{"id":5048,"date":"2012-10-10T18:40:09","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T01:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/?p=5048"},"modified":"2013-03-29T18:50:44","modified_gmt":"2013-03-30T01:50:44","slug":"rocky-mmxii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/2012\/10\/10\/rocky-mmxii\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocky MMXII"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\">Barack Obama is a War <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2012\/05\/02\/the-constitutional-crimes-of-barack-obama\/\">Criminal<\/a>. In the real world, War Criminals are awarded the Death Sentence. But we don\u2019t live in the real world; we live in fucking Fantasyland, where they\u2019re <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kGo6gtqvHxE\">awarded<\/a> the Nobel Peace Prize instead.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">And let\u2019s have no apologetic bleats to the effect that Obama &#8212; having inherited the Bushwars, and made good on his promise to exit Iraq &#8212; deserves a free pass here. While it\u2019s surely the case that the Monroe Doctrine wasn\u2019t promulgated by Obama, nor was it under his watch that its purview was <a href=\"http:\/\/danawilliams2.tripod.com\/philippines.html\">expanded<\/a> to include the entirety of the globe; the zeal with which he has <em>propagated<\/em> the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thirdworldtraveler.com\/Zinn\/Empire_PeoplesHx.html\">White<\/a> Man\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/rense.com\/general47\/thil.htm\">Burden<\/a>\u201d (while certainly not history\u2019s first Uncle Tom, Obama may be its most notable) could almost be considered shocking\u2026if it hadn\u2019t been so utterly predictable.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Had he wished to prevent this particular achievement from making its way to his CV, he needed only have, upon taking office, expedited the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Immediate, unconditional, complete withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan; followed by the paying of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.distantocean.com\/2009\/06\/the-destruction-was-mutual.html\">reparations<\/a>, and the cleaning up (if it\u2019s even possible) of the Depleted <a href=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/blog\/materials\/johnson.html\">Uranium<\/a> particles we\u2019ve left blowing in the wind.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\">Of course, this would still have marked him as the leading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sangam.org\/ANALYSIS\/Ahmad.htm\">Terrorist<\/a> Mastermind of the last four years, had he not in addition:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Repatriated all American military units <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/archive\/175338\/\">stationed<\/a> on foreign soil (yes, sorry, this includes the fucking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2012\/sep\/25\/drones-wests-terror-weapons-doodlebugs-1\">drones<\/a>); and closed down Guantanamo, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/south_asia\/8674179.stm\">Bagram<\/a>, and all other military \u201cdetention centers\u201d \u2013 both those known to, and those kept <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/archive\/175197\/anang_gopal_afraid_of_the_dark\">hidden<\/a> from, the public.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Ceased <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newint.org\/columns\/currents\/1980\/06\/01\/violence\/\">providing<\/a> armaments and <a href=\"http:\/\/soaw.org\/about-the-soawhinsec\/what-is-the-soawhinsec\">training<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalexchange.org\/blogs\/peopletopeople\/2011\/03\/22\/instead-of-bombing-dictators-stop-selling-them-bombs\/\">repressive<\/a>, tyrannical regimes (or better still, ceased the arms trade altogether).<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Discontinued all aid to, and UN blocking on behalf of, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternativenews.org\/english\/\">Israel<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Shut down the IMF and World Bank. Arguably, these might not be considered quote-unquote Terrorist organisations. But given that the global economy (directed by the U.S. of A. to the degree that it\u2019s known as the \u201cWashington Consensus\u201d) is largely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wfp.org\/hunger\/stats\">responsible<\/a> for the deaths by malnutrition and hunger-related disease of 30,000 children <em>per day,<\/em> whether strictly speaking \u201cviolence\u201d or no, the overtly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thirdworldtraveler.com\/IMF_WB\/Budhoo_IMF.html\">political<\/a> and mercilessly sadistic charge to, \u201cMake the economy <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man\">scream<\/a>,\u201d is tantamount to the same.