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)"

Dredd Blog's Eleventh Anniversary

What About It?

I wanted to quote from an article from Wikipedia (some emphasis added) on this occasion, while at the same time mentioning that Dredd Blog pointed out in its first year way back in 2009 that Global Warming induced Climate Change was considered to be a national security threat by the U.S. Military (Global Climate & Homeland Insecurity). Now on to the Wikipedia article:

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"Agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. In 1995 Robert N. Proctor, a Stanford University professor specializing in the history of science and technology,^[1] and linguist Iain Boal coined the neologism^[2][3][4] on the basis of the Neoclassical Greek word ἄγνωσις, agnōsis, "not knowing" (cf. Attic Greek ἄγνωτος "unknown"^[5]), and -λογία, -logia.^[6]

More generally, the term also highlights the increasingly common condition where more knowledge of a subject leaves one more uncertain than before. David Dunning of Cornell University is another academic who studies the spread of ignorance. "Dunning warns that the internet is helping propagate ignorance – it is a place where everyone has a chance to be their own expert, he says, which makes them prey for powerful interests wishing to deliberately spread ignorance".^[7]

In his 1999 book The Erotic Margin, Irvin C. Schick referred to unknowledge "to distinguish it from ignorance, and to denote socially constructed lack of knowledge, that is, a conscious absence of socially pertinent knowledge". As an example, he offered the labeling "terra incognita" in early maps, noting that "The reconstruction of parts of the globe as uncharted territory is ... the production of unknowledge, the transformation of those parts into potential objects of Western political and economic attention. It is the enabling of colonialism."^[8]

There are many causes of culturally induced ignorance. These include the influence of the media, either through neglect or as a result of deliberate misrepresentation and manipulation. Corporations and governmental agencies can contribute to the subject matter studied by agnotology through secrecy and suppression of information, document destruction, and myriad forms of inherent or avoidable culturopolitical selectivity, inattention, and forgetfulness.^[9]

Proctor cites as a prime example of the deliberate production of ignorance the tobacco industry's advertising campaign to manufacture doubt about the cancerous and other health effects of tobacco use. Under the banner of science, the industry produced research about everything except tobacco hazards to exploit public uncertainty.^[6][10]

Another example is climate denial, as illustrated in the 2012 PBS Frontline documentary Climate of Doubt, which argues that oil companies have for at least the last decade, paid teams of scientists to downplay the effects of climate change.

Tribal resistance to science that contradicts medical or dental dogma heavily biases decision making, prompting vitriolic attacks that contributes the suppression of scientific knowledge in service of protecting a sanctioned narrative. ^[11]

Agnotology also focuses on how and why diverse forms of knowledge do not "come to be", or are ignored or delayed. For example, knowledge about plate tectonics was censored and delayed for at least a decade because some evidence remained classified military information related to undersea warfare.^[6]"

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What We Don't Know ... Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 15

Feel your inner clock

I. Ancient History

Is 'oil wars' an ancient concept or is it just that we are not informed about 'oil wars' any more?

In this series that question has been asked and answered (The Peak Of The Oil Wars, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14).

The way it began is something like this:

Long before politicians mewled helplessly about the power of “Big Oil”, carbon-based fuels were shaping our very political, legal, intellectual, and physical structures.
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For instance, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a pivotal moment in America’s strategic outlook. America, a global hegemon whose empire was weakening, seized the second largest oil deposits in the world as a way of preventing its economic and political decline.
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The last declining global hegemon, Great Britain, also engaged in a brutal and highly controversial British occupation of Iraq, in the 1920s, pressed aggressively by the well-known British conservative, Winston Churchill.
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From the moment he arrived at the Admiralty, a young man of destiny, Churchill started to prepare the fleet for the Battle of Armageddon he believed was inevitable.
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Then, in 1911, the German Kaiser provoked the Agadir crisis ... Churchill went to the Admiralty and his outlook transformed. He was immediately confronted with the decisive question: to convert the navy from coal to oil ... the "fateful plunge" was made ... in April 1912 ... five oil-burning battleships were approved.
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Britain was well supplied with coal [but not oil]. It was the Royal Navy which was the impetus for the development of the oil industry in Britain. The problem was supply and the security of that supply. Initially, the British government purchased shares in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, subsequently, British Petroleum [BP].
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Then, to prevent further disruptions, Britain enmeshed itself ever more deeply in the Middle East, working to install new shahs in Iran and carve Iraq out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire.

Churchill fired the starting gun, but all of the Western powers joined the race to control Middle Eastern oil.

