Floods and Droughts; Che's Birthday; Ireland Rejects Lisbon; Corporate Treasonocracy

Wet or Dry, We Always Lose. Major media report that Midwest floods are likely to raise prices for hundreds of products across the economy for the entire Nation, all because we refuse to build what I have been advocating for 11 years, an Interstate Highway System for water. How could a nationwide system of canals, pipelines, impoundments, lakes, and dams possibly cost more than the humongous cumulative tally of flood and drought damage we see every single year?
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In 1997, I speculated:

If we start now, in 30 years killer floods along hundreds of miles of the Ohio or Mississippi, and devastating droughts in Texas or Georgia will be nothing more than tall tales that youngsters will have trouble believing.

Had we in fact started in 1997, we'd be a third of the way thru the creation of an interstate highway system for water, and if the most urgent projects had been addressed first, most of the worst flooding and dessication would already have been remediated.
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But noooooooo. Every year some part of this country is ravaged by floods while others are ravaged by drought. We lose tens of billions of dollars, perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars, to each end of the water continuum, every single year. Still we do nothing to move water from where there's too much to where there's too little. How stupid are we as a Nation? Well — and the mention of "well" brings up the fact that millions of wells and entire regional aquifers could be recharged by such a project — it would seem we're pretty damned stupid. Because every year we suffer floods and droughts we needn't suffer, and each year we do nothing to prevent them in future years.
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80th Birthday of Che Guevara. Hollywood has produced a 4½-hour film about the life of Che Guevara, whose birthday is tomorrow, and people involved with the film have expressed pride in having honored that 'dedicated revolutionary'. Never mind that he was a mass murderer intent on imposing totalitarianism upon hundreds of millions of people in the name of, what? socioeconomic 'liberation'? Stupid, naive young people may be won over by this paean to a monster, and think it chic and morally defensible to wear his image on a teeshirt. They should be educated about the worldwide death toll of Communism, some 110 million people killed by Communists directly and in wars to prevent Communism from taking over the whole planet. 110 million is only the midpoint estimate (next to last line in Table 16A at the website "Murder By Communism". The low estimate is 40.5 million; the high, 259.4 million. Let's be "moderate" and go for the middle estimate, a mere 110 MILLION DEAD. Yes, Che Guevara certainly was a hero for participating in that slauter, all for his "ideals".
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What next? A glowing Hollywood memoir of "Adolf Hitler: Hero Misunderstood"? "Tamerlane [Timur the Lame]: Greatest Handicapable Man of All Time"?
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I don't want to hear any defense of Che Guevara nor of any other Communist murderer. I don't want people pointing to Che's diligence and courage in the face of obstacles, nor making him out to be a hero for "dying for his principles", any more than I want to hear about how diligent Jeffrey Dahmer may have been or praising the courage of an armed-robber shooting it out with cops until he is killed in the commission of his (last) crime. When you're dealing with an evil person, the lazier he is, the more incompetent, the better for others. You don't praise his diligence, nor how brilliantly he planned and carried out his crimes.
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The human race is slime, so this film will doubtless inspire tens of thousands of stupid kids to glorify Che Guevara on their chest. Maybe we should regard all such images as targets for pistol practice. Figure a hit right between the eyes as the top score, and go for the gold.
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Ireland Rejects Lisbon. My congratulations to the people of Ireland, who have rejected the attempt to jam down their throat a European Union constitution that they correctly felt was dangerous to their rights and the residual sovereignty of Ireland. If Ireland is entirely to yield its sovereignty to any larger federation, it should be to the United States. The Republic of Ireland would make a wonderful addition to our Union, and such accession would constitute a reunion with millions of Irish emigrants, including part of my extended family (the fun part).

The loss came even after Ireland's three largest political parties, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and business groups IBEC and the American Chamber of Commerce all called for a yes vote. Mounted against them were political parties Sinn Fein and the Socialists and privately funded group Libertas.

The Irish people apparently understand that there is a dark, dangerous, autocratic, authoritarian, even totalitarian streak in Continental Europe. Anyone who gladly submerges Ireland in such a mass of cultures tolerant of dictatorship risks being crushed, imprisoned, beaten, killed by the very entity they endorse.
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The EU is potentially a huge danger to the world. It must be kept diffuse and weak. Divided, European nations conquered almost the entire planet, with only a handful of exceptions: Abyssinia and the American slave-resettlement country Liberia in Africa —all the rest of the continent was seized by Europeans; Siam (Thailand), Japan, Korea, and parts of China in East Asia; Persia (Iran) in Western Asia — all the rest of that continent being conquered and colonized by Europe. What might a United Europe do? Anyone who is willing to gamble that other planetary forces are so strong now that the rise of a European superpower poses no danger to the planet, is a fool.
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How do we know that European authoritarianism is still strong? Consider this, from the same Bloomberg.com story cited above:

In the U.K., where polls show opponents of the treaty outnumber supporters by two-to-one, Foreign Secretary David Miliband vowed to press on with ratification. The treaty awaits House of Lords approval next week.