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\">And, no: to demand this comportment of an American President isn\u2019t just some pie-in-the-sky bleeding-heart hippie babble. This is a <em>fundamental<\/em> standard of human decency \u2013 a standard to which we hold all other international actors. (Well, except for those willing to join us in \u201ccoalition\u201d as we carpet-bomb yet another defenseless people, and any tin-pot dictators whom are at a given moment in our <a href=\"http:\/\/home.iprimus.com.au\/korob\/fdtcards\/Cards_Index.html\">employ<\/a>&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Instead, of course, Barack Obama has, e.g.: retained Dubya\u2019s Secretary of War, <em>expanded<\/em> the war in Afghanistan, greatly expanded the global assassination-by-drone campaign, left a massive Middle East <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/07\/03\/world\/middleeast\/us-adds-forces-in-persian-gulf-a-signal-to-iran.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_moc.semityn.www\">deployment<\/a> trailing in the wake of the ever-so-reluctant withdrawal from Iraq (essentially, the withdrawal was a product of U.S. fecklessness), bombed the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2011\/07\/27\/barack-obama-changeling\/\">shit<\/a> out of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/2011\/mar\/29\/libya-west-tripoli-arab-world-gaddafi\">Libya<\/a> (while rattling, louder and ever louder, sabres at <a href=\"http:\/\/original.antiwar.com\/nfuller\/2012\/05\/23\/war-with-iran-has-already-begun\/\">Iran<\/a> and Syria), and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2012\/08\/31\/the-soul-suckers-of-endless-compromise\/\">maintained<\/a> the Bush-era <a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2009\/5\/19\/jeremy_scahill_little_known_military_thug\">torture<\/a>-first-then-ask-no-questions policy in re so-called \u201cillegal combatants\u201d (in fact, it\u2019s entirely <a href=\"http:\/\/daccess-ods.un.org\/access.nsf\/Get?Open&amp;DS=A\/RES\/3103(XXVIII)&amp;Lang=E&amp;Area=RESOLUTION\">legal<\/a> for citizens to use <em>\u201c<\/em>any means at their disposal\u201d to resist military occupation).<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">He has furthermore accelerated to a dizzying pace the Bush Administration\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/truth-out.org\/opinion\/item\/11264-john-cusack-and-jonathan-turley-on-obamas-constitution\">rollback<\/a> of Civil Liberties at home \u2013 including having\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/?p=2092\">seized<\/a> from the judiciary the authority to convict and punish without trial (i.e., murder) any American citizen unilaterally deemed a \u201cterrorist\u201d and having mercilessly tortured one of the few insiders <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bradleymanning.org\/\">principled<\/a> enough to have blown the whistle on our abominable crimes &#8212; and then thrown away the key to his cell (Obama&#8217;s crack-down on whistle-blowers has been &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/173521\/obamas-crackdown-whistleblowers?page=full#\">unprecedented<\/a>&#8220;). All with a smugly <a href=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/?p=686\">jingoistic<\/a> front which is stomach-turning to say the least.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Oh, did that say \u201czeal\u201d up above? Apparently it\u2019s more like \u201cglee\u201d with which Obama personally chooses, during his \u201cTerror Tuesday\u201d meetings, the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/plan-for-hunting-terrorists-signals-us-intends-to-keep-adding-names-to-kill-lists\/2012\/10\/23\/4789b2ae-18b3-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_story.html\">suspects<\/a>\u201d to whom will be administered the New American \u201cDue Process\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/05\/29\/world\/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_moc.semityn.www\">proceedings<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama\u2019s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guant\u00e1namo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda &#8212; even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was \u201can easy one\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">And &#8212; would you know it? \u2013 Obama\u2019s shameful Human Rights depredations will not, in the long term, even be his most ignominious legacy. <em>That<\/em> particular fillip, it hardly need be stated, will belong to his terrifying and insane ecological brinkmanship. Not, again, that he\u2019s been the<em> <\/em>first and only Captain of our species\u2019 growth-at-any-cost megalomania. But he\u2019s happened to be at the helm during a time when the bills have begun to accumulate with such rapidity that any and every attempt to sweep them under the rug is simply the most ridiculous of farce.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">In the face of (to name a few obvious distractions) a climate trending utterly <a href=\"http:\/\/guymcpherson.com\/2013\/01\/climate-change-summary-and-update\/\">haywire<\/a>, the decreasing <a href=\"http:\/\/usnews.nbcnews.com\/_news\/2012\/07\/05\/12579687-drought-hits-56-percent-of-continental-us-significant-toll-on-crops?lite\">reliability<\/a> of food <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/environment\/2012\/jul\/22\/americas-corn-farmers-dry-harvest\">harvests<\/a>, the rapid depletion of global fish stocks (in September, it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/earth\/environment\/9546004\/Just-100-cod-left-in-North-Sea.html\">reported<\/a> that North Sea Cod are almost completely finished), seven thousand temperature records <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2012\/03\/23\/climate-heat-usa-idUSL2E8EN1K820120323\">toppled<\/a> in March of 2012 and the most severe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesherald.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20120819\/OPINION03\/120819513&amp;template=printart\">drought<\/a> in eight hundred years, the ever-growing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ipsnews.net\/2012\/03\/oceans-will-not-survive-lsquobusiness-as-usualrsquo\/\">oceanic<\/a> \u201cdead <a href=\"http:\/\/www.harpers.org\/archive\/2004\/02\/0079915\">zones<\/a>\u201d, nearly-<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/demand-for-water-outstrips-supply-1.11143\">depleted<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eoearth.org\/article\/Aquifer_depletion\">aquifers<\/a>, the fastest species <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mysterium.com\/extinction.html\">die-off<\/a> in world history, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2012\/06\/12\/us-climate-wildfires-idUSBRE85B09420120612\">wildfires<\/a> gone wild; the President has consistently chosen a course not of ecological reconciliation, but rather the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/en\/press\/releases\/Greenpeace-comment-on-state-of-Rio20-negotiations-text-for-adoption\/\">continuation<\/a> of our full-speed-ahead mad dash across the brink: initiate any war, exploit any resource, destroy any community (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gaslandthemovie.com\/\">human<\/a>, animal, <a href=\"http:\/\/rewild.info\/anthropik\/2007\/08\/plants-are-people-too\/index.html\">plant<\/a>), \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/grist.org\/article\/reece\/\">remove<\/a>\u201d any mountain-top; all to squeeze every last drop of the \u201cBlack Gold\u201d coursing the veins of our life-giving Big Blue Stone.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Growth is <a href=\"http:\/\/physics.ucsd.edu\/do-the-math\/\">over<\/a>: the 2005 peak in global oil <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theoildrum.com\/\">extraction<\/a> (World energy consumption per capita has been more less <a href=\"http:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2012\/03\/12\/world-energy-consumption-since-1820-in-charts\/\">stagnant<\/a> since 1980) was the end of that game. Though any four-year-old could know that perpetual-motion machines are as grounded in reality as is obeisance to the Santa Claus or the fucking Jehova, some few ostensibly-all-growed-up politicians one could name are yet to have taken the memo.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">But, hey wait: what if we could find an as-yet-untapped energy source abundant and <a href=\"http:\/\/thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com\/2010\/02\/energy-follows-its-bliss.html\">concentrated<\/a> enough to enable us to keep living the Dream<sup>TM<\/sup> even <em>after<\/em> we\u2019d killed off all other forms of life? That&#8217;d be fun times, right? Nah, doesn\u2019t work, either: the 1972 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clubofrome.org\/?p=326\">Limits<\/a> To Growth study demonstrated that if energy constraints <em>didn\u2019t<\/em> bring down Industrial Civilisation, then uncontrollable waste streams <em>would do. <\/em>Ecosystems are mutual dependencies: without biodiversity, <em>nobody<\/em> gets out alive.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">So growth is over; and fuck\u2019s sake, thank the stars it <em>is<\/em> over. We didn\u2019t arrive here, this Wile E. Coyote moment, <em>not<\/em> having perpetrated a coupla thousand years of habitat destruction upon a (presumably) not-exactly-appreciative ecosphere. We arrived here <em><a href=\"http:\/\/rewild.info\/anthropik\/2002\/09\/may-god-continue-to-bless-the-united-states-of-america\/index.html\">having<\/a><\/em> done:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">When Europeans first arrived on the land that would eventually become the United States they found a land truly blessed by the divine. Their accounts speak of an abundance few would recognize today.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">On the East Coast, birds, including now-extinct species such as the great auk, could be found in \u201cnumber so great as to be uncountable\u201d, as one contemporary wrote. Passenger pigeons flew in flocks of billions, darkening the sky for days at a time as they passed overhead. Eskimo curlews, puffins, teals, plovers, and more could be found in numbers genuinely unthinkable today.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">And that\u2019s just to speak of the East Coast, and just to speak of birds. Writing from the Pacific Northwest in the 17th century, Nicolas Denys noted that \u201cso large a quantity of salmon enter[ed] the river [that] at night one [was] unable to sleep.\u201d Elsewhere cod were \u201cso thick by the shore that [one] could hardly have been able to row a boat through them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">In 1620, the crew of the Mayflower noted, \u201cEvery day saw whales plying hard by us; of which, in that place, if we had instruments and means to take them we might have made a very rich return.\u201d Tens of millions of buffalo dwelt on all corners of the continent, as did wolves and great cats.