(The Universal Smedley - 2). Strange beliefs mixed with technology and fossil fuels - particularly their location, is part and parcel of the real story.

So is foreign policy inspired by fossil fuels:

John D. Rockefeller, in his 1909 Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, recalled, "One of our greatest helpers has been the State Department. Our ambassadors and ministers and consuls have aided to push our way into new markets in the utmost corners of the world." But he left out a key explanation for the government's interest. Standard Oil was the biggest U.S. company, putting a hundred ships to sea, buying and selling oil in Latin America, Germany, and the Far East. It also operated a global intelligence system. "By 1885," according to one historian, "seventy percent of the Standard's business was overseas and it had its own network of agents through the world, and its own espionage service, to forestall the initiatives of rival companies or governments."
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"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal mines."

(The Authoritarianism of Climate Change). That was then perhaps, but is it still like that now?

II. Modern History

Once upon a time in Northern Iraq Kurds had hope of becoming oil-rich by controlling the oil rich areas around Kirkuk, but that did not pan out because the U.S. said so (Yes, Donald Trump Dumped the Kurds (And We Should Not Be Shocked)).

Meanwhile in Syria, oil ("the devil's excrement") was warping minds there (Syrian Oil, and… what caused the war?).

Then, once upon a time in N. Syria Kurds had hope of becoming oil-rich but ISIS controlled N. Syria where most of the Syrian oil is located.

So war broke out between the Kurds and ISIS (Control of Syrian Oil Fuels War Between Kurds and Islamic State).

The Syrian Kurds won that oil war (Kurds control 65 to 70% of Syrian Oil).

Now the Turks evidently want Syria’s Oil:

Even before the war, Syria was only a modest producer of oil and gas, averaging 400,000 barrels per day between 2008-2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, most of it exported to Europe and Turkey. Proven reserves stood at 2.5 billion barrels as of January 2013, according to estimates in the Oil & Gas Journal. That’s dwarfed by neighboring Iraq’s 145 billion barrels. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp., and Total SA were among companies working in ventures with the state-run Syrian Petroleum Co. before the war. Most of Syria’s major oil assets are located in the Kurdish-controlled northeast. Exploration could also lead to the discovery of off-shore gas reserves given that giant deposits were found in Mediterranean waters further south near Egypt, Israel and Cyprus.

(Washington Post). As the beat goes on:

Turkish invasion could also open the door for Russian and Syrian forces to invade SDF territory from the west, or else prompt the SDF to form an alliance with the Assad regime and its allies to protect the mostly Kurdish force from Turkey’s advance. That could increase the influence of Assad’s Russian and Iranian partners in the region and grant them access to north-east Syria’s lucrative oil fields.

(Guardian).

Who knows what else is involved?

Certainly not the U.S. president who said he was mad at Kurds for selling oil to Iran:

During a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Trump said he was not happy that the Kurds are selling oil to Iran.

“I didn’t like the fact that [the Kurds] are selling the small oil that they have to Iran, and we asked them not to do it,” the US president stated.

(Kurdistan24 News). And so it goes.

III. Closing Comments

What we see in headlines in daily news papers and on TV and social media is the endless oil wars that came with the devil's excrement (Iran says missiles strike its oil tanker off Saudi Arabia).

They will reach their peak when they, the oil wars, go nuclear (The Doomsday Clock).

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

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The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 14

Climate Week

This Dredd Blog series began nine years ago (The Peak Of The Oil Wars, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

Now, the better part of a decade later, it seems official in some circles that an act of oil-war broke out when half of Saudi Arabia's ability to produce the crude was bombed out of existence this week:

"The attack on Saudi oil facilities is the latest, most violent, example of an escalating series of gambits by rival powers in the Gulf aimed at achieving their objectives by all measures short of all-out war.

But the chances of avoiding such a devastating conflict diminish each time the stakes are raised.

Iran has denied responsibility for the attack on an oil field and refining facility, while the US, Saudi Arabia and their allies have hesitated over the geographical origin of the airstrikes. The size and sophistication of the operation however points to a state actor, and it fits a pattern in recent months of increasingly bold Iranian moves intended to raise the costs of the US campaign of maximum pressure and the Saudi war in Yemen.

Until now, Iranian harassment of oil tankers travelling through the strait of Hormuz and the downing of a US surveillance drone have appeared calibrated to stop short of triggering a military response. If Iran is indeed behind Saturday’s strikes, it marks a significant step towards more reckless action by Tehran, possibly emboldened by the departure of Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, and the desperation of Iran’s economic plight.

“What is clear is that the strategy of bombing Yemenis and starving Iranians into submission is more likely to backfire than bring the desired results,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran expert at the International Crisis Group. “Iran has less to lose and is less risk-averse.”

