polluted empire

POLLUTED EMPIRE


Just the other week I was enjoying the book “The World Without Us”. There was a rather long treatise on the pollution of plastics. It seems that rather than degrade, plastics just get smaller and smaller. The layer of visible crap floating on top of the ocean is nothing compared to the microscopic layer several feet under the surface that is ingested by sea life, a lot of it clogging up the intestinal tract and killing the little suckers. One wonders what this does to the idiots eating the survivors ( the jag offs eating sea food because it is so much healthier than beef, as if mercury and plastic is better for you than growth hormones and genetically modified feed grain ). Today I was thumbing through the book “Metal Of Dishonor”, a look at depleted uranium exposed Gulf War soldiers, as well as the long history of indigenous peoples ( Marshall islanders [ Bikini atoll nuke tests ], Navaho Indians [ uranium mining dust and tailings leaching into ground water ] ) getting intentionally poisoned by nuclear weapons. At first I thought I’d talk about the history of death by government and how this should warn you what is in store for you, but then that got me interested in how we happily wallow in the poisonous stew of our civilization. I’ll call it even and talk about both aspects of this.

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Boiling it down to brass tack basics, it is as simple as can be. Human nature predisposes us towards indifference to our own health, which automatically translates into not giving a crap about others health. Females happily degrade their own bodies to give multiple births, sagging breasts a badge of honor to feeding, accumulated fat a sign of repeated pregnancies ( leaving aside the gravity later associated with old age and the other fat build up that goes with consuming poisonous foods ). Males happily shorten and endanger their own lives at work, a badge of honor that reflects their ability to provide for their families ( in previous eras, hunting or war wounds, not too long ago industrial accidents such as missing digits, today something like hair loss due to stress in the office ). We actually glory in our ill health, as it shows us and others that we are worthy members of the tribe, whether procreating or protecting/providing. We gladly accept the trade-off. So, if we don’t care about small prices that we pay for advancing the interests of our family and tribe, why would we give a crap about other people suffering for that same goal? Pacific islanders having birth defects from nuclear testing is a sacrifice we gladly make with their bodies to ensure our nuclear deterrent is capable of keeping us in power ( and the same goes for the Indians, who we dismiss automatically after we buy off any feelings of guilt with a Food Stamp payment and a free trailer ). Iraqi children dying of cancer? Not our tribe, we don’t care. Even if we cared, compared to our poisoned drinking water we get from fracking gas and oil deposits, or the cancer clusters we put up around nuke power plants ( the older the plant the higher the incidences, clearly showing the build up of waste emits more poisons ), how bad do those freaks really have it, right? It isn’t like we are so callus as to expect other people to die for us, we gladly share in the pain. Just like smokestack poison was once a sign of wealth and economic security, now the global poisoning reflects the same. We see a trade-off in the already low probability of getting cancer being slightly elevated for a much more secure future ( even if getting cancer is higher than “slightly”, we know we will usually die before we know about it, early detection and treatment being reserved for rich bitches ).

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Irradiating Iraqi’s has several positive benefits for Americans. It gets the nuclear waste out of our country. Once it vaporizes upon detonation most of the locals suck it in. By the time it gets back to us in the atmosphere it is several orders of magnitude diminished in lethality. Meanwhile, Iraqi’s population is being diminished which will make it a lot easier to occupy the place. Of course, our military over there is totally humped but few of us care, even most of the soldiers. It is both the cost of protecting and a badge of honor, generally speaking. If the federal government subjected its draftee’s to direct nuclear fallout, do you really think it will not do the same to those that foolishly volunteered to be in harms way? The military has always treated its members as cannon fodder and guinea pigs, and I think it would be fair to say most of its members both know this and don’t care. If you are lower class and the military is a way up, you roll the dice and usually win in the death lottery. Both parties know the score and both agree with the rules.

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Anyone out there putting two and two together on Iran, with the test facilities and the downed drone? The frequency of “mysterious” explosions at Iranian government facilities has been increasing. Some idiot was blathering in the media about clandestine CIA or Special Forces bombing the facilities thought to be nuclear bomb related. First off, seriously? Why try to infiltrate teams, a difficult process with a slim chance of success. Just send in a stealth drone or two. Second, do you really think the Koreans and Iranians and Brazilians or whoever are really just “trying” to produce nuclear weapons? Russia is happy to supply ready made missiles to whoever is a counter to US power, just as we supplied South Korea and Japan with their own weapons ( no proof of course, but how else would Britain and France and Israel so quickly gotten their own nukes? It is a good bet that we also gave our other allies weapons to secure themselves against the Soviets and Soviet proxies ). I would bet one testicle that Iran has its own weapons, just as I’m sure that we are drone attacking bomb storage sites rather than enriching facilities. Which means we are exponentially increasing the radioactivity throughout the middle east. We are depopulating the entire oil producing area, slowly but surely. And the grunts and contractors going into the wasteland will gladly do so for the economics of it.

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So, yes, Peak Oil is here, but we have a great plan to deal with it. We are killing the indigs to get to ALL the oil left, and we are poisoning ourselves gladly to scrape out the last of the domestic oil and natural gas. The government only governs with the happy consent of the population, and we gladly go along with it. I make fun of pampered and spoiled Yuppies living in McMansions and driving SUV’s, but that is just a side effect of our polluted empire. We are getting basic security out of our global conquest, because Oil Is Food. The wealth that goes along with stealing the oil is not the reason for the theft, it is just a happy layer of frosting on the cake we eat ( literally what we eat ). A win/win. Of course there will be losers in the process. Like civil servants deprived of a meaningful pension as we must triage some cities and counties ( obviously we can’t survive on the same level of wealth as when the oil supply was increasing ), or Senior Citizens getting screwed on their retirements. But what do we care? We are suffering right alongside them, but the empire carries on. And the continued empire benefits all of us, even as we must readjust to a lower standard of living.

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