The Irish vote has emboldened British opponents, tho — which is more than a bit ironic, given the bitter history between the English and Irish. Again, from Bloomberg:

Critics seized on the Irish result to demand Prime Minister Gordon Brown hold a referendum.

"There are now no excuses left for denying the British people their say, William Hague, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, said in a statement.

Of course there are excuses left. There are always excuses for authoritarianism in Europe: the people know nothing; the people are fools; the people can't be trusted; we know better. That is the European way.
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Where's that guillotine that the French used on Louis XVI? Oh, I guess it doesn't have to be the same one, tho that would add a glorious glint to revolt. Any guillotine, or rope, or sword, or mob beating will accomplish the same thing.
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The British ruling class, and that of every other EU country, seems intent on ramming thru the Lisbon treaty without paying the slitest attention to the people. Would they prefer a "No" vote or a revolution that kills the ruling class? Guess which I'd prefer. I'll give you a hint: every member of the pro-Lisbon ruling class of all the countries of the EU should be tissue-typed.
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Corporate Treasonocracy. First Miller, then Coors, and now Budweiser? The selloff and destruction of all things American by corporate boards and shareholders who care nothing about this country continues. And the governmental traitors in Washington stand by doing nothing. Make no mistake about it: the people now in charge of "American" corporations and "our" Government have absolutely no loyalty to the United States. Not the tiniest shred of loyalty, nor patriotism, nor national self-esteem. Everything is just money to them. Everything.
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Mind you, they'll wrap themselves in the flag to sell you things, but the U.S. flag means absolutely nothing to them except a marketing tool. They'll refer to foreign cars as "the best cars in America" or "made in America", while actively concealing that the cars they're trying to sell you are of Japanese design and that every cent of profit goes to Japan, not the United States. They'll fill their advertising with American images and identify their foreign-owned beers and cars and every other type of merchandise as American, and they won't ever be prosecuted for false advertising — in part because almost no one is prosecuted for false advertising anymore. Even when someone does prosecute and find someone guilty of false advertising, the false advertising is allowed to continue.
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The scumbag who sells Enzyte, a supposed "male-enhancement" pill, was found guilty of multiple counts of fraud on February 23rd, but the ads keep airing and the bucks keep pouring in as tho no prosecution occurred and the government has approved that message: because, as some other advertiser dares to claim, "We couldn't say it if it wasn't true." So too do the ads for another vile scam of the exact same sort, Extenze, continue, and the advertiser continues to rack up hundreds of thousands of sales because, viewers believe, they couldn't say it on television if it wasn't true. Yes, alas, they could. Yes, indeed, they CAN. And DO.
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No one is punished for false advertising nowadays. No one is imprisoned — or killed, as the Enzyte and Extenze con artists should all be killed — and frauds galore keep pulling in fools to be parted from their money while government stands aside and lets it happen, all in plain sight. The penis-enlargement fraudsters, these corporate mobsters, declare with pride that 100 million pills have been sold! 100 million. And Government does nothing. The System is completely and absolutely corrupt, with the people at the top being rich, so identifying not with the victims of fraud but the "clever" rich people who manage to extract millions of dollars from idiots.
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As to beer, nowhere do we see any indication, of any kind, that Miller or Coors is foreign-owned. And if Anheuser-Busch is sold to foreigners, that fact will be equally well concealed. Americans will continue to think they're drinking American beer, when they are actually drinking Belgian beer, co-owned by Brazilians. We are being progressively colonialized without our knowledge, as one foreign company after another rips chunk after chunk of our patrimony out from under us while our brave Governmental defenders, so eager to send us to war thousands of miles away to keep us "safe" at home (but actually to serve other people's (Israel's) interests) do nothing to defend the home front.
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We will all someday be working for foreigners, who will control our wages, hours, and every other term of our employment, and we will accept that colonialization by transnational corporations because we will have no alternative but starvation, because of course there will be little or no Unemployment pay if we 'voluntarily' leave our job in indignation to look for another, and there will be no other jobs to be had except with different foreign corporations.
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Money has no nationality, because it can all be converted. The rich have no nationalism, only bank accounts. Money flows across borders with ease. So borders mean nothing. And it doesn't matter whether the money that supports the 112-room mansions of the rich started as dollars, euros, reales, yuan, or yen, as long as it buys the property and keeps the gardener and maid and poolboy working. And as working people's options erode away, the rich will be able to pay ever less to their servants, who will gradually become their slaves, for having no option but to accept whatever job is offered at whatever rate of pay and working conditions the rich may deign to offer.
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Americans sometimes think that globalization is a good thing because "we" are on top. No, actually, the bulk of "us" are on the bottom as much as are the latter-day coolies of China and India. The Golden Age of democracy is OVER. It has been displaced in primacy by plutocracy, which grows every day at the expense of all forms of democracy, be they political, corporate, or socioeconomic. Inequality is the new watchword, and the people in power aspire to ever more unequal social, political, and economic arrangements, in which the rich are also the powerful, and if you are not rich, you will never be powerful. The rich will crush the rest of us, and feel good about it. Until we slit their throats.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,099 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:57 PM