Trump’s tweet about being “locked and loaded” echoed his claim the US was “cocked and loaded” in response to the downing of a US drone in June. But having agreed to launch retaliatory missile strikes then, Trump changed his mind, saying the risk of casualties made it a disproportionate response.
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'If they [Saudi's] retaliate, the Iranians would have to retaliate even more. And we are just in an inertia of war,' Seznec said. 'We really are in that situation right now and what’s so scary is that people all agree that this is not good for anybody. But there is nobody who can stop it.'”

(Saudi oil attack signals an escalating crisis, emphasis added). Don't forget the power of love ... oh yeah ... not much love between the Saudis and Iranians, so what about a threesome with The Stable Genius lover-boy at the helm?

At this point he has been jilted, and so, like LBJ who said "let us continyah to continyah" the Lover Boy in chief will continue sanctions as a remedy.

Some say that his withdrawal from the agreement (among the US and its allies) with Iran over nuclear issues, and replacement of the agreement with increasingly aggressive sanctions is what caused this oil-war in the first place.

The fact that this oil-war is raising oil prices gives Oil-Qaeda pause, so perhaps we should keep our attention on "there is nobody who can stop it."

We shall see (If the world ran on sun, it wouldn’t fight over oil) if Climate Week will overcome oil century (The Universal Smedley - 2).

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

The TIME Has Come Today

TIME September 2019

TIME January 2, 1989

We are in the "show me" state (of mind):

"Three decades ago—at a moment when much of the world was only beginning to wake up to the damage humanity had been wreaking on its home—TIME convened a group of 33 scientists and political leaders from five continents in Boulder, Colo., to discuss the threat. The result was one of the best-known issues TIME has ever produced, sounding one of the louder alarms to date. In the Jan. 2, 1989, issue, the editors named “Endangered Earth” the most important story of the year, replacing the annual “Person of the Year” with a planet, our own. The cover, by the artist Christo, showed a 16-in. globe wrapped in plastic and rag rope.
...
Notably, what you will not find in this issue are climate-change skeptics. Core to our mission is bringing together diverse perspectives. Experts can and should debate the best route to mitigating the effects of climate change, but there is no serious doubt that those effects are real. We are witnessing them right in front of us. The science on global warming is settled. There isn’t another side, and there isn’t another moment."

(TIME, cf. this). Can we honestly say that we were not warned (Naomi Oreskes)?

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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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The Psychology of the Notion of Collective Guilt - 2

Who built this?

I. Background

When is it your fault for what someone else did when they should not have, or did not do something they should have?

Or when is it your fault for what a group you are not a member of did when they should not have, or did not do something they should have?

In the first post of this series I mentioned one of Oil-Qaeda's propaganda streams which blames us for climate change because we bought some of their merchandise:

Oil-Qaeda is also paying media operatives to spread the false notion that all humanity is responsible for addicting civilization to oil, seeking to minimize the greatest crime against humanity in all history (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

It is not too surprising, then, that some still mistakenly think everyone is equally to blame for the current reality that civilization is in deep trouble (Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids?, 2; Stockholm Syndrome vs. The Ecosystem, 2).

The psychology involved in this has been detailed, and the dynamics of imagined or mythical guilt are well understood:

"... collective guilt is a psychological experience, it need not involve actually being guilty in any sense of the word. This is an important distinction. Indeed, one of the most striking features of collective guilt is that it can be experienced by group members who were not in any way involved in the harm doing ... The essential ingredient of personal responsibility for the harm done can be absent when collective guilt is experienced, although this is an important prerequisite for "being guilty" in the legal sense.

Feeling guilt for events that an individual is not personally responsible for is possible because people can and do categorize themselves as members of a group ... These theories explain how group membership shapes the cognitions, emotions, and behavior of individuals. From a social identity perspective, the actions taken by the ingroup can elicit an emotional response to the extent that the self is linked with the ingroup. Immoral actions and outcomes caused by other ingroup members link the self to the wrongdoing via shared group identity. People "bask in the reflected glory" of their group when other ingroup members are responsible for successes, and they can attempt to "cut off reflected failure" when other group members' actions harm the ingroup's image ... Because part of people's identity is based on their group membership, the desire to feel positive about their group will frequently result in group-serving explanations for ingroup actions. However, when those justifications fail or become impossible to sustain, people may feel collective guilt to the extent that the ingroup's past actions are perceived as violating the current moral standards of the ingroup."

(Collective Guilt: International Perspectives, p. 4, emphasis added). When justice is perverted to place guilt on the guiltless, a grave wrong is done.

