wayback Machine."

The first post in this series, on July 14, 2009, discussed the national security implications of The Damaged Global Climate System's impact on the global environment (Global Climate & Homeland Insecurity).

In that first post I discussed an investigation by CNA concerning the U.S. Military's perception of global climate change.

As noted in that post, the substantial and robust report was "disappeared" sometime after I penned the post, but when I noticed the link no longer worked, I sought and found a copy of that CNA page recorded in The Wayback Machine.

Anyway, in that report the generals and admirals were unequivocal in their 2009 conclusions:

The nature and pace of climate changes being observed today and the consequences projected by the consensus scientific opinion are grave and pose equally grave implications for our national security. Moving beyond the arguments of cause and effect, it is important that the U.S. military begin planning to address these potentially devastating effects.

(CNA Report, emphasis added, PDF). It is clear that those who participated in the study and report are aware of military national security matters:

GENERAL GORDON R. SULLIVAN, USA (Ret.)
Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Army
Chairman, Military Advisory Board

ADMIRAL FRANK "SKIP" BOWMAN, USN (Ret.)
Former Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program;
Former Deputy Administrator-Naval Reactors, National Nuclear Security Administration

LIEUTENANT GENERAL LAWRENCE P. FARRELL JR., USAF (Ret.)
Former Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs, Headquarters U.S. Air Force

VICE ADMIRAL PAUL G. GAFFNEY II, USN (Ret.)
Former President, National Defense University; Former Chief of Naval Research and Commander,
Navy Meteorology and Oceanography Command

GENERAL PAUL J. KERN, USA (Ret.)
Former Commanding General, U.S. Army Materiel Command

ADMIRAL T. JOSEPH LOPEZ, USN (Ret.)
Former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and of Allied Forces, Southern Europe

ADMIRAL DONALD L. “DON” PILLING, USN (Ret.)
Former Vice Chief of Naval Operations

ADMIRAL JOSEPH W. PRUEHER, USN (Ret.)
Former Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) and Former U.S. Ambassador to China

VICE ADMIRAL RICHARD H. TRULY, USN (Ret.)
Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command

GENERAL CHARLES F. “CHUCK” WALD, USAF (Ret.)
Former Deputy Commander, Headquarters U.S. European Command (USEUCOM)

GENERAL ANTHONY C. “TONY” ZINNI, USMC (Ret.)
Former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)
(ibid, caps in original). I have posted about other military officers tasked with grasping the climate change threat to national security (Has The Navy Fallen For The Greatest Hoax?, with a video of R.Adm. Tilley's presentation @ Pentagon).

II. Perhaps It Was The Irony?

I wondered why CNA would be directed to lose the report.

It was excellent, well researched, unconventional, and counter to the Oil-Qaeda and MOMCOM propaganda of the day (Will This Float Your Boat - 12).

But the number one polluter, in terms of fossil fuel burning, is said to be the U.S. military (A History of Oil Addiction - 2, cf. The Military Assault on Global Climate).

So, I though "perhaps they do not want us to think that they are a threat to national security" ... hence the missing report?

We are all in this together, and today's military is as much a victim of bad decisions made by their predecessors in command as we are (The Universal Smedley - 2, Viva Egypt - 2).

III. Military Solutions?

There is nothing the military can do beyond what other agencies can do (Why The Military Can't Defend Against The Invasion; The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports - 4; Greenland & Antarctica Invade The United States, 2, 3, 4; Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization, 2, 3, 4, 5).

But they can stop fighting for possession and or control the oil that is causing the problem (The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil).

They can switch to non-polluting sources of energy (U.S. Military Orders Less Dependence on Fossil Fuels).

IV. Military Conflict With Climate Change Deniers?

Some military officers have also anticipated problems with some of the current presidential candidates (Pentagon Officers: We Quit if Trump Wins).

One wonders how they have interacted with similar congressional deniers during the past few years (Inhofe's One Man Troofiness Crusade).

Even the courts and prosecutors are seeing reason for concern about the hiding of the facts (Have Courts Fallen For The Greatest Hoax?, Oil-Qaeda & MOMCOM Conspire To Commit Depraved-Heart Murder - 5).

Increasingly, the physical predicament is exacerbated by the predicament of the conflict of world views in government (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change).