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"justify\">\u2022<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5064\" style=\"width: 260px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/deforest.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5064\" class=\"wp-image-5064 \" title=\"deforest\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/deforest.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"422\" srcset=\"https:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/deforest.jpg 250w, https:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/deforest-177x300.jpg 177w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-5064\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Deforestation of North America from 1620 to 1926.<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When you think of the plains and hillsides of Iraq, is the first thing that you think of normally cedar forests so thick that sunlight never touches the ground? That&#8217;s how they were.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The first written myth of this culture is Gilgamesh going in and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidsheen.com\/firstearth\/interviews\/jensen.htm\">deforesting<\/a> those hills to make cities. When you think of the Arabian peninsula, is the first thing that you think of oak forest? That&#8217;s what it used to be. Let&#8217;s move a little bit west, and you get the cedars of Lebanon. They still have one on their flag.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Plato was commenting on how deforestation was destroying the springs and rivers in Greece. [&#8230;] Greece was heavily forested, Italy was heavily forested, North Africa was heavily forested.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">Is this a difficult concept? For some, apparently, it is. Has, for example, Barack Obama ever <em>once<\/em> addressed the public <em>without<\/em> promising to return to the country its fucking birthright &#8212; its \u201cGolden Age\u201d chicken-in-every-pot\/car-in-every-garage \u201cDream\u201d? Ever <em>once<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Obama\u2019s Industry-friendly responses to\u00a0 the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2012\/04\/20\/the-aftermath-of-deepwater-horizon\/\">Deepwater<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/news\/the-spill-the-scandal-and-the-president-20100608\">Horizon<\/a> (don\u2019t read that <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> piece on a full stomach) and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.intrepidreport.com\/archives\/1106\">Fukushima<\/a> Daiichi disasters demonstrated precisely with whom his priorities lie.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">But it\u2019s probably not, in the end, even ecological <a href=\"http:\/\/rewild.info\/anthropik\/2005\/11\/thesis-17-environmental-problems-may-lead-to-collapse\/index.html\">blowback<\/a> that\u2019ll bring us down; but rather the atom. The possibility of Resource Wars escalating to a full-blown nuclear exchange seems\u2026if not necessarily <em>likely<\/em>, certainly very far from out-of-the-realm (nor is the possibility of an <a href=\"http:\/\/fsi.stanford.edu\/publications\/accidental_nuclear_war_a_postcold_war_assessment\">accidental<\/a> nuclear war anything like far-fetched). The Obama Administration, rather than scurrying to get the god damned things off-line, is (natch) \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/us-nuclear-arsenal-is-ready-for-overhaul\/2012\/09\/15\/428237de-f830-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html\">overseeing<\/a> the gargantuan task of modernizing the nuclear arsenal\u201d. Uh, thanks for that.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Should one prefer to lie awake nights, though, Fukushima is the spectre to haunt those sleepless moments. If you thought that Fukushima <em>itself<\/em> was under control \u2013 or even close \u2013 have a <a href=\"http:\/\/physics.ucsd.edu\/do-the-math\/\">listen<\/a> to Helen Caldicott\u2019s recent interview with Arnie Gundersen. It\u2019s decidedly <em>not<\/em> under control, and the likelihood of its going completely apeshit is <em>not<\/em> small. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=how-safe-are-old-nuclear-reactors-lessons-from-fukushima&amp;print=true\">Moreover<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">[\u2026] the disaster was no surprise given the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=safety-concerns-status-quo-at-us-reactors\">type<\/a> of reactors at Fukushima. In fact, nuclear power experts, computer models, and other analyses have consistently shown for decades that a problem in the older boiling-water reactors employed at Fukushima Daiichi would become disastrous because of a flawed safety system that houses the nuclear fuel, known as the Mark I containment. It is &#8220;the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/podcast\/episode.cfm?id=fukushima-we-listen-back-12-03-11\">worst<\/a> one of all the containments we have&#8221; &#8212; and in a complete blackout, &#8220;you&#8217;re going to lose containment&#8221;, noted U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Deputy Regional Administrator Charles Casto on March 16, 2011; who was in Japan to assist, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrc.gov\/reading-rm\/foia\/japan-foia-info.html\">transcripts<\/a> of internal meetings released by the NRC. &#8220;There&#8217;s no doubt about it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The U.S. has 23 reactors with the same kind of safety systems &#8212; and the same risky placement of pools for spent nuclear fuel; namely, alongside the main reactor in the top of the reactor building. Would U.S. reactors <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scientificamerican.com\/observations\/2012\/03\/06\/one-year-after-fukushima-could-it-happen-in-the-u-s\/\">perform<\/a> any better than Japan&#8217;s in a crisis?