(The Psychology of the Notion of Collective Guilt; cf. Victim Blaming: When We Do It and When We Don’t, by Peter Kaufman).

II. The Law of the Case

Well, it is now a matter of law too, rather than it only being a matter of psychology or sociology.

In a federal court ruling yesterday, a federal judge said it is ostensibly your fault and my fault that damage from global warming is taking place (San Francisco Chronicle).

I downloaded a copy of Judge Alsup's decision in PDF format, so I will be quoting from it.

The judge wrote:

"Defendants have allegedly long known the threat fossil fuels pose to the global climate. Nonetheless, they continued to extract and produce them in massive amounts while engaging in widespread advertising and communications campaigns meant to promote the sale of fossil fuels. These campaigns portrayed fossil fuels as environmentally responsible and essential to human well-being and downplayed the risks of global warming by emphasizing the uncertainties of climate science or attacking the credibility of climate scientists." - (Order, p. 5)
...
"The issue is not over science. All parties agree that fossil fuels have led to global warming and ocean rise and will continue to do so, and that eventually the navigable waters of the United States will intrude upon Oakland and San Francisco. The issue is a legal one — whether these producers of fossil fuels should pay for anticipated harm that will eventually flow from arise in sea level." - (Order, p. 6)
...
" ... our industrial revolution and the development of our modern world has literally been fueled by oil and coal. Without those fuels, virtually all of our monumental progress would have been impossible. All of us have benefitted. Having reaped the benefit of that historic progress, would it really be fair to now ignore our own responsibility in the use of fossil fuels and place the blame for global warming on those who supplied what we demanded? Is it really fair, in light of those benefits, to say that the sale of fossil fuels was unreasonable?" - (Order, p. 8)

(Oakland vs. BP, US District Court N. Dist. of CA, Case No. C 17-06011 WHA & No. C 17-06012 WHA, emphasis added). That ruling means that when we are talking about global warming we are talking about a predicament rather than a mere problem.

The judge bought into Oil-Qaeda's public promotion of the notion that "the devil public made Oil-Qaeda do it" because the public needed the gas for their cars, etc. ...  (What Next, Mass Depraved-Heart Murder? - 2)

III. A Brief History of Oil-Qaeda

Dredd Blog has featured many a post on the origin and history of fossil fuel use, pointing out clearly that it started before any of us were born (A History of Oil Addiction, 2, 3, 4, The Universal Smedley - 2, The Peak Of The Oil Wars, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12).

Pointing the finger at those who had no choice is like blaming the children of Immigrants for crossing the border improperly (like President Trump's mother did).

IV. Conclusion

All of our branches of government (Administrative, Legislative, and Judicial) have been protecting Oil-Qaeda for way too long now (A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Books have even been written about The Harm Oil-Qaeda Has Done.

The previous post in this series is here.

Oil-Qaeda & MOMCOM Conspire To Commit Depraved-Heart Murder- 6

Fig. 1 White Gold Cover Up

I. Background

The minions of Oil-Qaeda have been sent out on missions for over a century now.

Their means and methods have changed over the decades, but the thrust of their propaganda has been narrow and simple.

They want us to think that dirty oil is white and pure, and above all, it is the savior of the world.

Their message is that Oilah Akbar! brought us out of the dark ages and into the light with its economic (and sometimes militant) might.

It would seem that Dredd Blog has raised "their" eyebrows from time to time sufficiently enough to receive an honorable mention from time to time in the books written by those minions; such as in Author Michael C. Lynch's Oil-Qaeda praising work of fiction (Fig. 1) that makes Dredd Blog even more well known than it otherwise would have been:

"Dredd Blog's long-time characterization of the exercise of power in Western Civilization with the Dredd Blog caricature of 'MOMCOM' (Military Oil Media Complex). Why we gave up the old notion of 'MIC' (Military Industrial Complex), as explained in the Dredd Blog post 'MOMCOM: Mean Welfare Queen,' is because it is so yesterday, it is so 1950's reality." ²⁹

(see Fig. 2 for the link). I have to say that Mr. Lynch either has a good staff of researchers, or is one himself, to have fixed upon the Dredd Blog series about MOMCOM (your boss should be proud, Michael).

Fig. 2 Excerpt from Michael C. Lynch's Book

Dredd Blog does receive a wide array of readers from many of the diverse realms of business, education, government and the like as shown at the Who Reads Dredd Blog tab (which hasn't been updated for years; maybe I should get around to adding an "authors section" then add author Michael C. Lynch to the list).