Not to mention the cover-up instead of coverage in the press (In the Fog of The Presstitutes - 4).

V. Worse Than Previously Thought

One has to wonder if the deniers, who used to make fun of environmentalists because they wanted to save the snail darter (Snail Darter Politics) will awaken.

Up to this point in time, their dangerously myopic viewpoints have had certain untenable impacts on reality (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Impacts that bring it all home (The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports, 2, 3; The Extinction of Charleston, The Extinction of Philadelphia, The Extinction of Washington, D.C., The Extinction of Boston, The Extinction of Miami, The Extinction of Manzanillo, The Extinction of Houston, The Extinction of Providence, The Extinction of Chesapeake Bay Islands; Endangered Naval Bases).

It is not about snail darters assholes (On The Origin of Assholes), because now even East Antarctica is catching up (Melt Expanding into East Antarctica).

VI. Conclusion

It is time for the panicked frenzy of immature leaders in government to disappear instead of continuing to disappear the facts they are afraid to admit (The 1.14% vs. The 100%).

Time to admit that the waters around us have grown:

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

(The Times They Are A-Changin’, by Bob Dylan). Yep, worse than previously thought.

The previous post in this series is here.

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"Everything is Broken" by Bob Dylan, (lyrics here).

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Evolution From Left To Right - 7

Click To Loom² Large

This series is about the social evolution in the U.S.eh? (cf. Evolution From Left to Right, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

There are several branches involved in today's post, two of the other branches being (A Tale of Coup Cities, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) and (Will The Military Become The Police?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

Themes along these lines are simply other ways of saying "our civilization is dying":

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). As it turns out, technological "progress" has given the trump card to our civilization, in the sense or lack of sense that we can destroy all human life several times over, which no other civilization was exceptional enough to be able to do.

What drives current social evolution, the eye of the storm as it were, is rebellion from the prophecies of our forefathers and foremothers:

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both.

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Those truths are well established." - James Madison

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"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison

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“Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

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“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

And here we are lost in space even with a host of visionaries in our social genealogy.

We have a president who helped destroy the people of a nation because his popularity was at stake (MOMCOM And The Sins of Libya, 2, 3).

He followed in the footsteps of the madman president that preceded him, which is not all that exceptional or unique.

And now we have more madmen and women than usual clamouring for their chance to proceed with the mechanisms of depraved heart murder (Oil-Qaeda & MOMCOM Conspire To Commit Depraved-Heart Murder, 2, 3).

They all want to be pilots (The Elections of Pontius Pilots, 2, 3, 4, 5) or perhaps co-pilots (Inside Job and/or Conspiracy?).

Either way, power wannabes are droning on to the sounds of a dull, primitive roar.

After all, the mass murder of the people on this planet is a big business that is not well understood (You Are Here).

The heroes warriors of this predicament have also evolved to the wrong, while calling it evolution toward the right:

In 1982, historian Joseph Ellis summed up such sentiments in a prophetic passage in an essay titled “Learning Military Lessons from Vietnam” (from the book Men at War):

“[V]irtually all studies of the all-volunteer army have indicated that it is likely to be less representative of and responsive to popular opinion, more expensive, more jealous of its own prerogatives, more xenophobic -- in other words, more likely to repeat some of the most grievous mistakes of Vietnam … Perhaps the most worrisome feature of the all-volunteer army is that it encourages soldiers to insulate themselves from civilian society and allows them to cling tenaciously to outmoded visions of the profession of arms. It certainly puts an increased burden of responsibility on civilian officials to impose restraints on military operations, restraints which the soldiers will surely perceive as unjustified.”

Ellis wrote this more than 30 years ago -- before Desert Storm, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, or the launching of the War on Terror. These wars (and other U.S. military interventions of the last decades) have provided vivid evidence that civilian officials have felt emboldened in wielding a military freed from the constraints of the old citizen army. Indeed, it says something of our twenty-first-century moment that military officers have from time to time felt the need to restrain civilian officials rather than vice versa.

(America's Post-Democratic Military). The zombie wannabees, from the parties, take their marching orders from the marching orders handed down from on high.

But not high enough to validate the hopium of the Stockholm Syndrome culture (Epigovernment: The New Model, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

Thus, the rock music, poetry, and high rates of suicide (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

The previous post in this series is here.

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