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">That\u2019s David Biello, writing in the <em>Scientific American<\/em>, from March of this year. In one of the pieces linked to, also from the <em>Scientific American<\/em>, John Matson continued:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of debate on this issue,\u201d physicist Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said last week at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Boston. \u201cIn our view, complacency is as prevalent here as it is in Japan.\u201d (Lyman and a colleague recently released a report [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucsusa.org\/assets\/documents\/nuclear_power\/fukushima-anniversary-report-3-5-12.pdf\">pdf<\/a>] on the U.S. response to the accident.) One major threat to a nuclear plant is a prolonged power outage, or station <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/podcast\/episode.cfm?id=nuclear-accident-is-long-feared-sta-11-03-14\">blackout<\/a>, like the one at Fukushima, which deprived the reactors of their cooling systems.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">U.S. nuclear plants, Lyman said, are not well prepared to handle severe, \u201cbeyond design basis\u201d events, such as major natural disasters, multiple system failures, or terrorist attacks. A report last year by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which itself has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=safety-concerns-status-quo-at-us-reactors\">criticized<\/a> for being too lenient with the industry it is supposed to oversee, revealed that many U.S. nuclear plants were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=many-us-nuclear-plants-ill-prepared-to-handle-simultaneous-threats\">vulnerable<\/a> to extreme emergencies. \u201cRegulators don\u2019t usually impose stringent requirements to deal with these accidents, because they assume that they\u2019re so <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article.cfm?id=us-nuclear-regulations-fukushima-like-incident\">improbable<\/a>,\u201d Lyman said. Indeed, the NRC has called the Fukushima crisis \u201cthe result of a combination of highly unlikely natural disasters.\u201d That specific combination of mega-earthquake and tsunami, the agency maintains, would be very improbable in the U.S..<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">\u201cImprobable\u201d as the Obama Administration\u2019s \u201cwatchdogs\u201d may think some or\u00a0 other series of man-made or natural events (NASA has also <a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/science-news\/science-at-nasa\/2003\/23oct_superstorm\/\">warned<\/a> of a \u201cSolar Superstorm\u201d, much like the one that occurred in 1859, frying the grid) may be, they are, clearly, not only <em>possible<\/em>, but precedented. But though the consequences resulting from such an event couldn\u2019t possibly be more fraught with calamity; any thought of taking pains to assure its avoidance elicits from the Feds only bored ennui.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><em>November 18, 2012 Update<\/em>s:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">Don\u2019t look now, but the NRC was in October <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2012\/10\/19\/nuclear-plant-flood-threat-leak_n_1983005.html\">exposed<\/a> in hiding from the public its own pessimistic analyses.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">Arnie Gunderson, in an October 30 <a href=\"http:\/\/fairewinds.org\/content\/special-edition-podcast-after-hurricane-sandy-questions-and-answers-about-what-happened\">podcast<\/a>, revealed that New Jersey&#8217;s Oyster Creek plant suffered an incident during Hurricane Sandy. It was saved from fucking up entirely only by the good fortune of the hurricane&#8217;s having arrived during a time of scheduled maintenance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\">Worse, they\u2019re only considering so-called \u201cBlack <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_swan_theory\">Swan<\/a>\u201d events here: those which are imaginable &#8212; perhaps even predictable \u2013 but not likely to occur during any given period of time. When, however, we consider not just the <em>possibility<\/em> of a catastrophic failure of the grid; but the <em>certainty<\/em> of a systematic failure &#8212; owing to infrastructure disrepair, financial <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shtfplan.com\/headline-news\/greece-power-regulator-calls-emergency-meeting-to-avert-collapse-of-power-grid-and-natural-gas-system_06032012\">breakdowns<\/a>, and the onrushing scarcity of global energy and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/john-ck-daly\/will-the-us-face-blackout_b_1864711.html\">water<\/a> resources &#8212; \u201cToo Cheap To Meter\u201d begins looking a lot more like \u201cToo Frightening To Even Contemplate\u201d. And so we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Nobody, of course, can predict exactly <em>when<\/em> the grid will finally become too unreliable for us to be able to keep our nuclear waste from going Postal. Dmitry Orlov, in a brilliant blog <a href=\"http:\/\/cluborlov.blogspot.ca\/2012\/06\/fragility-and-collapse-slowly-at-first.html\">entry<\/a> from last Spring, in fact explicitly refused to predict the timing; instead giving readers enough clues to begin to draw our own conclusions.