II. MOMCOM On Dredd Blog

The gist of the MOMCOM feature on Dredd Blog is founded in psychology that has in the past been neither a left wing or a right wing political football:

"Psychologists tell us that we transfer the notion of authority from parents to other authority figures.

Parents provide their children with security.

Have you heard the government mention that the number one function of government is to provide you with security?

If we analyse this at a fundamental level, not leaving out the obvious, we can see the direction this is going.

First, lets look at the government's meaning of "security", and where that leads.

George Lakoff, a student of Noam Chomsky at one time, has propounded theories that much of our thinking is metaphorical in nature:

"But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. in most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. Just what these lines are is by no means obvious. One way to find out is by looking at language. Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.

Primarily on the basis of linguistic evidence, we have found that most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature."

(The Literary Link). In recent years "security" is a word linked to a metaphorical structure attached to military matters."

(In Loco Parentis & Parens Patriae). The government as parent metaphor is widely considered by social scientists to be valid:

A NAZI Family?

"The photo to the [right] is a photo of a family in the NAZI governed Germany of long ago.

Have you ever noticed how many "family" words are associated with the concept of "nation" in literature, politics, and government?

A quick check of a few relevant metaphors (forefathers, father of the constitution, Uncle Sam, motherland, fatherland, homeland, father of the nation, founding fathers, mother of the nation, family of nations, etc.) makes me want to look at perhaps the key source-metaphor for this notion:"

"... a common metaphor, shared by conservatives and liberals alike -- the Nation-as-Family metaphor, in which the nation is seen as a family, the government as a parent and the citizens as children ..."

"(The Nation-as-Family Metaphor). To expand upon this concept a bit, consider these comments:

"It’s no accident that our political beliefs are structured by our idealizations of the family. Our earliest experience with being governed is in our families. Our parents “govern” us: They protect us, tell us what we can and cannot do, make sure we have enough money and supplies, educate us,
and have us do our part in running the house.

So it is not at all surprising that many nations are metaphorically seen in terms of families: Mother Russia, Mother India, the Fatherland. In America, we have founding fathers, Daughters of the American Revolution, Uncle Sam, and we send our collective sons and daughters to war. In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the voice of the totalitarian state was called Big Brother.

As George Lakoff discussed at length in his 1996 book, Moral Politics, this metaphorical understanding of the nation-as-family directly informs our political worldview. Directly, but not consciously. As with other aspects of framing, the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness."

(The Nation As Family, PDF). It is important to remember the part of the concept indicating that "the use of this metaphor lies below the level of consciousness", because in this post today we are going to try to take a look at part of that iceberg we can see, which is not only conscious, but is also attached to the bulk that is not conscious."

(Security: Familyland, Fatherland, or Homeland?). Thus, the 'MOM' in MOMCOM is a valid metaphorical reference.

And with regard to the 'O' in MOMCOM, note that she has told her offspring:

"The 5th Fleet together with troops are in the Middle East where there is lots of oil.

The 4th Fleet has been reactivated [cf. Navy Reestablishes U.S. 4th Fleet] after 58 years of being moth balled, and has been sent to Central / South America where there is also lots of oil.

A website of the federal government tells us:

"Oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy."

(Department of Energy [they removed it, so here is The Wayback Machine copy of that page: Department of Energy]). Which is the same thing as saying you are economically dead without your blood, your oil.

The struggle for economic life then, would be the struggle for oil would it not?

Bush II put it in the cowboy language during a state of the union address to congress, saying that "America is addicted to oil".

(The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil). The DNA shines right through, if you know what I mean (A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA, 2, 3, 4, 5).

III. The Embryo

One might wonder how 'MOM' came to be, so let's take out the family album and have a look-see:

"John Davison Rockefeller (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, he founded the Standard Oil Company and aggressively ran it until he officially retired in 1897. Standard Oil began as an Ohio partnership formed by John D. Rockefeller, his brother William Rockefeller, Henry Flagler, Jabez Bostwick, chemist Samuel Andrews, and a silent partner, Stephen V. Harkness. As kerosene and gasoline grew in importance, Rockefeller's wealth soared, and he became the world's richest man and the first American worth more than a billion dollars. Adjusting for inflation, he is often regarded as the richest person in history."

(A History of Oil Addiction - 2). But there was a dark side to the family tree that many might say is just old-timey history:

"John D. Rockefeller, in his 1909 Random Reminiscences of Men and Events, recalled, 'One of our greatest helpers has been the State Department. Our ambassadors and ministers and consuls have aided to push our way into new markets in the utmost corners of the world.' But he left out a key explanation for the government's interest. Standard Oil was the biggest U.S. company, putting a hundred ships to sea, buying and selling oil in Latin America, Germany, and the Far East. It also operated a global intelligence system. 'By 1885,' according to one historian, 'seventy percent of the Standard's business was overseas and it had its own network of agents through the world, and its own espionage service, to forestall the initiatives of rival companies or governments.'"

(The Private Empire's Social Media Hit Squads). Author Michael C. Lynch is a member of the modern form of "a global intelligence system ... and ... network of agents ... and its own espionage service, to forestall the initiatives of rival companies or governments" (see also Oil Industry Braces for Trial on Rights Abuses, and Oilfluenza, Affluenza, and Disgorgement, 2, 3).

IV. The Current Behavioral Phase

The oft-quoted phrase "history repeats itself" can be applied here with the Oil-Qaeda victory in the recent national election:

"So, in today's episode let's cover T-Rex, the guy from the tradition 'I am not an American company.' (The Private Empire's Social Media Hit Squads).

Recently T-Rex forgot to put on his camouflage package, and therefore went alt-pro shape-shifter out in alt-right public view:

"Secretary of State [T-Rex] is skipping a NATO meeting, but he is planning to travel to Russia next month. His travel schedule is raising alarms in Europe." - NPR
...
"[T-Rex's] decision to miss his first NATO meeting but visit Russia a week later plunged his department into damage control, frustrated allies and left analysts scratching their heads at an administration that once again is rubbing Europe the wrong way and raising questions about its commitment to its Western allies." - CNN
...
"America’s newly-installed secretary of state [T-Rex] is to skip his first Nato meeting, it has been announced, and will instead greet the president of China and then travel to Russia." - Telegraph

The media's consternation is misplaced due primarily to a dearth of knowledge of the history of Oil-Qaeda, so let's just briefly go through it from recent on back into the more distant past:

"Speaking from the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, Russian President Vladmir Putin lauded ExxonMobil [Humble Oil-Qaeda, 2], calling the company Russia’s 'old and reliable [dirty oil] partner.'"

(Deepwater Horizon Keeps On Killing & Drilling - 3). That took place several years ago in 2014.

(The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 5). That other saying "the more things change the more they remain the same" comes to mind.

V. Conclusion

I have only scratched the surface concerning MOMCOM coverage on Dredd Blog, so if you want to read more about that subject go to the Series Posts tab and look under the heading 'MOMCOM' (there are several such headings).

In closing, I want to compliment author Michael C. Lynch for a piece of his book title "The Coming Oil Flood" because it is quite true (Greenland & Antarctica Invade The United States, 2, 3, 4; Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Two hundred feet of sea level is quite a flood, and yes, it is an oil flood in the sense that burning dirty oil is what will have caused it.

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

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The MOMCOM anthem ...

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Oilfluenza, Affluenza, and Disgorgement - 3

Who dunnit?

Several times over the years I have discussed court cases concerning Oil-Qaeda (The War of the Warms;  Oilfluenza, Affluenza, and Disgorgement, 2; A Case of Big Oil vs. Climate Change; What Next, Mass Depraved-Heart Murder?, 2; Global Warming Induced Climate Change Is A Matter of Law).

In an ongoing case in a federal district court, the judge has set a hearing on the merits of the case:

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, who is hearing a suit brought by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco against five big oil corporations, ordered a historic tutorial in which both parties will have a chance to present their view of the science behind climate change, the McClatchy Washington Bureau reported March 7.

"This will be the closest that we have seen to a trial on climate science in the United States, to date," Michael Burger, head of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told the Bureau.

The hearing marks the most recent novel development in an already groundbreaking lawsuit. As EcoWatch reported, San Francisco became the first major U.S. city to sue the fossil fuel industry over climate change when it filed with Oakland against the five largest fossil-fuel producing corporations in September 2017.

The cities claim the companies named in the suit—Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell—"have known for decades that fossil fuel-driven global warming and accelerated sea level rise posed a catastrophic risk to human beings." They are therefore suing the companies for the costs of adapting to the climate challenge, such as the building of sea walls.

(Court Case Climate Change). I will try to get some more data (briefs, transcript, and the like such as NOTICE RE TUTORIAL).

Meanwhile, I am still wrestling with the data issues in bottom pressure record usage, and hope to post on it soon (The Ghost-Water Constant - 10).

UPDATE: "As climate litigation heats up, a judge’s climate science tutorial puts the fossil fuel industry in an awkward position with the science deniers it once funded"   (The Climate Is Changing For Climate Skeptics).

The previous post in this series is here.