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">With regard to the electric grid, the incidence of major power outages has recently been seen doubling every year. Yes, we are committing the inductive fallacy by simply extrapolating this trend into the future, but, given what is at stake, dare we not extrapolate? At the very least, we would need to hear a very good reason why we shouldn\u2019t. The incidence of major power outages can only double so many times before it\u2019s time to start handing out potassium iodide tablets and before wig prices shoot through the roof.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/PowerOutages.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5067\" title=\"PowerOutages\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/PowerOutages.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"352\" srcset=\"https:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/PowerOutages.jpg 400w, https:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/PowerOutages-300x264.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Nicole Foss, meantime &#8212; one-half of the team behind <em>The Automatic Earth,<\/em> a blog whose predictions have for years been coming true almost like clockwork \u2013 in late-August took a long, hard look at the recent Indian <a href=\"http:\/\/theautomaticearth.com\/Energy\/india-power-outage-the-shape-of-things-to-come.html\">blackout<\/a> which affected something like 700 million people. Surveying the electric-generation milieu, and the probable implications, she painted a grim picture of the future of the grid in India &#8212; as well as in the Developing <em>and <\/em>Developed nations at large.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">John Michael Greer, in a <a href=\"http:\/\/thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com\/search?q=grid\">despatch<\/a> from March of 2010, took a more sanguine approach, arguing that we\u2019ll in future do what we must to keep truly necessary services running for as long as possible.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">The managers of a power grid facing collapse due to a shortage of generation capacity have one obvious alternative to hand: cutting non-essential sectors out of the grid for as long as necessary, so the load on the grid decreases to a level that the available generation capacity can handle. In an emergency, for example, many American suburbs and a large part of the country\u2019s nonagricultural rural land could have electrical service shut off completely, and an even larger portion of both could be put on the kind of intermittent electrical service common in the Third World, without catastrophic results.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">Possibly a valid point. If Greer\u2019s right, we\u2019ve probably got more than the decade or so it would take to realise the decommissioning of currently operating nuclear plants and the entombing of the mountains of toxic <a href=\"http:\/\/ens-newswire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/2004-03-16-10.html\">waste<\/a> seventy years\u2019 accumulation have wrought. We could try it, and just hope to Hell that disaster <em>doesn\u2019t<\/em> strike at some time during the process\u2026and that\u00a0 our climate goose <em>hasn\u2019t<\/em> already been <a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/world_now\/2012\/03\/greenland-ice-sheet-global-warming.html?track=lat-pick\">irretrievably<\/a> cooked to a crisp.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/breathing.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5083\" alt=\"breathing\" src=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/breathing.jpg\" width=\"529\" height=\"529\" srcset=\"https:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/breathing.jpg 529w, https:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/breathing-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/breathing-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/breathing-500x500.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 529px) 100vw, 529px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">If Barack Obama were a real-live living being rather than a golem \u2013 if there were any reason to believe that there could be a snowball\u2019s chance of his sitting down in the Oval Office wearing a sweater (or, more appropriately, a fucking <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Sheep_Look_Up\">breathing<\/a> apparatus) and revealing his administration\u2019s \u201cplan\u201d (it\u2019s\u00a0 all about the Plans these days) to divert all resources currently being spent on making war on the planet and its inhabitants into powering down the Homo <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dieoff.org\/page15.htm\">Colossus<\/a> (to borrow William Catton\u2019s term) and cleaning up our almost inconceivably problematic messes\u2026<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">At current consumption levels, humanity has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.footprintnetwork.org\/en\/index.php\/GFN\/page\/earth_overshoot_day\/\">overshot<\/a> the Earth\u2019s carrying capacity by 50%. This doesn\u2019t account, however, for soil <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soilerosion.net\/\">degradation<\/a>, habitat destruction, resource depletion, waste accumulation, and time-sensitive urgencies. So our situation is much more dire than simply concluding that we could <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fcQYI4yo8mM\">reduce<\/a> global consumption by 50% (a pipe-dream in its own right) and everything would be hunky-dory.