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On March 7, 2018 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s “drastic and extraordinary” petition for writ of mandamus ...

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The Extinction of Houston - 2

Downtown tomorrow

The 4th largest city in the U.S.eh? is paralyzed in an ongoing anthropogenic disaster.

It is thereby confronted with an uncanny vision of the future (The Extinction of Houston).

But it is real now, not later, and it is happening to people alive today, not to their children sometime in the distant future.

In the first post of this series I contemplated sea level rise, which is a slow motion reality unlike the fast-forward scenario taking place in today's current ongoing disaster.

A disaster that is not only taking place in Houston, but is also taking place all along the Gulf Coast of Texas.

This catastrophe is brought on by Category 4 hurricane Harvey, which is now a tropical storm that is not leaving anytime soon enough, because there are no "steering fronts" to push it away, no jet stream to push it along to harm someone else somewhere else.

Some meteorologists are calling this the greatest flood-disaster in U.S. history, and perhaps the worst disaster ever in U.S. history.

Downtown today

It still has a few days to go before we know for sure.

The ongoing slow sea level rise disaster doesn't help, because it is rendering large parts of the Houston metroplex into below-sea-level areas.

Today's danger, tomorrow's danger, and the danger the next day after that will unfortunately be views into the future of Houston and other U.S. cities along the coast, such as New York City.

I mean "views" that give us a true reality vision of what is slowly but surely coming (permanent inundation).

It is not pretty now, but it will be worse then.

Elderly await rescue in flooded group-home

The most striking thing to me is that there were days of forewarnings, (enough forewarning to have relocated the most vulnerable to safer places).

Just as there have been days of forewarning, there have been years of forewarning on the sea level rise dangers, yet, very few, percentage wise, are able to heed the warnings (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

As a result, "as we speak," the emergency services are spread thin.

People have to wait four or five hours on the roofs of their houses for rescue, if rescue comes at all.

And there are more days of rain in the potential forecast, the highest being as much as five feet of rain accumulation in some places (now already piling up in rivers, lakes, streets, homes, roads, and businesses).

The denier governments are dumbing down those in danger areas, and thereby increasing death and injury to citizens who follow and believe those official deniers:

"But county and city officials responsible for addressing flooding largely reject

Downtown policy

these arguments. Houston’s two top flood control officials say their biggest challenge is not managing rapid growth but retrofitting outdated infrastructure. Current standards that govern how and where developers and residents can build are mostly sufficient, they say. And all the recent monster storms are freak occurrences — not harbingers of global warming or a sign of things to come."

(Texas Tribune). From the idiotic messages of the president on down to agency leaders, governors, and local mayors, they preach lies to their constituents and those constituents suffer for it.

This is going to increase as time goes on, unless those deniers in power are taken out of office, or voted out of office, permanently.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Choose Your Trances Carefully - 8

Fig. 1 Policy makers of Trancelvania

I. Start Here

By definition we can't make sense of insanity, nor conversely demonstrate insanity to be sensible.

Yet, there are vast industries that have been trying to do just that for about a century in the U.S.eh?  (The Deceit Business).

They had to give up on that ultimate difficulty, so they chose to call their mixing up of the 'unmixable' by the name of "pragmatism" rather than calling it what it really is.

The result of course is that the masses have lost their way to fall into trances (Citizenship: The Art of Hallucinating Properly) after being told that sanity is not all that it is cracked up to be, nor is insanity all that bad (The Ways of Bernays).

II. The Three Most Deadly Trances

The trance-makers are so into their own trance (Bernays Trance) that their once-carefully-crafted impositions have now morphed to the point that they are doing it now without using those two words (sanity, insanity) in any reasonable context (at times even swapping the two words surreptitiously along the way).

The predicament boils down to two ways (Trance II, III) to destroy civilization, which includes the human species:

As we are all surely aware, we now face the most ominous decisions in human history. There are many problems that must be addressed, but two are overwhelming in their significance: environmental destruction and nuclear war. For the first time in history, we face the possibility of destroying the prospects for decent existence -- and not in the distant future. For this reason alone, it is imperative to sweep away the ideological clouds and face honestly and realistically the question of how policy decisions are made, and what we can do to alter them before it is too late.

(Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch - 2, quoting Dr. Noam Chomsky). As long as those predicaments can go wrong they will go wrong.

For the remainder of this post, let's look at the two "what could go wrong" trances we face at the fork in the road ahead.

III. What Could Go Wrong

Yes, even at those times when they were asking "what could go wrong" they would stumble, somewhere along the way, into Murphy's Law ("Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong").

 But once that law was discovered it was quickly abandoned for a more "pragmatic" policy:

The fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 abruptly ended one historical era and inaugurated another. So, too, did the outcome of last year’s U.S. presidential election. What are we to make of the interval between those two watershed moments? Answering that question is essential to understanding how Donald Trump became president and where his ascendency leaves us.

Hardly had this period commenced before observers fell into the habit of referring to it as the “post-Cold War” era. Now that it’s over, a more descriptive name might be in order. My suggestion: America’s Age of Great Expectations.

Forgive and Forget

The end of the Cold War caught the United States completely by surprise. During the 1980s, even with Mikhail Gorbachev running the Kremlin, few in Washington questioned the prevailing conviction that the Soviet-American rivalry was and would remain a defining feature of international politics more or less in perpetuity. Indeed, endorsing such an assumption was among the prerequisites for gaining entrée to official circles. Virtually no one in the American establishment gave serious thought to the here-today, gone-tomorrow possibility that the Soviet threat, the Soviet empire, and the Soviet Union itself might someday vanish. Washington had plans aplenty for what to do should a Third World War erupt, but none for what to do if the prospect of such a climactic conflict simply disappeared.

Still, without missing a beat, when the Berlin Wall fell and two years later the Soviet Union imploded, leading members of that establishment wasted no time in explaining the implications of developments they had totally failed to anticipate. With something close to unanimity, politicians and policy-oriented intellectuals interpreted the unification of Berlin and the ensuing collapse of communism as an all-American victory of cosmic proportions. “We” had won, “they” had lost -- with that outcome vindicating everything the United States represented as the archetype of freedom.

From within the confines of that establishment, one rising young intellectual audaciously suggested that the “end of history” itself might be at hand, with the “sole superpower” left standing now perfectly positioned to determine the future of all humankind. In Washington, various powers-that-be considered this hypothesis and concluded that it sounded just about right. The future took on the appearance of a blank slate upon which Destiny itself was inviting Americans to inscribe their intentions.

American elites might, of course, have assigned a far different, less celebratory meaning to the passing of the Cold War. They might have seen the outcome as a moment that called for regret, repentance, and making amends.

After all, the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, or more broadly between what was then called the Free World and the Communist bloc, had yielded a host of baleful effects. An arms race between two superpowers had created monstrous nuclear arsenals and, on multiple occasions, brought the planet precariously close to Armageddon. Two singularly inglorious wars had claimed the lives of many tens of thousands of American soldiers and literally millions of Asians. One, on the Korean peninsula, had ended in an unsatisfactory draw; the other, in Southeast Asia, in catastrophic defeat. Proxy fights in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East killed so many more and laid waste to whole countries. Cold War obsessions led Washington to overthrow democratic governments, connive in assassination, make common cause with corrupt dictators, and turn a blind eye to genocidal violence. On the home front, hysteria compromised civil liberties and fostered a sprawling, intrusive, and unaccountable national security apparatus. Meanwhile, the military-industrial complex and its beneficiaries conspired to spend vast sums on weapons purchases that somehow never seemed adequate to the putative dangers at hand.

Rather than reflecting on such somber and sordid matters, however, the American political establishment together with ambitious members of the country’s intelligentsia found it so much more expedient simply to move on. As they saw it, the annus mirabilis of 1989 wiped away the sins of former years. Eager to make a fresh start, Washington granted itself a plenary indulgence. After all, why contemplate past unpleasantness when a future so stunningly rich in promise now beckoned?

(Tom Dispatch, "How We Got Here"). As it turns out then, even 'here' turns out to be just another word for a 'nothing left to lose' freedom trance (The Matriarch of The Matrix).

IV. The YAH Trance

How we got to where ever we are seems to be less pragmatic and less probable, especially if we climb up to peer over the trance walls, and are able to look deep enough into whatever 'here' we have arrived at.

As it turns out, 'here' is not here (You Are Here).

Where we have ended up is where "the resistance" is a struggle for our very lives, rather than a struggle to bring peace and prosperity to ourselves and others (the 'here' we were told we were going to).

But more than that, the place where the powers that be are located, and where resistance to them is located, is really not 'here'.

V. Conclusion

The video below shows that various governments are performing their duties as if they live on two different planets.

That inexorably leads to some countries being "pragmatic" in a way that is diametrically opposite to another country's "pragmatism," even as they claim to be 'here'.

Some European nations are hard at work on projects to protect their coasts, while in Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, "climate change" is being removed from official public discourse.

Yes, the data that are being interpreted by the consensus of scientists are being heeded with gasps by one official group, while being denied by another official group.

The previous post in this series is here.

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