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">In other words, if we\u2019re going to stand a chance at pulling our irons out of the fire, it means no more fucking around: no more warships, no more prisons, no more teevee show, no more motor-car, no more advertising, no more meat-<a href=\"http:\/\/whyveg.com\/save_the_planet\/\">eating<\/a>, no more Hollywood, no more football league, no more Made In Maquiladora plastic gewgaws, no more Mudd Club nor CBGB. We just ain\u2019t got time for that now. It\u2019s all hands on deck, or we\u2019re all going down with the ship.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">\u2026If there were any reason to believe the President would draw up such a plan of action, then, sure, go ahead and vote for the miserable son of a bitch.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">To repeat: no. Barack Obama <em>didn\u2019t <\/em>invent Growth!, nor <a href=\"http:\/\/killinghope.org\/\">Imperialism<\/a>, nor Military Keynesianism, nor the <a href=\"http:\/\/lists.topica.com\/lists\/PhLeftReader\/read\/message.html?sort=a&amp;mid=500012164\">Revolving<\/a> Door, nor Bretton Woods, nor Institutional Racism, nor State Repression. Nor even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.polisproject.org\/researchareas\/propertycommons\">Property<\/a> \u201cRights\u201d. But he\u2019s held their banner high. Not only higher than any Democrat before him has done, in point of fact; but also higher than McCain would have done, or Romney would do.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">This last is of course speculation. But it\u2019s based on established reality: the \u201cBest And Brightest\u201d of the Democratic party have in the end been a more effective force for crushing liberty and justice and for destroying ecological communities than have their \u201cMayberry Machiavellian\u201d counterparts. This is simply the historical record, whatever one wants to make of the party\u2019s feel-your-pain \u201cHope and Change\u201d promises.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The Republicans love to bluster and fulminate; to fire their six-guns in the air. But talk, however intimidating, is cheap. To really get down to the nitty-gritty of grinding the world underfoot, the Democrats are the tops.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Think, for examples, of Clinton\u2019s Welfare Reform, of NAFTA and GATT, of the Clinton-era <a href=\"http:\/\/www.justicepolicy.org\/research\/2061\">explosion<\/a> in the prison population, and of an environmental record so shameful that the Sierra Club\u2019s David Brower adjudged Clinton\u2019s first four years to have been more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.debatethis.org\/gore\/enviro\/brower.html\">damaging<\/a> than the Reagan and Bush Sr. years combined. Republicans were peeing their pants with envy.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Obama\u2019s landmark achievement in this regard has, of course, been his astonishingly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com\/30062012-why-the-obamacare-ruling-stinks-oped\/\">venal<\/a> health care initiative. But he oughtn\u2019t either be sold short for his truly breathtaking Civil Liberties ravages, nor his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/obama-s-bank-bailout-bush-s-plan-resurrected\/\">expansion<\/a> of the TARP bailouts. The former head of Israeli Intelligence, additionally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesofisrael.com\/obama-best-president-for-israel-says-former-intel-chief\/\">considers<\/a> Obama \u201cthe greatest defender of the Jewish state to ever sit in the Oval Office\u201d; Ehud Barak <a href=\"http:\/\/www.standardmedia.co.ke\/?articleID=2000063034\">agrees<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The likelihood is that a McCain\/Palin administration would have bumbled and bungled its way through four years in much the same manner as Shrub II\u2019s had done. (And the latter was, after all, the lamest-duck Presidential term since\u2026you tell me?) Romney is already a laughing-stock. If he wins (he <a href=\"http:\/\/electoral-vote.com\/\">won\u2019t<\/a>), he\u2019ll <em>continue<\/em> to be a laughing-stock. If we <em>must<\/em> have a biocidal maniac running the show, may as well at least have the one who\u2019s the bigger dumbfuck, less likely to successfully bring to fruition his nefarious desires.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Look, it just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2012\/08\/17\/meet-barack-obama\/\">doesn\u2019t<\/a> matter for whom you vote. They\u2019re completely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.obamatheconservative.com\/\">indistinguishable<\/a>. From the Gunboat Diplomacy, to the Executive-Branch power-grabbing, to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/arts\/critics\/atlarge\/2012\/01\/30\/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz28RHMkas8\">Prison<\/a>-Industrial imperatives, to the mega-bailouts and\u00a0 Corporate Welfare, to the Planetary Russian Roulette.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Chomsky has been fond of opining that Presidential campaigns are all style and no substance:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">Elections in the United States are expensive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/culture\/books\/7865508\/Noam-Chomsky-interview.html\">extravaganzas<\/a> run by the public relations industry. The PR people looked at the polls and picked slogans accordingly.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Did you know Obama won the best campaign of the advertising industry in 2008? It was politicians being marketed as a product, like toothpaste. What does that have to do with democracy?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"justify\">But it\u2019s <em>literally<\/em> true as well: one\u2019s Presidential selection is about as important a choice as one\u2019s toothpaste selection. It won\u2019t make one god damned ounce of difference.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">So why vote for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.voterocky.org\/intro\">Rocky<\/a> Anderson, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.justicepartyusa.org\/\">Justice<\/a> Party candidate?<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Well, voting <em>can<\/em>, at the local level, make differences in people\u2019s lives. And so long as one is going to be voting anyway, sure, take a few seconds and vote for Rocky. Dude\u2019s got principles. Or, vote for another third-party candidate of your liking. Or, Hell, vote for Bullwinkle &#8212; that\u2019s about the level of seriousness with which issues are dealt in the American polity. Whichever name one marks their X alongside, just remember: that\u2019s the easy part. That\u2019s the part to which should be given about as much consideration as will be the next toothpaste purchase.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">After that, well, it\u2019s put up or face up &#8212; to the quite real possibility, if we don\u2019t get our collective act together, of extinction. For Barack Obama <em>is <\/em>a golem.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">But here\u2019s where the Occupy movement is misguided: it\u2019s not the 1% of \u201cgreedy\u201d motherfuckers whom we ought to find culpable of soiling the nest; but rather the ladies and gentlemen in the mirror. The problem isn\u2019t the bureaucrats &#8212; no\u00a0 matter how wealthy or powerful they may be \u2013 piloting the Machine. The problem is the Machine itself.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The Machine (or as Fredy Perlman dubbed it, the <a href=\"http:\/\/theanarchistlibrary.org\/library\/fredy-perlman-against-his-story-against-leviathan\">Leviathan<\/a>) feeds insatiably on life; and defecates Bhopal disasters, Interstate Highways, Flavr Savr \u201cTomatoes\u201d, and Prozac. The machine is <em>all <\/em>of us \u2013 all 100% of us who, by our daily participation in the system, contribute to its Sherman&#8217;s March over the face of the planet.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">It\u2019s great sport to scapegoat the Plutocracy; but the overwhelming bulk of planet-killing activities are undertaken by us proles going about our daily lives, as good little consumers will. Here as well the Occupiers have it wrong. Austerity isn\u2019t to be <em>protested against<\/em>; it\u2019s in fact our only hope. We cannot continue to consume beyond our basic survival needs. It was profligacy, after all, sent us tumbling headlong over the <a href=\"http:\/\/cassandralegacy.blogspot.com\/2011\/08\/seneca-effect-origins-of-collapse.html\">cliff <\/a>&#8212; unchecked consumption damned sure won\u2019t see us safely back to the ground far, far below.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Nor shall a Great Savior, after the plebiscitical dust has cleared, ride in and solve for us all of our problems, thereby allowing the hedonistic \u201cDream\u201d to resume. Contrary to popular opinion, even Saviors must obey the laws of physics. Besides: politicians exist only to serve the State; which, in turn, exists only to serve the Machine.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">We <em>could<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/transitionus.org\/transition-101\/\">instead<\/a> get <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ecoshock.info\/2012\/10\/food-and-revolution.html\">busy<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wildethics.org\/\">cast<\/a> off the chains which bind. It\u2019s not as though it were inconceivable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barack Obama is a War Criminal. In the real world, War Criminals are awarded the Death Sentence. But we don\u2019t live in the real world; we live in fucking Fantasyland, where they\u2019re awarded the Nobel Peace Prize instead. And let\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/2012\/10\/10\/rocky-mmxii\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/durianapocalypse.net\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}